New on the Personal Book Shelf: The ANV, Southern Journalism and The Anti-Slavery Movement

CWL received an offer from Louisiana State University Press and picked up a nice stack of books for $7.50 each and that included shipping! Unfortunately, the books doubled the size of the stack labeled 'Read This Summer'.

Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee, edited by Peter S. Carmichael. Six essays that praise and fault the Marble Man.

The Cause of the South: Selections From De Bow's Review, 1846-1867, edited by Paul Paskoff and Daniel Wilson. De Bow's Review was one of the preeminent Southern publications of the antebellum period. Based in New Orleans, the journal was the forum for agricultural and industrial issues, the slavery vs. wage labor issue, southern nationalism and Black Republicanism issues among others. A book for the primary source shelf.

Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War, edited by Susan Grant and Peter Parrish. Twelve essays on the myths, memories, leaders, legacies, perceptions and realities of the war.

Campbell Brown's Civil War: With Ewell and the Army of Northern Virginia, edited by Terry Jones. Since its publication in 2001 Campbell Brown's journals have added a new dimension to the study of the Army of Northern Virgina's leadership.

A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade, Robert Gudmestad covers the emptying out of the Upper South's slaves into the lower and trans-Mississippi South during the three decades before the war. Speculation in slave prices was comparable to the speculation in oil prices today.

No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Anti-Slavery Politics, Frederick Blue. Anti-slavery politics generated Southern fears that it could lose the right to hold property in slaves. Pittsburgh's Jane Grey Swisshelm gets a chapter in the book.

The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy by Robert K. Krick. Ten essays that consider the death of Jackson, Jackson's persecution of Garnett, the accuracy of Longstreet's memoirs and his relationship with McLaws, brigade commanders Rodes, Gregg and Early, Confederate bibliography and other topics.

CWL will start with Audacity Personified, then Campbell Brown's Civil Warand then The Smoothbore That Doomed the Confederacy next. Hopefully finish one in July one in August and one in September. After reading Glaathar's General Lee's Army during the winter, it seems to be shaping up to be a Army of Northern Virginia year. CWL probably focus on John Brown in October as a way of saluting the 150th anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid.

CWL---Was Lee Still Looking For A Battle of Annihilation After Gettysburg?

"Lee's Search for the Battle of Annihilation", Peter Carmichael in Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee, Peter Carmichael, ed., LSU Press, 2004, pp.1-26.

By the fall of 1863 did Robert E. Lee's expectations far exceed what the Army of Northern Virginia could realistically accomplish? Much has been made of Lee's spring 1863 remark that the ANV was unbeatable. Did Lee continue to believe that the ANV could annihilate the Army of the Potomac after Gettysburg? Carmichael describes how Lee did believe just that. Lee looked for a decisive victory from Early in the summer of 1864 in the Shenandoah Valley. Carmichael believes that Early's army best served Lee by forcing Grant to send troops away from Petersburg to protect Washington. Lee failed to appreciate that defensive victories could both dishearten the North during the autumn elections and sustain Southern morale. The fall of Atlanta, the march to Savannah and the battles of Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek led to Lincoln's presidential victory.

Discussing the works of Douglas Southall Freeman, Thomas Connelly, Allan Nolan, Michael Fellman and Emory Thomas, Carmichael covers the changing interpretations of Lee's audacity during the war. Carmichael cites Lee's July 1864 remarks, "if we can defeat or drive the armies of the enemy from the field, we shall have peace. All our efforts and energies should be devoted to that object, to illustrate Lee's continuing quest for a battle of annihilation. By ordering the assaults at The Wilderness, Harris Farm, North Anna, Bethesda Church, Cold Harbor, Weldon Railroad, and Fort Harrison Robert E. Lee engages in questionable tactics Carmichael feels. With these assaults and the 1864 Valley Campaign the ANV sustained battlefield losses at a time when Confederate numbers should have been conserved Carmichael concludes. Lee does deserve credit for making the effort in 1864 but the offensive forays drained the lifeblood out of an already anemic Confederacy.

"A defensive operations strategy afforded the best chance to ruin Lincoln's reelection bide with protecting Southern manpower," Carmichael summarizes (p. 26). The goal was to break the North's will to fight and defensive tactics as long could have accomplished this goal. In 1864 Confederate defeat was non inevitable and as Gary Gallagher has pointed out, Carmichael notes, the Southern people still had the will to outlast the enemy if the armies could be preserved.

Image Source: Lee Cart d'viste 1864

Among the Best of 2008: General Lee's Army From Victory To Collapse

Joseph T. Glatthaar. General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, New York Free Press, 41 illustrations, 19 maps, notes, bibliography,index, 600 pp., 2008, $35.00.

Like his March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops on the Savannah and
Carolinas Campaigns and Partners in Command: Relationships between Civil War Leaders Glatthaar in General Lee's Army extensively relies on the voice of the soldiers found in primary documents and the quantitative research that is sometimes more hidden within the primary sources. The world of individuals, the world of ideas and the world of quartermasters are brought together in a way that is reminiscent of Bell I. Wiley who relied on the primary source but did not rely on the numbers like Glatthar.

He repudiates Lost Cause historiography that preaches that neither Lee nor his army had faults. Loyalty and courage, desertion and cowardice have a place in the narrative. Glathaar created a database of 600 soldiers and tested it for the number of killed, wounded, and lost to disease; at the end of the war only 25% of the soldiers were untouched. Their median age was 24 in 1861 and they in a slightly higher portion from the well-to-do. In the course of the war, 14% of the Army of Northern Virginia deserted at one time or another. Glatthaar work shows that it was not necessarily a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

CWL notes that Glatthaar has come to understand that every social class supported slavery as the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Close to 50% of the 1861 Rebel army lived in households that used slaves. Like McPherson, Glatthaar sees the community, the government, the hearth, manhood, and hatred of the enemy as motives for joining the military. Glatthaar offers an evenhanded discussion of desertion. The book is driven by chronology but Glatthaar is a subtle writer and themes of are woven throughout. Food, arms, post-traumatic stress, the lack of health care and substantive nutrition.

Glatthaar's quantitative research is an important element in the narrative but it never becomes tedious. It is not hard to imagine that General Lee's Army has set a new standard for writing Civil War armies' history. Readable, enjoyable, bring new insights to the story, General Lee's Army is not a battle history but a social history of men who passed through the experience of being a Civil War soldier.

New and Noteworthy---Flames Beyond Gettysburg

Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863, Scott Mingus, Ironclad Publishing, maps, illustrations, $24.95

Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863 describes the significant expedition and raid by a mixed force of Confederate infantry, artillery, and cavalry with the goal of capturing Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Newly promoted Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon led roughly 1,500 Southern soldiers on a mission to seize a vital bridge crossing over the Susquehanna River between Wrightsville and Columbia, Pennsylvania. The capture of this bridge, which carried both trains and foot traffic, was crucial for the advance of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early's division into Lancaster County. Additionally, the capture and ransom of very prosperous York, Pennsylvania, along with the destruction of important railroad bridges and the critical Hanover Junction rail yard further isolated Washington, D.C. In conducting this mission, Gordon and his men became the first Confederates to occupy Gettysburg the week before the battle.

Flames Beyond Gettysburg is a very detailed and accurate account of the Gordon Expedition and the Pennsylvania emergency militiamen and civilians who resisted the invasion. Like others books in Ironclad Publishing's "Discovering Civil War America" series, Volume 5 features detailed driving tours of sites associated with the Gordon mission, such as the Rebels' route from Maryland, the June 26, 1863 skirmishing at Gettysburg's Witmer Farm, CSA Lt. Col. Elijah V. White's cavalry raid on Hanover Junction, Gordon's triumphal march through York, and the crucial burning of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge by Federal troops.

Text Source: CWL edited and added content found at author's website. Also, there is a wonderful online picture gallery that accompanies the book.

Ironclad Publishing now has seven volumns in its Discovering Civil War America Series.

New---Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865

Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865, Ethan S. Rafuse, Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 283 pp., maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, $35.00

The generalship of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy's greatest commander, has long fascinated students of the American Civil War. In assessing Lee and his military career, historians have faced the great challenge of explaining how a man who achieved extraordinary battlefield success in 1862-63 ended up surrendering his army and accepting the defeat of his cause in 1865. How, in just under two years, could Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Confederacy have gone from soaring triumph at Chancellorsville to total defeat at Appomattox Court House?

In this reexamination of the last two years of Lee's storied military career, Ethan S. Rafuse offers a clear, informative, and insightful account of Lee's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to defend the Confederacy against a relentless and determined foe. Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy describes the great campaigns that shaped the course of this crucial period in American history, the challenges Lee faced in each battle, and the dramatic events that determined the war's outcome.

In addition to providing readable and richly detailed narratives of such campaigns as Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Spotsylvania, and Appomattox, Rafuse offers compelling analysis of Lee's performance as a commander and of the strategic and operational contexts that influenced the course of the war. He superbly describes and explains the factors that shaped Union and Confederate strategy, how both sides approached the war in Virginia from an operational standpoint, differences in the two sides' respective military capabilities, and how these forces shaped the course and outcome of events on the battlefield.

Rich in insights and analysis, this book provides a full, balanced, and cogent account of how even the best efforts of one of history's great commanders could not prevent the total defeat of his army and its cause. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in the career of Robert E. Lee and the military history of the Civil War.

Ethan Rafuse is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His previous books include McClellan's War: the Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, George Gordon Meade and the War in the East, and A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and the Battle of Manassas. Text From Publisher

CWL: Rafuse states the purpose of this book is "to explain how Lee and the Confederate cause went from . . . [the] triumph of Chancellorsville to complete defeat in 1865." Did Lee's aggressive strategy and tactics destroy his army? Or was it the course of nature when the Army of Northern Virginia was out manned and outgunned? Or was the best regimental, brigade, division and corps leaders dead by 1863 and few quality replacements available? Did Jefferson Davis play a major role by ignoring logistical problems that brought about the demise of General Lee's army?

Rafuse also states that "this study will not only consider matters on the Confederate side, but will also devote considerable attention to decisions and actions taken by Lee's counterparts on the Union side." As George Pickett said regarding the outcome of the Grand Assault at Gettysburg, "I believe the Union army had something to do with it." Rafuse confesses that the working title of the book was Robert E. Lee and The Triumph of the Union. He was convinced by friends that the title might be confusing to some readers, and CWL adds might anger others.

2009 appears to be the year of re-examining Lee and his army. Joseph Glathaar's General Lee's Army From Victory to Collapse arrived in May and re-invigorated the topic and moved it forward. CWL will have both Glathaar's and Rafuse's work on the Top Ten of 2009 list. Rafuse has been busy. Before 2009 closes, his Antietam, South Mountain, and Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide should be available December 1. In Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865, Rafuse tips his hat to his 'good friends and colleagues. Steven Woodworth, Brooks Simpson, Carol Reardon, Mark Grimsley and Chris Stowe; also, among his friends and colleagues are John Hennessy, Donald Pfanz, and Chris Calkins of the National Park Service. CWL has read books by each of these, with the exception of Stowe, and appreciates their scholarship and fine narrative voices.

CWL---The Heart of General Lee's Army In Victory and Defeat

General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, Joseph Glatthaar, Free Press, 624 pages, 19 maps, 41 photographs, appendix, notes, bibliopraphy, index, $35.00.

An exceptional history by professional standards and a thoroughly entertaining work! Glatthaar's General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse is a finely balanced match of statistics and story. Not driven by campaigns and chronology, but by the soldiers and their voices, Glathaar's effort opens the Army of Northern Virginia in a way unlike D.S. Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants. Recently, several battle studies have used soldiers' diaries in an intimate way; Rable's Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!; John Michael Priests' Antietam: The Soldiers' Battle, Tracey Power's Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox and Noah Trudeau's Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage. Glathaar has managed in 472 pages of narrative (yes, there are 150 pages of appendix, notes, bibliography and index) to re-introduce both the scholar and the lay reader to the Army of Northern Virginia.

Those readers who enjoy Bell Irvin Wiley's Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, John Billings' Coffee and Hardtack or Sam Watkins' Company Atch should confidently approach General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse. Individual chapters focus upon religion and morality, arms and ammunition, combat, the homefront, medical care, desertion, and black Confederates. Campaigns and their battles are covered as they impact the soldiers in the ranks. Lee is treated honestly and without hagiography or disdain. Slavery is put in its place as a cause of the war, as a cause worth dying for and as a cause for regret.

CWL will place it on the Top Ten of 2008 and will return to General Lee's Army: From Victory of Collapse again. Most moving for CWL were three chapters 'The Grind of War', 'Spiral of Defeat' and 'The Final Days.' The collapse of the Army of the Northern Virginia, after a year of sacrifice beyond endurance by the men in the ranks, is nearly heartbreaking.

CWL----For Gettysburg, Is the Army of Northern Virginia Represented in the Official Records?

Happily perusing Benjamin Dixon's new Learning The Battle of Gettysburg: A Guide to the Official Records, I asked "For Gettysburg, Is the Army of Northern Virginia Represented in the Official Records?" The answer was found on pages 136-144. Of what I found this is a summary of Army of Northern Virginia's Reports in the OR:

Of three infantry corps, all three corps reports are missing.

Of the auxiliary corps (artillery, ordinance, cavalry) there are
two of three are there with the cavalry report missing. Did Lee
possibly
command the cavalry corps while Stuart and his division were away?

Of the First Corps divisional (infantry/artillery) reports, all of
Longstreet's divisional reports are missing.
Of the First Corps' 15 brigade reports, 14 are missing.

Of the Second Corps 4 divisional (infantry/artillery) reports,
there are zero missing.
Of the Second Corps 18 brigade reports, only one is missing.

Of the Third Corps 4 divisional reports, none are missing
Of the Third Corps 18 brigade reports, only one is missing.

Why does the First Corps have all these missing reports?

NOTE CORRECTION TO THIS POSTING: MAY 23, 2008.

New Book: Robert E. Lee's Best Division Commander

Major General Robert E. Rodes of the Army of Northern Virginia, A Biography , Darrell L. Collins, Savas Beattie Publishers, hardcover, 360 pages,26 photos and illustrations, maps, index, $32.95. (November 2007)

Jedediah Hotchkiss, Stonewall Jackson's renowned mapmaker, expressed the feelings of many contemporaries when he declared that Robert Rodes was the best division commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. This well-deserved accolade is all the more remarkable considering that Rodes, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a prewar railroad engineer, was one of a very few officers in Lee's army to rise so high without the benefit of a West Point education. Major General Robert E. Rodes of the Army of Northern Virginia: A Biography, is the first deeply researched scholarly biography on this remarkable Confederate officer.

From First Manassas in 1861 to Third Winchester in 1864, Rodes served in all the great battles and campaigns of the legendary Army of Northern Virginia. He quickly earned a reputation as a courageous and inspiring leader who delivered hard-hitting attacks and rock steady defensive efforts. His greatest moment came at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863, when he spearheaded Stonewall Jackson's famous flank attack that crushed the left wing of General Hooker's Army of the Potomac.


Rodes began the conflict with a deep yearning for recognition and glory, coupled with an indifferent attitude toward religion and salvation. When he was killed at the height of his glorious career at Third Winchester on September 19, 1864, a trove of prayer books and testaments were found on his corpse.

Based upon exhaustive new research, Darrell Collins' new biography breathes life into a heretofore largely overlooked Southern soldier. Although Rodes' widow consigned his personal papers to the flames after the war, Collins has uncovered a substantial amount of firsthand information to complete this compelling portrait of one of Robert E. Lee's most dependable field generals. (Text From Publisher)

CWL --- The First Confederate Soldiers

Confederate Soldiers in Virginia 1861, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Jr., in Virginia At War, 1861, William C. Davis, and James I. Robertson, Jr., University of Kentucky Press, 2005, pp. 45-63.

Northern mudsills versus Southern woodsmen. Yankee urban dwellers versus Southern farmboys. Better riding, independent-minded, superior shots, the men in 1861 who became the Army of Northern Virginia in mid-1862 would be able to take out 3, 5 or 7 Yankees. Just how “knowledgeable and experienced where these rural men who fought for the Confederacy in Virginia . . ?” Did pre-war experience create an indomitable fighting man in the Confederacy? (p. 45)

What advantages did Southerners bring into military service? For one motivation.
Viewed as a glorious, holy, sacred and patriotic endeavor performed by free men with honor, soldiers of the Confederacy insisted that they would win. This psychological and emotional edge was accompanied by pre-war militia training. At the very beginning of the war, Virginia Military Academy, Citadel, and a host of other military academies supplied leaders for the militia companies.

Yet, both in the North and South, the immensity of the war outstripped militia experienced. The army which Winfield Scott led into Mexico was numbered at 10,000, the size of a corps during the Civil War. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in 1862 was twice as large as Richmond, Virginia. in 1860.. Richmond the 26th largest city in the U.S.; the 25th largest city was Troy, New York. For many Southerners, the ANV was the largest community in which they had lived. Glatthaar, the author, understands that this new community was ‘a biological time bomb. (p. 50)

City dwellers had been inoculated by their survival of illnesses in their pre-war living conditions. Measles, mumps, typhoid, pneumonia, dysentery, and diarrhea took their tool in the ANV. Additionally, pre-war ‘rural living did little to develop concern over sanitation.. (p. 52) After 1st Manassas, Southern army encampments continued to suffer casualties from sanitation and hygiene issues related to the slaughtering of beef.

Despite a rural upbringing most Confederate soldiers had not slept and lived for extended periods out of doors. At home, food was prepared by mothers and daughters; in camp, cooking was done by males inexperienced with food preparation. Glatthaar cites examples of soldiers mistaking tallow for lard. Also, it is assumed that the Southern soldier had extensive experience with firearms. Casualties generated by negligence and accidents were a steady drain on company strength during 1861 and 1862.Glatthaar has found.

Many Confederate soldiers realized that military service was much like slavery. An extreme case of military disobedience at the company level were among Louisiana troops. Troops from other states acted in ways similar to the Louisiana men. “Removed fro traditional social controls and with too much time on their hands, young . . . responded with’ disruptive behavior. (p. 57) Wildly drunk, preferring prostitutes as female company, and gambling to the point of exhaustion, some Rebels were not good soldiers.

Virginia soldiers adjusted their military performance and discipline by 1862 when Lee took command of the Army of Virginia and made it into the Army of Northern Virginia. The proper sanWriting & Fighting From the Army of Northern Virginia: A Collection of Confederate Soldier Correspondence (Writing & Fighting the Civil War) by William B. Stypleitation, proper cooking, proper self-discipline, and proper obedience acquired by Virginia soldiers by June 1862 was what was their new commander, a very proper gentleman, R. E. Lee, demanded.

This essay is available from your local library, through inter-library loan, or from Civil War Librarian.

For Additional Reading:

Writing & Fighting From the Army of Northern Virginia: A Collection of Confederate Soldier Correspondence, William B. Styple, Belle Grove, Press, 2003

The Army of Northern Virginia: Lee's Army in the American Civil War, 1861-1865, Philip Katcher,Routledge Press, 2003

Lee's Tigers: The Louisiana Infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia, Terry L. Jones, Louisana State University Press, 2003

CWL --- Personal Shock and Awe: Sharpshooters, Army of Northern Virginia

Shock Troops of the Confederacy: The Sharpshooter Battalions of the Army of Northern Virginia, Fred L. Ray, CFS Press, hardcover, maps, illustrations, index, notes, 432 pages, 2006, $35.

"Thoroughly researched. " "Offers new material on the common soldier." "Worth every penny." "Wonderful to read." Ever use remarks like this about a book? If so, have you used each of them for the same book? Well, you can say each of those things about Fred Ray's Shock Troops of the Confederacy.

Forthcoming: The Army of the Northern Virginia, Social and Institutional History

The Army of Northern Virginia: A Social and Institutional History, J. Tracy Power, 333 pp., ABC-CLIO Press, December 2007, hardcover, $85.00

Thsi introductory volume features a chronology of the army's history from its orgins in 1861 until is surrender in a 1865. Also, the book contains photographs, paintings, and engravings of the army's generals, officers and enlisted men, their weapons and uniforms. Significant battles and other incidents in the army's history is covered. Theater maps of northern Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania along with maps of the army's campaigns and battles are included.