TOCWOC - A Civil War Blog

If you're new To TOCWOC, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As many TOCWOC readers know, I am interested in the post-Gettysburg campaigns in the East and have commented on them in the past.  Andrew A. Humphreys, Army of the Potomac’s Chief of Staff at the time of Bristoe Station and Mine Run, did write a short campaign study in 1883 (available to read or for download at Google Books for anyone interested), but modern book-length studies of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run campaigns are long overdue.

It was with interest, then, that I stumbled onto an ongoing series of posts on the History Channel Civil War forum by forum regular “sfcdan” covering te Mine Run Campaign from the Union perspective.  For a map of the campaign prior to reading the information below, check out this page, which was found in the comments of part 2 of this series.

Mine Run - Part I - In this “Prelude”, Dan sets the stage for the Mine Run Campaign by covering the post-Gettysburg action in the East up to and including the action at Rappahannock Station on November 7, 1863.

Mine Run - Part 2 - Part 2 is titled “Meade considers his options”, and goes over what choices Meade could make in order to most effectively cross over the Rapidan River and force the Confederates from their formidable defenses.

Mine Run - Part 3 - Part 3 looks at the plan Meade finally settled on in detail and communicated to his Corps commanders on November 23, 1863.

Mine Run - Part 4 - As Meade’s plans were put into action, rain and mistakes by III Corps commander William French caused problems from the beginning.

Mine Run - Part 5 “Robertson’s Tavern” covers the preliminary action on November 27 and 28 east of Mine Run.

Mine Run Part 6 and beyond have not yet been written as of the morning of October 6.  I encourage TOCWOC’s readers to follow sfcdan’s posts to the conclusion of the campaign.  He has been doing these campaign studies of lesser known campaigns for awhile and these threads never cease to be interesting.  I’ll be following along and I will post updates here at TOCWOC if time permits.

I have finished Earl Hess’s The Rifle Musket in the Civil War and will posting a review by and by, but before I do that I’d like to address one of his points, that of the role of the artillery. Hess and several other historians (e.g. Mark Grimsley, Gregg Biggs, etc.) have adopted the thesis advanced by British historian Paddy Griffith in his 1988 book Battle Tactics of the Civil War that the US Civil War was “a badly fought Napoleonic War” and not the first modern war (that distinction being reserved for the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71).

The conventional wisdom, so ’tis said, was that the increased range of the rifle musket made it impossible to push the artillery up to the line to blow a hole in it as Napoleon’s gunners had done. Both Griffith and Hess disagree, at least so far as the effect of the rifle musket was concerned. Hess cites other reasons (e.g. the larger size of the guns) as why it might not have worked in the American conflict.

The Napoleonic “artillery charge” was pioneered by General Alexandre-Antoine Hureau de Sénarmont, who first used it at the battle of Friedland on 1807. Sénarmont pushed his guns up to within 60 yards of the Russian line, blasting their infantry and actually leading his own. There is an excellent account of French artillery in general and of Sénarmont and his methods in particular (scroll down a bit in the first section) here. The post author notes, however, that although Sénarmont was spectacularly successful, there were special circumstances—the Russian artillery was unable to effectively reply, and they failed to deploy light infantry to screen their line of battle, allowing the French to get quite close without interference.

Was this still possible in the 1860s? I think it questionable, and both Hess and Griffith have been rather light with their evidence. While looking for something else last night I came across this account, a transcribed letter from the battle of Williamsburg in 1862, that to me summarizes the situation in the Civil War nicely. Keep in mind that in May of that year the Confederate Army was still almost entirely armed with smoothbore muskets, although there were probably some riflemen on the skirmish line.

On Sunday morning, May 4th, we discovered for a certainty that the enemy had evacuated Yorktown, and at noon we were ordered to advance in pursuit. We marched as fast as our legs would carry us until half past ten at night, then laid down just as we were, with our guns by our side. About two in the morning it commenced raining very hard, and at four we started on. The mud was awful, and we had to wade right through it. In a very few moments, our clothes and blankets being wet, and our feet and legs covered with mud, it was with difficulty we could get along. About six o’clock our advance guard were fired on by the enemy’s rear, just as they emerged from a piece of wood into a piece of felled timber. The 1st Massachusetts regiment were in advance, the 2nd New Hampshire next. The Massachusetts regiment formed into line of battle and advanced on the left—our regiment in front. As soon as we started put of the woods the enemy opened a battery directly in front of us; and just as we crossed the road a cannon ball, the first one fired, went right through our ranks, killing one and wounding two of our company. Then commenced a shower of balls, and we were ordered to keep under cover as much as possible—the fallen trees affording us a good protection. We advanced from one tree to another about fifty rods, to the edge of a large open field in front of the enemy’s breastworks.

They were pouring a deadly fire into us, and Gen. Hooker ordered one of our batteries up in front of us to engage their battery, but before they got their guns in position all but three of the men belonging to the battery were killed, and one of their guns stuck in the mud. For a few moments the guns were left entirely alone! Oh, if you could have seen the Captain, his hat off, crying, as he turned round and shouted, “For God’s sake send me some men to work these guns!” The rebels, seeing the guns deserted, came out of their intrenchments and were about to make a charge to capture them; but immediately the boys of our regiment, without any order, fixed bayonets and rushed out to receive them, when they ran back into their intrenchments. About a hundred of us then caught hold of the gun that was stuck in the mud and took it into position in an instant. By this time some men arrived to work the guns, ammunition began to arrive, and until about noon it was fight in earnest. Our battery had to contend with two—one in front, and one on the left—we lying all the time within eight rods [about 50 yards. FR] of the enemy’s guns! The rebel sharp-shooters by noon had killed nearly all the gunners, and the guns were all disabled but one, the horses all dead, and the cannon and musket balls showering around us. We were ordered to fall back. Charles Putnam and myself, who bad been lying together behind a log, were just eating some hard bread and molasses, several balls and shells having hit within a few inches of us—one ball grazing the leg of my pants. We started with our Captain, but it was impossible to keep the company together, as the surroundings presented a perfect slash of heavy timber. Charles and myself, however, agreed, if the company did not get formed, to remain together. We fell back, amid a perfect shower of balls, to the edge of the woods where we started from. (Otis Waite, Claremont War History 1868)

Thus Joe Hooker ordered up the guns in the best Napoleonic fashion, and almost lost them. Unlike the Russians at Friedland, the Confederates did have artillery to reply and light infantry (at least some of whom were probably armed with rifles) who cut the gunners down. I’ve seen numerous other examples that amount to the same thing—advancing the guns up to the line of battle was tantamont to suicide. One can argue as to whether the effect was due entirely to the rifle or not, but in Civil War terms it wasn’t just a viable tactic. Later in the war, as the number of rifles increased, the situation just got worse.

Air Date: 100308
Subject: Lincolns Labels
Book: Lincoln’s Labels: America’s Best Known Brands and the Civil War
Guest: James M. Schmidt

Summary: Fellow blogger Jim Schmidt discusses his new book Lincoln’s Labels.

Brett’s Summary: Gerry notes there will be no show on October 10 at the top of this week’s episode.  In an interesting aside, Gerry mentions that those who want to end up on the show should send him their book or material so he can judge for himself if he wants you on.

Jim is a bio-analytical chemist in his day job.  He mentions his chemistry interest came prior to his Civil War interest, and that a business trip to Richmond over a decade ago led to his eventual immersion into the Civil War.  Due to his day job, Jim became interested in the medical and pharmaceutical sides of the war.  Jim was actually able to go back and let the NPS ranger who first led him on a tour of the Richmond battlefields know how his interest started with that tour.  Jim has written in North & South’s Knapsack section in the past, and these items found their way into Lincoln’s Labels.

Milton Bradley, the game maker, had initially been a print maker, but his failure involving the sale of prints of a beardless Lincoln pushed him into the game making business.  Bradley introduced the The Checkered Game of Life in 1860 and it sold well during the war.  This story did not make it into the book, but Jim has some interesting things to add.

The discussion turns to Proctor & Gamble and its influence on the war.  P&G were candle and soap makers and became one of the most popular companies in the North due to the advertising of their brand name.

Jim talks a little about how he did research on the individual companies which appear in Lincoln’s Labels to end the first 20-minute portion of the episode.  Some of the companies have their own archives, others have put out commemorative histories, and some even appear in the Official Records.

To open the second section, Gerry asks Jim about Confederate companies still in existence today.  Jim found some, but none that would really strike a chord with readers today.

Talk turns to the Borden “meat biscuit”.  Borden had created condensed milk, which was a popular success during the war.  The meat biscuit, however, was not.  Despite some early indications of promise, the product never became a commercial success due to its less than palatable taste.

Brooks Brothers is the next company on the docket.  They were accused of making shoddy uniforms during the war.  Gerry mentions that the “ready to wear” market for clothing did not take off until after the Civil War.  The Brooks Brothers, however, were making this type of mass produced clothing prior to the war.

Talk of the Brooks Brothers leads Gerry to talk about the intersection of business and history.  He asks Jim why this topic hasn’t garnered more attention.  The author believes it is due to the tendency to focus on battles, leaders, and politics.

Tiffany is the next company discussed.  By the Civil War, Jim says the well known jewelry company was “a high end store”.

Tiffany’s and Brooks Brothers were affected differently during the New York City Draft Riots.  Tiffany’s was protected, but one of the Brooks Brothers two stores in New York City was destroyed.  Proctor and Gamble came close to be affected by the war during the Confederate invasion of Kentucky.  P&G was located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Confederates wanted to capture and/or destroy the DuPont Powder Works during the war, but their window of opportunity closed quickly.  I thought it was interesting that the works suffered an explosion on average every six months or so during the war.

At the start of the last third of the program, the making of officers’ swords by Tiffany’s is the topic of discussion.  Some of these beautiful, expensive swords were presented as gifts and made the jewelers famous.  Tiffany’s also made regimental flags for many units, and these were highly sought after items during the war.

Jim had a chapter on the magazine Scientific American, and Gerry talks about General Ripley, the Chief Ordnance Officer as a result.  Ripley refused to deal with many excellent inventions which could have helped win the war.  He gained a reputation of turning inventors down without really giving them a chance to demonstrate their inventions.  Jim sounded extremely excited about this topic during the interview, so I am especially looking forward to reading this portion of Lincoln’s Labels.  Gerry recalls that in the book Arming the Suckers, Ripley was applauded for doing the right thing because too many resources would have been wasted on potentially unusable weapons and other inventions.  Jim agrees with this thought.

To end the hour, Gerry asks Jim, as he has asked a lot of the recent guests, why he thinks non-professional historians are writing so many more interesting and accessible books than trained professional historians.  Gerry somewhat facetiously says he is “ready to throw in the towel” and asks Jim if he could get a job as a chemist.  Jim points out that he did consult quite a few professional historians on the book.  Gerry’s point is that he worries professional historians are not doing a good enough job to publish books which the public want to read.  Gerry compliments Jim on Lincoln’s Labels and says he greatly enjoyed it.

I honestly grew more excited about reading it myself after hearing about some of the interesting stories covered.  I think this particular book has some more mainstream appeal than your typical battle or campaign study.  I’ll be reviewing the book here on TOCWOC in the coming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.

Civil War Talk Radio airs most Fridays at 12 PM Pacific on World Talk Radio Studio A. Host Gerry Prokopowicz, the History Chair at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, interviews a guest each week and discusses their interest in the Civil War. Most interviews center around a book or books if the guest is an author. Other guests over the years have included public historians such as park rangers and museum curators, wargamers, bloggers, and even a member of an American Civil War Round Table located in London, England.

In this series of blog entries, I will be posting air dates, subjects, and guests, and if I have time, I’ll provide a brief summary of the program. You can find all of the past episodes I’ve entered into the blog by clicking on the Civil War Talk Radio category. Each program should appear either on or near the date it was first broadcast.

Check out more summaries of Civil War Talk Radio at TOCWOC.

Did you enjoy this blog entry? Subscribe to TOCWOC’s RSS feed today!

Author and fellow blogger Jim Schmidt will be appearing on Civil War Talk Radio this Friday to promote his new book Lincoln’s Labels: America’s Best Known Brand and the Civil War and talking about Civil War medicine as well.  Thiks episode, as usual, will air at 12 pm Pacific (2 pm Central) on Friday afternoon.  I’ll be listening and I’ll have a summary of the program on Friday evening or Saturday morning.

Those that can’t write, Review!

October 2008

James Durney

***************************************************************

Book News

I have been able to find very few new books on the war. Most publishers seem to be on vacation after an active August/September. We may have to wait until Christmas for an active schedule again. There are a number of good new books on the market among them are:

ONE CONTINUOUS FIGHT: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863 by Eric J. Wittenberg, J David Petruzzi & Michael F. Nugent and Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign by Kent Masterson Brown make for excellent reads. One Continuous Fight covers the military aspect of the AoNV’ retreat while the Brown book covers the wagon train of wounded and supplies. This is two different operations and each needs a book to cover them. In 2005, Retreat from Gettysburg won the Bachelder-Coddington Prize as the best new work on the battle of Gettysburg.

Lincoln’s Darkest Year: The War in 1862 by William Marvel is the second in a planed series of four books on the Civil war. The first in the series is Mr. Lincoln Goes to War. This book questions the idea that war was inevitable due to slavery and forced on the North. Marvel is one of our better authors and has written another very readable thought provoking book,

Noah Andre Trudeau’s Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea provides an in depth look at Sherman’s March. This day-by-day account come complete with a daily map and details of marching conditions and military actions. Any book by Trudeau is worth reading and this book is no exception.

Brian Holden Reid America’s Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861-1863 is available. This is the successor volume to Origins of the American Civil War. This is an import from England, with a slightly different perspective on the war. We profiled Reid in our May column.

Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865 (The American Crisis Series Books on the Civil War Era) by Ethan Rafuse is available. This is a 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. This book provides a comprehensive, yet concise and entertaining narrative of the battles and campaigns that highlighted this phase of the war and analyzes the battles and Lee’s generalship in the context of the steady deterioration of the Confederacy’s prospects for victory.

The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat Reality and Myth By Earl J. Hess is in stores. The Civil War’s single-shot, muzzle-loading musket revolutionized warfare–or so we have been told. Noted historian Earl J. Hess forcefully challenges that claim, offering a new, clear-eyed, and convincing assessment of the rifle musket’s actual performance on the battlefield and its impact on the course of the Civil War. Impressed with the new weapon’s increased range of 500 yards, compared to the smoothbore musket’s range of 100 yards, many assumed that the rifle was a major factor in prolonging the Civil War. Historians have assumed that the weapon dramatically increased casualty rates, made decisive victories rare, and relegated cavalry and artillery to far lesser roles than they played in smoothbore battles. Hess presents a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited and confined primarily to marginal operations such as skirmishing and sniping. Earl J. Hess is an accomplished author that can make technical subjects understandable, interesting and enjoyable.

Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J. E. B. Stuart by Jeffery D. Wert is in the stores. Wert is one of our most respected authors and does excellent biographies. Wert integrates comprehensive archival and printed sources to describe a man shaped by a zest for life, religious faith and devotion to duty, who from his youth sought achievement and recognition. Soldiering promised both. The initial dominance of Confederate cavalry in the east during the Civil War was a product of Stuart’s skills as leader and organizer, trainer and tactician. Above all, he was a master at reconnaissance and screening. His decision at Gettysburg to ride around the Union army instead of rejoining Robert E. Lee was a mistake. However, its serious consequences were in good part due to Lee’s dependence on his now-absent source of reconnaissance

Britannia’s Fist: from Civil War to World War: an Alternate History by Peter G. Tsouras, a “what if” that assumes that England and the United States end up at war after multiple publication dates is still not in the stores.

Men of Granite: New Hampshire’s Soldiers in the Civil War by Duane E. Shaffer was due the end of September. This book is a history of the seventeen infantry regiments, two cavalry regiments, three artillery batteries, and three companies of sharpshooters and members of miscellaneous naval and marine units from New Hampshire in the Civil War.

The Great Comeback: How Abraham Lincoln Beat the Odds to Win the 1860 Republican Nomination by Gary Eclebarger is in the stores. Gary Eclebarger has written two excellent books on Stonewall Jackson’s battles in the Shenandoah Valley

Scheduled for October 30th is Andersonvilles of the North: the Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners by James M. Gillispie.

On the same schedule for publication is The Baltimore Plot: the First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln by Michael J. Kline.

November promises Brady’s Civil War Journal: Day-by-Day Events 1861-1865 by Theodore P. Savas. The title is enough to warrant looking into this book. 3

Due in December from Ethan S. Rafuse is Antietam, South Mountain and Harpers Ferry. This is the next entry in This Hallowed Ground: Guides to Civil War Battlefields series. These are excellent guides at a reasonable price, written by experts on the battle.

***********************************************************

Introducing Author Steven E. Woodworth

Steven Woodworth is a two-time winner of the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Award, for his books Davis and Lee at War and Jefferson Davis and His Generals.

Born in Ohio in 1961, raised in Illinois, he graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1982 with a B.A. in history. Thereafter he studied one year at the University of Hamburg, in Germany, before beginning studies at Rice University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1987. He started teaching in 1987 at Bartlesville Wesleyan College in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. In 1997, he joined the faculty at Texas Christian University, where he teaches courses in U.S. history as well as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the Old South.

Publications include Jefferson Davis and His Generals (University Press of Kansas, 1990), Davis and Lee at War (University Press of Kansas, 1995), Leadership and Command in the American Civil War (Savas Woodbury, 1996), The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research (Greenwood, 1996), A Deep Steady Thunder (McWhiney Foundation, 1996), Six Armies in Tennessee (1998), The Art of Command in the Civil War (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), Civil War Generals in Defeat (University Press of Kansas, 1999), Chickamauga: A Battlefield Guide (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), No Band of Brothers (University of Missouri Press, 1999), While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (University Press of Kansas, 2001), Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), and Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). He is currently working on an overview of the Civil War west of the Appalachians. His latest book, Grant’s Lieutenants: from Chattanooga to Appomattox was published in June 2008. This is the companion volume to Grant’s Lieutenants from Cairo to Vicksburg published in 2001.

Bachelder/Coddington Award

Thanks to Rich Bellamy for taking the time to provide this information on this award.

This annual award is presented to the most outstanding new work on the battle of Gettysburg. The award committee is composed of three individuals each with an equal vote. Considerations are does the book cover an issue of the battle not previously delineated, does the author have adequate footnotes, has the book uncovered new sources, is the book factually correct, is the author arguing a particular case and if so is he presenting both sides of the issue adequately, and lastly is the book a good ‘read’.

Each member considers the book individually without discussion and gives both a first choice and a second choice. In most cases, there is a clear-cut winner. If there is not a clear-cut winner, 4

we then add the second choice in to see if it puts one of the tied first choices over the top. This has been an effective manner of choosing the recipient. As a check on our choices, it should be noted that almost all of the books we have chosen have had more than one printing and are still available. An award is not given simply because Gettysburg books are published in that year. We will not choose a recipient unless the book meets our criteria. In the list below, you will note that there are two years that do not have a recipient.

Here is a list award recipients starting in 1996:

1996 Gettysburg Day One by David Martin

1997 Devil’s Den by Gary Adelman and Tim Smith

1998 Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions by Eric Wittenberg

1999 Gettysburg Day Two A Study in Maps by John Imhof

2000 Cavalry on the Road to Gettysburg by George Rummel III

2001 Grappling with Death The Union II Corps Hospital at Gettysburg by R. Maust

2002 Gettysburg’s Bloody Wheatfield by Jay Jorgensen

2003 When the Smoke Cleared at Gettysburg by George Sheldon

2004 No award given

2005 Retreat From Gettysburg by Kent Masterson Brown

2006 Isn’t This Glorious by Edwin R. Root and Jeffrey D. Stocker

2007 No award given

The past two months, July and August, I took a look at the Amazon.com top 10 Civil War bestsellers.  Although I’m barely squeaking this in prior to month’s end, and despite Dimitri’s hatred of lists, I’d like to revisit this a third time and see how (if?) this list has changed in the past 45 days since I last took a look.

As in the last two blog entries, I’ve taken the liberty of removing non-Civil War related books from the list.  The books below are in the Civil War top 10 as of September 30, 2008.  Numbers in parentheses mark the book’s August 2008 rank in the top 10.

Note: Some of these are the Kindle edition. Kindle is Amazon’s handheld device for reading books electronically.

1. (1) Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Summary: Goodwin covers the “team” Abraham Lincoln put together to form his cabinet.  Dimitri would dispute the validity of the term “team”. For the third straight month, Team of Rivals has no rivals at the top of the Civil War heap.

2. (2) The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Summary: Although obscure when initially written in the 1970s, Michael Shaara’s fictional account of Gettysburg has been a bestseller pretty much since the movie GETTYSBURG was released in 1993. Like Goodwin’s book above, The Killer Angels seems entrenched in its spot on the list.

3. (4) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Summary: Jacobs was a slave, and she chronicled her experiences in this book, released in 1861.  Her attacks on slavery served to further educate the public as to the evils of the peculiar institution. Jacobs’ book leapfrogged Frederick Douglass’ autobiography for the number three spot, remaining high on the list.

4. (3) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass

Summary: The autobiography of one of the most famous Abolitionists ever.  I have not yet had the pleasure of reading this one. Douglass’ book is the second on this list which focuses main on slavery and the life of slaves to remain near the top of the bestseller list. So much for harping on readers’ complete ignorance concerning the great racial elephant in the room, or what some corners of the Civil War blogosphere would call the ONLY reason to even study the conflict.

5. (9) Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson

Summary: Swanson’s book covers the hunt for John Wilkes Booth in the days immediately following Lincoln’s assassination. Manhunt jumped quite a bit over last month. It will be interesting to see what all of the Lincoln books do as 2009, the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, rapidly approaches.

6. (7) Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times by Donald T. Phillips and Donald Phillips

Summary: Oddly enough one of my best friends, someone not at all interested in the Civil War, read this book for a business class he was taking in college.  I have not read the book, but he gave it high marks. Others have commented on the good qualities of this one. Was anyone reading this underwhelmed? I’m just curious.

7. (6) Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson

Summary: This has been the standard one volume history of the Civil War since its release. McPherson’s book has been largely in the bottom half of the top 10. Given its widespread use and acclaim, I’m a little surprised it isn’t consistently in the top 3.

8. (-) Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief by James M. McPherson

Summary: A newcomer to the list this month covers both a President and an author already entrenched here month to month. McPherson’s new book, scheduled out on October 7, 2008, looks at Abraham Lincoln in his role as commander in chief. I will be especially interested to see how McPherson believes Lincoln handled the situation in the East in May-June 1862. I will also be interested to see if this one shoots up the bestseller list. The star power of subject and author combined might mean this book stays here for a long time to come.

9. (10) This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust

Summary: Faust argues that 1860s America’s familiarity with death led to massive casualty rates, acceptable by those standards but appalling when looked at through today’s lens. This book has been one of the most reviewed Civil War books I’ve seen over the past 3 or so years since I started blogging. Although it has slipped a bit these last few months, I expect to see Faust’s book flirt with the middle to back end of the top 10 for quite awhile to come.

10. (8) Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

Summary: This is one book I’m genuinely sorry I haven’t yet had the chance to read.  Horwitz, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his foreign war correspondence work, here details Civil War re-enactors and the continuing hold the Civil War has on the American public. There has been some criticism from certain groups about Horwitz’ misrepresentation of typical reenactors, but I’m in no position to judge the validity of that argument. Horwitz’ book seems to be hanging around the back end of the top 10.

Dropped Out This Month:

-. (5) Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea by Noah Andre Trudeau

Summary: Trudeau’s large new book on Sherman’s March burst onto the scene of the Civil War Top 10…but didn’t stay for long. It will be interesting to see if this one ever makes a reappearance given its detailed day by day account of the March to the Sea.  I have a copy of this one and hope to review it in the near future. Gerry Prokopowicz also recently interviewed author Andy Trudeau on Civil War Talk Radio.

Brett’s Final Thoughts:

Books focusing on slavery continue to have a strong presence on the Top 10 Civil War Bestsellers on Amazon.com. The top 2 look like they will probably not change month to month, and if any book has the clout to topple one of these mainstays, it’ll probably mean the author is going to do well financially. The only debut in the top 10 is McPherson’s new Lincoln book. This is probably one I’ll pick up cheap from a used book site several years down the road, so for now you probably won’t hear much about it from me. Most of the rest of these books only saw minor shuffling. Lastly, I was a little surprised Trudeau’s book on Sherman’s March dropped out of the list so quickly. In any event, whether you are new to the study of the Civil War or an experienced veteran, check out the Amazon.com Top 10 Bestseller List and see if there is something there for you.

Previous Books in the Top 10 Prior to Last Month’s Top 10:

The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage by Daniel Mark Epstein

Summary: I don’t know too much about this one other than that it covers Abe and Mary’s marriage, obviously.  Would any readers care to share?

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

Summary: Donald’s biography of Lincoln is arguably the greatest ever written on our Sixteenth President.

Did you enjoy this blog entry? Subscribe to TOCWOC’s RSS feed today!

Are you interested in Civil War books? Read some Civil War Book Reviews here at TOCWOC!

American Scholar takes a look at the Lieber Code, formalized in 1863 by the US Army as General Orders No. 100. This was one of the first formal codes concerning the conduct of war, and is the basis of the modern ones such as the Hague and Geneva conventions. The author, Francis Lieber (1798–1872), was an interesting character in his own right. He was a Prussian, a former soldier who had fought at Ligny and Namur (preliminaries to Waterloo), where he had been severely wounded. An academic by trade, Lieber spent considerable time in the South at Charleston. Though he despised the institution, he bought several slaves to run his household. A Unionist (though he kept it concealed to protect his position), he left for New York’s Columbia University in 1857. In 1862 Gen. Henry Halleck tapped him to write a legal code for military operations, primarily on how to deal with irregular forces. Lieber’s family exemplified the divisions the war brought on. His eldest son Oscar joined the Confederacy and was killed in 1862 at Williamsburg. Another son, serving with the Union, was badly wounded.

Yet it is debatable what effect Lieber’s code had on the war. There were, under the rubric of military necessity, loopholes big enough to march an army  through.

“Union generals showed scant interest in the code and soldiers none,” concludes the historian Harry S. Stout. What influence it did have, he continues, leaned in the direction of latitude. The code “gave Lincoln and his generals what they needed as they contemplated a new war that would deliberately invade civilian lives and properties.” Another scholar is even harsher. “Often touted as a humanitarian milestone,” writes Mark Grimsley, “Lieber’s code was thoroughly dedicated to providing the ethical justification for a war aimed at the destruction of the Confederacy.” This may be too harsh. A Union hardened to war and bent on victory needed no scholarly treatise to clear the way for Sherman’s march.

Speaking of Sherman, the Lieber Code did little to inhibit him, as I detailed in my review of Deborah Petite’s The Women Will Howl. By 1864 the Federal government was making war on the people of the South with few holds barred, code or no.

Worth reading, especially since as it relates to the wars we are fighting today.

Lieber’s Code had immediate credibility with politicians and warriors, in no small part because it was written by a man who knew war, understood its occasional necessity, and believed deeply in the justness of his cause. Today, by contrast, the task of monitoring and developing the law of war has often fallen to—or been taken up by—a host of nongovernmental organizations. Many of these activists believe that the use of force has little place in world affairs and hope to legislate it out of existence. As the legal scholar Kenneth Anderson has argued, “The pendulum shift toward [nongovernmental organizations] has gone further than is useful, and the ownership of the laws of war needs to give much greater weight to the state practices of leading countries.” What’s more, these activists have a strong preference for supranational mechanisms to supervise the behavior of states. Nongovernmental organizations, for example, played a critical role in the development of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which promises regular international prosecutions for many war crimes.

Did you enjoy this blog entry? Subscribe to TOCWOC’s RSS feed today!

I haven’t done an Odds & Ends entry in several weeks, so let’s see what’s happening in the Civil War blogosphere and beyond.

• TOCWOC recently made it onto a list of “100 Awesome Blogs for History Junkies” listed in an unusual place.  It’s nice to be recognized from time to time!  I tried to recommend several other Civil War blogs I read frequently such as Harry Smeltzer’s Bull Runnings and Drew Wagenhoffer’s Civil War Books and Authors in the comments, but they are only available via RSS feed.

• Author and fellow Civil War blogger Ethan Rafuse has started to post at the US Army Combined Arms Center’s CGSC History Department blog.  I read his blog entry on Teaching the American Civil War with interest.

• The Village Carpenter goes to the new Gettysburg Visitor Center and is impressed by Robert E. Lee’s Medicine Box.

• NPS Ranger John David Hoptak has a very thorough review of Jeffry D. Wert’s new J.E.B. Stuart biography Cavalryman of the Lost Cause posted at Civil War Musings.

• Rea Andrew Redd of Civil War Librarian informs us that the 29^th Connecticut, an African-American Regiment during the Civil War, will get a new memorial.

• Nick at Battlefield Wanderings recently posted some information on the book Historic Photos of the Siege of Petersburg.  Given my continued interest in the Petersburg Campaign, I’ll have to pick this one up soon.

• The Greensburg (IN) Daily News offers up a brief look at the diary of Indiana Civil War veteran James M. Hart.

• Ari at the Edge of the American West shows that the characterization of Abraham Lincoln as “The Great Emancipator” evolved during the Civil War.

• The Civil War Preservation Trust wants to save 125 acres of the First Deep Bottom battlefield.