Behind the Lines Hess, Earl J
The Civil War in the West,
03/2012
Book Chapter
While Sherman battled his way toward Atlanta, the rear areas of Union occupation in the West were alive with activity. Strategic raids by mounted Confederate forces swept across western Tennessee and ...western Kentucky, hitting several Union garrisons and resulting in sharp battles at Paducah and a controversial slaughter at Fort Pillow, even before Sherman set out on his campaign for Atlanta. Sherman himself struck out from Vicksburg toward Meridian in an attempt to disrupt the Confederate position in Mississippi and tear up enemy lines of communication as preparation for major campaigning in the spring. After his massive host left Chattanooga,
End Game Hess, Earl J
The Civil War in the West,
03/2012
Book Chapter
Ending a war often proves more difficult than starting or even winning it, and the Rebel government offered no guidance for how its military forces should deal with the many issues involved with ...bringing peace to the land. Therefore, Confederate commanders in the West were on their own in terms of dealing with Union commanders. For their part, Federal officers had only scant guidelines on how to deal with their Southern counterparts. The war in the West came to a close over the span of a couple of months, concluding a bit differently in different areas. Another problem quickly emerged:
Occupation Hess, Earl J
The Civil War in the West,
03/2012
Book Chapter
It became an item of received wisdom after the war to criticize Henry Halleck for not advancing deep into Mississippi following the fall of Corinth. His large army of some one hundred thousand ...veterans “could have gone to Mobile, or Vicksburg, or anywhere in that region,” asserted William T.
Sherman, “which would by one move have solved the whole Mississippi problem.” Sherman considered it “a fatal mistake” that Halleck dispersed his grand army to consolidate control of territory recently captured by Union troops. Grant felt the same way after the war, and John Pope dramatically claimed that there was “scarce
Winter Campaigns Hess, Earl J
The Civil War in the West,
03/2012
Book Chapter
The hiatus in Union offensives along the Mississippi River came to an end by the late fall of 1862 as the new regiments Lincoln had called for in July became available, swelling the size of Federal ...field armies. The gunboat fleet was reinforced and reorganized as well. David D. Porter replaced Charles Davis as commander of the Western Flotilla on October 15, and the gunboats were transferred to the control of the Navy Department and designated the Mississippi Squadron. Porter began to construct fifteen additional mortar boats and six more ironclad gunboats. TheEastport,Lafayette,Choctaw,Indianola,Chillicothe, andTuscumbia
The Gulf Hess, Earl J
The Civil War in the West,
03/2012
Book Chapter
Federal authorities had enough resources to operate large numbers of troops supported by naval power along selected areas of the Confederate coast. In addition to incursions along the North Carolina ...and South Carolina shores, they also planned to strike at New Orleans and open the lower Mississippi Valley to Union control. Ship Island, which lay sixty miles southeast of the river’s mouth, could serve as a staging area. Vessels transporting an invading force from ports in the Northeast were able to stop at the island, which had been used as a supply depot for Union blockaders, before mounting an attempt
The thesis of Delivered Under Fire: Absalom Markland and Freedom's Mail is that Absalom Markland was an unsung hero of the Civil War era. Born in Kentucky, Markland became an assertive, ...career-oriented man who began working as a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service, the equivalent of a modern postal inspector, shortly after the start of the Civil War. Hooper is at her best when digging out the details of his life, relying heavily on a previously unused collection of personal and business papers and scouring relevant published primary material, especially an array of newspapers and archival repositories.
Murray and Hsieh set out to write a general military history of the conflict much in the mode of Russell F. Weigley's A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (2000), John ...Keegan's The American Civil War: A Military History (2009), and even in many ways Bruce Catton's books published in the 1960s. The growing body of literature on the important connections between military operations and the environment produced by Lisa Brady and contained in an anthology edited by Brian Allen Drake also are ignored. Battle and campaign studies offer perspectives on the resonance of battle in the lives of soldiers and civilians alike, in the way that armies actually operated in the field, in the decision-making process endured by commanders, and in the many factors that underlay the movement of armed masses of men through enemy territory.
The volume also discusses the latest theoretical approaches to the use of current U.S. Army concepts for managing military operations as applied to the difficult task of finding, mapping, and ...understanding Civil War battlefields. ...it seems as if virtually no Civil War historians are aware of what their counterparts in the field of historical archaeology are doing on Civil War subjects.
