Civil War – Lemuria Books

Category: Civil War

By John Mort. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 8)

Bass Reeves—a real, historical figure—was born a slave on an Arkansas plantation in the 1840s. In Sidney Thompson’s new novel, Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One, Reeves grows up to be a big, agreeable man entirely loyal to his master, the redoubtable Master Reeves. Master Reeves is not cruel. When a black scullery maid has her baby, he gives her one day off, and this is regarded as kind by the scullery maid and everyone else.

Slaves have so adapted to this patriarchal economic system that notions of emancipation and equality don’t occur to them. A kind of freedom exists just a few miles to the west, in Oklahoma Territory, but fleeing—running—is a tough concept. If you were beaten or starved, that would be one thing, but Master Reeves would never beat you or withhold food. You may be a slave, but you can live a life on Master Reeves’s plantation. You can marry. You can have kids.

It develops that Bass is an extraordinary marksman, and Master Reeves takes Bass to a number of turkey shoots in Arkansas and the Territory. Bass always wins, and the Master makes good money betting on him. Bass enjoys himself, and sometimes, he can bring those dead turkeys home for the other slaves.

Ignorance may have seemed like bliss, but Bass is a slave and a slave can be moved about like a horse. Old Master Reeves gives Bass to his son, young Master Reeves, who has a plantation down in Texas. Bass has a difficult time understanding this. He doesn’t know where Texas is, and doesn’t want to leave behind his aging parents. How could Master Reeves treat him like this?

The young Master Reeves is an intellectual with all sorts of theories about slavery. He baits Bass with his endless mind-games, trying to cause his new manservant to reveal his true feelings. In many ways, young Master Reeves inadvertently educates Bass and inculcates in him a desire for freedom. Young Reeves is despicable, but he’s also complicated. He fully understands how intelligent Bass is, and potentially how dangerous.

The Civil War has reached the West, and young Master Reeves wants a manservant who can shoot. Most of the Southern officers bring their manservants to the Battle of Wilson’s Creek (near Springfield, Missouri), a Southern victory of sorts that flows into the Southern defeat at Pea Ridge (near Fayetteville, Arkansas). These battles have been written about by historians and novelists alike, but Thompson’s treatment, portraying the war from a slave’s perspective, is unique.

The man-servant’s job is to reload weapons for their masters (for the most part, repeating rifles are not yet in use). But Bass is such an unerring shot that the young Master Reeves loads for his slave. And Bass kills many a Yankee, aiming for the brass buttons of their coats.

Young Master Reeves and Bass return to a changing Texas. The war isn’t over but everyone knows the South will lose. Throughout Bass’s faithful service, young Master Reeves has promised Bass’s manumission, or freedom; secretly, Bass, who has seen some of the world by now, has begun to contemplate running for his freedom into Oklahoma Territory. Just how to maneuver away from the devious young Master Reeves, and how to take leave of his sweetheart, Jennie, occupies the final pages of the first installment of this epic, three-volume portrait of Bass Reeves, the first black deputy west of the Mississippi.

When you’re gifted with the fine sense of characterization Thompson deploys, even the unsubtle subject of slavery grows subtler. His Young Master Reeves is a sort of Nazi, but he’s drawn masterfully. Thompson, once one of Barry Hannah’s students at University of Mississippi, is a highly entertaining writer, and his Bass Reeves emerges as an intelligent, reluctantly violent, sympathetic young man. Readers will find the compelling recreations of two important Civil War battles to be a kind of bonus.

John Mort is the author of Down Along the Piney: Ozarks Stories among others, and the winner of many awards for his fiction including a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.

Sidney Thompson will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, March 10, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves.

Author Q & A with Allie Povall

By Guest Author

On January 26, 2020

In Civil War, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 26)

Oxford resident and retired attorney Allie Povall’s exploration of what became of many of the South’s major military leaders after the Civil War provides an in-depth–and often surprising–look into their lives after they put down their weapons and left the battlefields.

Rebels in Repose: Confederate Commanders After the War highlights how these men followed their own divergent destinies, and how they interacted with each other: some became friends; others vehemently blamed their counterparts for the loss of the war. Whatever their fates, the memories of the American Civil War would mark them forever.

Povall, a Lexington native, served as a naval officer in the Vietnam War after he received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Mississippi. He went on to earn a law degree from Ole Miss and an LLM from Yale Law School, then enjoyed a long and successful legal career before his retirement in 1998.

He has authored three previous books, including The Time of Eddie Noel, a finalist for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Best Nonfiction Award in 2010, as well as Forward Magazine’s Best True Crime award that same year.

What influenced your interest in the Civil War and inspired your idea to write Rebels in Repose: Confederate Commanders After the War?

Allie Povall

I grew up in Lexington, Miss., and I was raised on Civil War lore. I had three great-grandfathers who served in the Confederate Army and a number of great-great uncles who also served, at least one of whom died at Shiloh. One of my high school teachers was Margie Riddle Bearss, and her husband eventually became historian of the National Park Service and an expert on the Civil War. She did much to kindle my interest in that conflict. By the time I finished high school I had, following Mrs. Bearss’s guidance, studied and written about the Civil War in depth.

Later, I would lose that interest and move on to other things, like law, but later in life–after I retired from the practice of law–I began to wonder about both Confederate and Union generals and what they did after the War. It really was just curiosity. So, I read a book about Robert E. Lee and his years after the War at Washington College, which eventually became Washington and Lee, and I loved the human side–as opposed to his military persona–of Lee as presented in that book. That epiphany led me to take a look at some of the other Confederate commanders, and that process led to this book, which is my fourth.

On what basis did you select the nine officers featured with their own chapters in your book, and the 10 others who were included in the final chapter?

There are no bright lines between the nine and some of the others, and the selection process for the generals to go in the “Ten Others” chapter was, with respect to at least some of those generals, mildly arbitrary. What I tried to do, however, was to address the “major” commanders first and then the lesser known and less major generals second. Some–Richard Ewell for example–in the “Ten Others” chapter might have gone in the first group, but I tried to concentrate on those generals who made the greatest contribution to the Confederate cause, whether good or bad, and there were some bad Confederate generals.

What do you hope your readers will gain from your examination of the fates of these Confederate offices after the Civil War ended?

The Civil War, in my opinion, was the defining event of American History. It left the South in shambles, and it changed in many ways–legal, political and militarily, for example–the way that this country functions. The War, thankfully, ended slavery, and it led to the passage of several amendments to the U.S. Constitution–the Fourteenth, with its “Due Process” and “Equal Protection” clauses in particular–that fundamentally altered American jurisprudence and that extended the protection of “fundamental rights” to all Americans, thus establishing the legal underpinnings of the Civil Rights movement.

In examining the lives of these men–from childhood until their deaths–I have tried, through them, to tell some of the story of American history during the period from about 1820 to the early 1900s. I also address their roles in the War, and in the War’s aftermath, I tell how they took widely divergent paths as they tried to adjust to the Union victory. Some went to Canada, some went to Mexico, and some sought positions in the Egyptian, Rumanian and Brazilian Army, for example.

I want the reader to see how, in some cases, their lives were intertwined after the War, in both good and bad ways, as well as how their lives were intertwined with some of the lives of their Union counterparts. I want the reader to understand, finally, the impact that the War had on the South, and through these men, the impact that it had on its leaders, who, after the War, were just ordinary men trying to make a living in the aftermath of a catastrophic war that resulted in an economically decimated South.

Why is this information still relevant in today’s America, and what lessons can we learn from it?

As I said, I believe that the Civil War was the defining event in American history, and I believe an understanding of it and its aftermath, as I present it in this book, is essential to understanding how we got where we are.

It is, therefore, important, I believe, to see how African-Americans took charge politically of the southern states after the war, only to lose control–even though in some cases they had a majority of the voters–to whites, through violence and the race-inspired Jim Crow state constitutions that deprived blacks of the right to vote and basically, the right to coexist equally with whites. These conflicting forces would give rise to the Civil Rights movement a hundred years later. I hope that my readers can learn that the fundamental underpinnings of the South that arose around the turn of the 20th century were set in motion in the immediate aftermath of the War, and that we must resolve never to let those things happen again.

Please tell me about your next book.

I originally planned to do one book on Confederate and Union commanders, but the combined book would have been too large for most publishers to swallow, so I decided to split it into two companion books. I have started on the Union book–Warriors at Sunset: Union Commanders After the War– and hope to have it done in the next couple of years. If you look at the bibliography for Rebels in Repose, there are about 100 sources and about 400 footnotes. The point is that the research for a book like this is, in a colossal understatement, daunting. Nevertheless, that is my goal, and I am on my way.

Signed first editions (of the paperback original) of Rebels in Repose are available both at Lemuria and its online store.

S.C. Gwynne provides riveting, smartly crafted history of Civil War’s end in ‘Hymns of the Republic’

By Guest Author

On November 6, 2019

In Civil War

By Jim Woodrick. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 3)

In his second inaugural address, delivered in March 1865, Abraham Lincoln expressed his hope that “this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away” but also allowed that it might yet be God’s will that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”

As it happened, the war would finally draw to a close a little more than a month later, but the nation could hardly have paid a steeper price in blood than had already been shed in the final, horrific year of the Civil War. Lincoln himself would, of course, be among the war’s last victims at the hands of an assassin.

Author S.C. Gwynne, who has previously written an acclaimed biography of Stonewall Jackson Rebel Yell, offers a fast-paced and engaging look on the last year of the Civil War in Hymns of the Republic. In his book, Gwynne focuses initially on Grant’s Virginia campaign which evolved into a series of battles that produced long lists of Union casualties but made little headway in winning the war.

The stalemate in Virginia, along with William T. Sherman’s struggle to capture Atlanta, gave renewed hope in the South that an increasingly war-weary North would turn against Lincoln in the November elections and choose someone willing to let the Confederacy go. But it was not to be.

With the fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, the war took a dramatic turn. Not only had prospects brightened for Lincoln, but a new style of warfare emerged. Sherman, who the author describes as a “restless, nervous, fidgety, kinetic” man, would use his army in the subsequent March to the Sea and into the Carolinas not to take and hold territory but to destroy the Confederacy’s ability to wage war, and, perhaps more importantly, to destroy the South’s will to continue the struggle.

In Virginia, Phil Sheridan slashed and burned his way across the Shenandoah Valley with similar goals. Caught in the crossfire were countless civilians, both slave and free.

Gwynne’s military narrative closes with a compelling account of Appomattox and explores a number of long-held myths about the surrender of Lee’s army. Throughout, Gwynne pays particular attention to the increasingly important role of African Americans as Union soldiers and as a political and moral force in shaping the outcome of the war.

Gwynne is perhaps at his best in bringing to life the main characters in the unfolding drama. While he is fairly critical of Grant’s tactical skills, or lack thereof, he draws a parallel between Grant’s ability to overcome setbacks, both personal and professional, with his determination to keep up the pressure on Lee in spite of a chorus of critics in Washington.

Robert E. Lee, meanwhile, is presented as a somewhat tragic figure who sacrificed everything for a cause and country that could no longer be sustained. Lee, he writes, was a man increasingly burdened by “sadness, frustration, unhappiness and loss.”

Yet Lee, like Grant, seemed to understand that the game had to be played out, even if it resulted in thousands more lives sacrificed on Virginia’s blood-soaked fields. Readers will also gain fresh insight into Sherman’s character, along with Phil Sheridan, Clara Barton, John Singleton Mosby, Salmon P. Chase and, of course, Lincoln.

There are certainly more in-depth studies on the campaigns of 1864 and 1865, most notably Gordon Rhea’s multi-volume work on the Overland Campaign, but Gwynne’s book includes just enough detail on the movements of the armies to satisfy military historians and appeal to those who might not otherwise read a book on the Civil War. Hymns of the Republic is a riveting and beautifully crafted story and would be a valuable addition to any library.

Jim Woodrick is the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer at MDAH, the author of The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi, and a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Vicksburg National Military Park.

Lemuria has selected Hymns of the Republic its November 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Complex campaign, Grant’s triumph given in-depth, rousing treatment in Donald Miller’s ‘Vicksburg’

By Guest Author

On October 30, 2019

In Civil War

By Jim Woodrick. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 27)

On May 1, 1863, Ulysses S. Grant’s Union Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River on a flotilla of steamboats, gunboats and barges and landed on Mississippi soil at Bruinsburg. It was the largest amphibious landing by an American army in history and would remain so until World War II.

More importantly, it was the culmination of months of hard campaigning by the Federals; not the end of the campaign by any means, but certainly the beginning of the end. As Grant would later relate in his memoirs, “All of the campaigns, labors, hardships, and exposures” to that point were for the accomplishment of “this one object”–the capture of Vicksburg and the reopening of the Mississippi.

In his new one-volume history of the Vicksburg Campaign, Donald L. Miller brings the reader to this dramatic moment–and many other twists and turns–not merely as an observer but as a participant through his elegant prose.

Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy is first and foremost an in-depth look at U.S. Grant during this critical period of the Civil War. Grant, of course, has been the subject of a great deal of attention from biographers of late, especially Ron Chernow’s celebrated work, and Miller’s book is a welcome addition.

In an almost intimate fashion, he brings Grant to life without heaping too much praise for his military successes or being overly critical of his personal and professional failings (of which there were many) and he ably handles the most controversial aspect of Grant’s character—his reported affinity for alcohol. Along the way, the author introduces a host of interesting characters who played their own parts, both large and small, in the drama that unfolds.

In addition to the increased interest in Grant, there has been, in recent years, a renewed focus on the Vicksburg Campaign, a focus that is both well-deserved and long overdue. For those who wish to delve deeply into the complexities of the movements of armies and logistics, there are many excellent choices available, including Edwin C. Bearss’ monumental three-volume study and the late Michael Ballard’s one-volume treatment.

For the casual reader, however, Miller’s book provides a good overview of a very complex campaign without getting lost in the details and places the Vicksburg story within its proper context. Rather than focusing on minutiae of individual battles, the author uses a wide-angle lens for his campaign study and includes the earliest efforts by Union military authorities to reopen the Mississippi, beginning with a dramatic account of the capture of New Orleans in 1862.

From there, Miller describes Grant’s single-minded focus on achieving his goal of capturing Vicksburg, from his overland march in north Mississippi to the failed expeditions in the twisted bayous of the Mississippi Delta. Throughout, he pays particular attention to the critical role played by the U.S. Navy, an aspect of the Vicksburg Campaign which is all too often overlooked.

Once Grant’s army lands at Bruinsburg, Miller’s prose quickens as the action and the urgency of the campaign swells to a bloody crescendo at Champion Hill, which Miller argues—and convincingly so—was the most decisive engagement of the Civil War. All along the way—whether in the malarial swamps of Louisiana or the hot and dusty trenches at Vicksburg—Miller’s poetic descriptions of the sweeping landscape adds to the reader’s experience.

In the acknowledgements, Miller relates that he first began research on the Vicksburg Campaign in 1997 and, due to circumstances of life and other research projects, did not return to working on the book until 2013. We are indeed fortunate that he kept at it, as the result is a magnificently written and thoroughly readable account of what is arguably the most significant and complex campaign of the Civil War.

Jim Woodrick is the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer at MDAH, the author of The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi, and a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Vicksburg National Military Park.

Lemuria has selected Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy its October 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction. Signed first editions of Vicksburg are available in our online store.

Author Q & A with S.C. Gwynne

By Guest Author

On October 27, 2019

In Civil War

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 27)

If you haven’t given much thought to the American Civil War lately, bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist S. C Gwynne offers some compelling thoughts on the country’s current state of division as he examines–in depth–the fourth and final year of the War Between the States.

Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War chronicles the events, people and politics of the U.S. in 1864–a time when almost no one, including Abraham Lincoln himself, thought the president would win re-election. The book traces the rough roads Union General Ulysses S. Grant and his counterpart Robert E. Lee traveled as each drove toward victory; the triumphs of nurse Clara Barton; the role that 180,000 black solders forged as they donned Union uniforms, Lee’s ultimate surrender at Appomattox; and finally, the assassination of Lincoln.

Gwynne’s previous books include the award winning Empire of the Summer Moon, Rebel Yell, and The Perfect Pass. As a former journalistic, he served as bureau chief and national correspondent with Time and as executive editor for Texas Magazine, among others.

Today he and his wife, the artist Katie Maratta, live in Austin, Texas.

Hymns of the Republic begins with Washington D.C.’s 1863-64 winter “social season” in high gear as the Civil War dragged on–and the nation’s leaders were given an infusion of hope when Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general over the Union forces. Please explain what that meant to Washington and the war effort.

S.C. Gwynne

When Grant arrived in Washington, he inspired a hopeful, almost joyful feeling in the North that the war might soon be over. Here was the great and glorious warrior from the “west,” victor of Shiloh, Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Here, at last, was someone to challenge the great Robert E. Lee.

What happened next was the opposite of hope and joy. Within a few months of Grant’s arrival, he and Lee would unleash a storm of blood and death that beggared even the killing fields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. And there would be no great northern victory. It was, in fact, Grant’s failure to beat Lee–which opened the large possibility that Abraham Lincoln might not re-elected–that really set the stage for the war’s dramatic final act.

The next presidential election lay ahead, and it seems that Lincoln himself had doubts that he would win. Potentially, what could his loss in the election have meant for the war’s outcome?

In the summer of 1864, it was hard to find anyone in the country, North or South, Republican or Democrat, including Lincoln himself, who believed the president would be re-elected. If he had lost, I believe there would almost certainly have been some sort of negotiated peace, probably with slavery intact in the South. The Civil War would still have to be fought to a close–because the fundamental issue that had caused it in the first place, whether the new territories and states would be slave or free, had not been resolved–but that final action would have been delayed by many years. That’s just my opinion.

Tell me briefly about the contributions that former slaves made to the Union efforts in the war.

Most people have lost track of this, but 180,000 black soldiers fought for the North in the Civil War, most of them in the final year. Some 60 percent of them were former slaves. This meant that men who had been held in bondage one month–without any legal rights, including the right to marry, to hold assets, to buy real estate, to use the courts to settle grievances, to travel, to hold a job–were suddenly wearing uniforms. They had jobs. They earned salaries. They had weapons. Their numbers, and their success as fighters, did much to tip the scales in favor of the Union.

If you look at troop strength, North and South, it always seems as though the Union has a large advantage. But because the North was trying to hold and control so much real estate, as well as garrison Southern cities and protect its supply lines, its advantage on the battlefield was less than it seemed. Black soldiers amounted to an astounding 10 percent of the Union army.

Briefly explain the comparisons you draw between Lincoln and Confederacy President Jefferson Davis as the war was coming to a close.

The two men were so radically different. They shared traits of stubbornness and deep conviction, but otherwise came from different planets. Lincoln was kind, tolerant, forgiving, and personally warm. Davis was brittle, unforgiving, thin-skinned, and grudge-holding. His public persona was often stiff, cold, and unemotional. Both men arguably held their countries together because of their unwillingness to compromise. Lincoln insisted on full restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery as his basic terms for peace. Davis insisted on the full sovereignty of the southern nation.

Your book examines that last year of the U.S. Civil War in a great deal of detail. What lessons does this documentary of that period hold for Americans today–and why should we still be considering the history of the Civil War today?

The most basic lesson is that the United States of America is, and always has been, a deeply divided country. In the Civil War it was divided by region, state, and race. It still is.

Look at a map of red and blue state America. Read any newspaper to see the often-bitter national debate on race. The Civil War, in which 750,000 people died and huge sections of the South were destroyed, was this divide at its most extreme.

As grim as those statistics are, you can look at the history that followed as the United States somehow muddled through. We are no longer killing ourselves at the rate we did in 1864. Our democracy is messy and imperfect. We are still muddling. Today I read in the paper that the president of the United States in October 2019 was predicting a Civil War. But I draw some small hope from my reading of history.

S.C. Gwynne will be at Lemuria on Monday, October 28, at 5:00 to sign and discuss Hymns of the Republic, in conversation with Donald Miller. Lemuria has selected Hymns of the Republic its November 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Susan T. Falck’s ‘Remembering Dixie’ raises questions about historical memory

By Guest Author

On September 23, 2019

In Civil Rights, Civil War, Southern Culture, Southern History

By Jay Wiener. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 1)

Reverberations remain from decades during which Southerners acted as if the Civil War was not concluded with the Confederacy losing. The narrative evolved through variations on a theme, but constant was diversion from discussion of a multiracial society.

Remembering Dixie: The Battle to Control Historical Memory in Natchez, Mississippi 1865-1941 offers opportunity to rethink the narrative. Author Susan T. Falck writes, “In crafting their historical consciousness whites emphasized the gentility of southern civilization, the valor of Confederate soldiers, and the courage of female and elderly male civilians who heroically protected the home front. The memory… was selective, with little room for black experiences told from a black perspective.”

Experiences during enslavement of people of color of mixed blood and in the free black community, and hierarchies arising through differences, were overlooked by “… white Civil War memoirists who subscribed to the notion that the South was tragically victimized during the war and Reconstruction.” Fixation upon the Lost Cause crippled the South—and the country—because it begat orthodoxy as rigid as Stalinism, stopping expansive inquiries:

What other possibilities exist?
What options offer optimal outcome?
Why ignore them?

One-dimensional defense of the slavocracy—as a paradise lost—prohibited white Southerners from full appreciation of how emancipation felt for former slaves, the experience during Redemption, at which time freedoms were revoked, and the dehumanization which ensued. Remembering Dixie yields insights.

Chapter Four addresses lacunae through discussion of photography in Natchez. That examination alone justifies buying the book, in the manner that one purchases magazines without reading everything. Art History classes are likely to utilize it. Anyone interested in photography ought to consider it, given profound perspective into the “thousand words” that a picture is supposedly worth.

The author writes, “[Henry] Norman’s photographs empowered his black subjects to directly challenge the rampage of racist cartoons, jokes, articles, and pictures circulating in the pages of newspapers and consumer periodicals nationwide. As symbols of personal and collective empowerment, Norman’s portraits contested characterizations of blacks as innately inferior, simplistic, and unworthy of respect or civil rights.”

Chapter Five is no less essential. “The creators of the Pilgrimage repackaged the dramatization of a mix of decades-old southern racialized ideology and white historical memory initiated in the early postbellum period as a product for Depression-era consumption.” Slavocracy was sold as an idyll, superior to the dislocations of the Great Depression and industrialization. “Out of the more practical features of the North we may have obtained our economic status, but it is to the South that we turn for the music and romance of our yesteryears.”

Otherwise put, “… the Pilgrimage invited 1930s audiences to step inside the world of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler and experience vicariously a carefully reconstructed mythical past.”

The advertising slogan “Come to Natchez Where the Old South Still Lives” coined by “George Healy, Jr., formerly of Natchez and an Editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune…” encapsulates the anodyne delusion.

Interestingly the women spearheading the Pilgrimage exemplified anything other than Healy’s antediluvian approach: Although they inhabited traditional femininity, they were thoroughly modern, shrewd and calculating businesswomen.

Sound business judgment ultimately created “a profound civic commitment shared by many in the community—whites and blacks—to promote and tell a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative.”

As Natchez has done so, utilizing the Historic Natchez Foundation, the Natchez Courthouse Records Project, and the National Park Service, it has instructed communities, elsewhere, struggling through challenges: “… [T]hanks to the coupling of strong and wise external and homegrown influences the healing of Natchez’s past is well underway, resulting in a flurry of innovative heritage tourism developments that while not always embracing a critically accurate narrative are more racially inclusive and historically accurate than ever before.”

Jay Wiener is a Jackson attorney.

Susan T. Falck will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 25, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Remembering Dixie.

Grant bio ‘Hold On with a Bulldog Grip’ makes ideal entry into storied life

By Guest Author

On July 18, 2019

In Civil War

By Timothy T. Isbell. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 30)

The book Hold on with a Bulldog Grip: A Short Study of Ulysses S. Grant informs the reader about one of the more intriguing and larger-than-life characters of the American Civil War.

Co-authored by John F. Marszalek, David S. Nolen, Louie P. Gallo, and Frank Williams, the book is a short biography of Grant and his legacy. In a well written and concise narrative, the authors take turns telling about Grant’s early life, his college days at West Point, and his eventual military and political career.

In his memoirs, Grant expressed his desire not to be a soldier: “A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect.” Grant’s fellow cadets such as William Tecumseh Sherman, James Longstreet, George H. Thomas, Don Carlos Buell, and Richard Ewell played a significant role in Grant’s experience in the Mexican War and Civil War.

In the book, the Civil War years reflect on Grant’s victories at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga and his ultimate victory at Appomattox. Readers learn of Grant’s philosophy of always moving forward. Grant said, “One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.”

Such a philosophy helped Grant win Civil War battles like Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Each engagement offered serious obstacles that may have forced other generals to withdraw, but Grant stayed the course.

After the first day at Shiloh, Grant’s Union army was pinned against the Tennessee River. Sherman said, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Grant demonstrated his always go-forward mentality, stating “Yes, lick ’em tomorrow though.” This was exactly what Grant did as his army drove the Confederates from the field.

The Civil War period touches on relationships with Abraham Lincoln and the likes of Sherman, David Dixon Porter, and Henry Halleck.

Grant was ahead of his time where the issue of slavery and civil rights were concerned. Grant was staunch in his belief that the Civil War was because of slavery. In his memoirs, Grant said, “The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery.”

Grant supported the use of black soldiers in the Union Army. One of the earliest examples of former slaves fighting can be found during the Vicksburg Campaign. Grant used the 11th Louisiana Cavalry to defeat Confederates at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana.

Grant’s magnanimous gesture to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox helped a war-torn nation to try peace after four bloody years of fighting. Such an effort along with his military record helped put Grant in the White House.

As president, Grant supported passage of the 15th Amendment which granted African American men the right to vote. Although ratified during Grant’s presidency, it took almost a century to totally enact. Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, and means of intimidation to keep black people from voting.

Of special note is the afterword by Mark Keenum. The relationship between Grant and Stephen D. Lee is explored. The relationship of these soldiers who fought for blue and gray, who became friends after the Civil War and their eventual relationship with Mississippi State is a nice closing for the book.

For anyone interested in Ulysses S. Grant, the man who struggled to succeed at anything prior to the Civil War, the hero who helped save the Union, president over a war-torn land and determined fighter who beat death long enough to write his memoirs, this is a book to read and enjoy.

A freelance journalist and author of four books from University Press of Mississippi, Timothy T. Isbell was a member of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning Sun Herald newspaper in Biloxi. He received a National Endowment of the Arts/Knight Foundation grant for his study of Mississippi’s Vietnamese community on the Gulf Coast and he’s an inductee in the University of Southern Mississippi Mass Communications Hall of Fame.

John F. Marszalek will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the Civil War panel at 12:00 p.m. in the C-SPAN/Old Supreme Court Room.

Author Q & A with Shelby Harriel

By Guest Author

On April 14, 2019

In Civil War, Southern History, War, Women's Studies

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 14)

Shelby Harriel fell in love with history at a young age when she was shocked to find out that her own state had left its country in order to start a new one.

That curiosity eventually led to published research in newspapers, magazine, website, and blogs about the role of women in the Civil War.

Her new book, Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi (University Press of Mississippi) encompasses much of that information, with an emphasis on women’s motivation to secretly join the military and fight, the hard work they put in alongside the men in their units, and the roads they paved for a future for women in the military.

By day, Harriel may be found at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville–teaching . . . math!

Please tell me about your long interest in history–and specifically, the Civil War and women who fought in the Civil War. Do you have an approximate number or percentage on the fighting force that were women?

Shelby Harriel

I became interested in the Civil War in elementary school when we were first introduced to the subject in our Mississippi History class. I was absolutely fascinated to learn that my state had left the United States and formed a whole new country. I had to find out more. Eventually, my studies led me to participate in reenacting, but I just couldn’t find my niche. As an athlete my entire life … sitting on the sidelines in a hoop skirt never appealed to me. I was more interested in learning about the experiences of the common soldier.

One day, (someone) remarked that there were women who served as soldiers. Suddenly, I found a whole new exciting realm to direct my interest and research. That was in the late 1990s when researchers began to take a fresh new look at women soldiers, and books were published. So, I had all this new exciting material to consume. The more I read, the more questions I had. This naturally led to me examining primary sources myself. Soon, I had accumulated a great deal of new research that I felt needed a broader audience.

We will never know how many women served as soldiers during the Civil War because they were hidden behind male disguises. Estimates range from the hundreds to the thousands. When you consider that millions of men fought, this number is insignificant. There weren’t that many of them.

What motivated women–some as young as 16–to risk the dangers and hardships of war by secretly enlisting in the military and fighting in the Civil War, disguised as men–and how did they get through the physical exams that allowed them to pass as men?

In some cases, it was the same motivational factors that led men to enlist that also prompted women to join the ranks: patriotism, adventure, and economic opportunities. There weren’t many well-paying, respectable jobs available for women then. But when they disguised themselves as men, they could double or triple their income in a variety of jobs previously closed to them. This afforded them a more independent lifestyle they would not have been able to enjoy in traditional feminine roles. Women also enlisted to avoid separation from male loved ones who went off to war. Other women joined to escape these male family members. Vengeance for a fallen loved one led some women to enlist–or attempt to.

Military regulations called for a soldier to strip for a medical exam upon entering the service. However, pressure to fill depleting ranks or incompetency resulted in cursory examinations where, in some cases, all surgeons did was to ensure that a recruit had a working trigger finger and two good teeth to tear the paper cartridge that held the ammunition. There are quite a few accounts of soldiers testifying that all they had to do was to show their hands and teeth. Some women even had men take the exam for them. So it was actually not terribly difficult for a woman to get past the examination. There are accounts, however, of thorough examining surgeons discovering women trying to sneak into the ranks.

You point out several times in your book Behind the Rifle that pursuing research into the stories and even the names of women who fought in the Civil War is difficult. Could you explain why this was, and do you plan to continue your efforts to identify these women and tell their stories?

At the time, women could not serve in the military, so if a woman wanted to join the army, she had to disguise herself as a man. She cut her hair, put on male clothing, and assumed a male alias. It was actually not that difficult because they did not have forms of identification, but it was a risky venture. Back then, it was not only illegal but also socially unacceptable for a woman to even wear pants. If caught, she served jail time and/or paid a fine. Clothing defined the genders, and anybody caught crossing those lines brought shame upon themselves and their families.

If these women were caught, they often told newspaper reporters wrong information about themselves–including their own feminine name–so this information would not get back home to their families. Sometimes, writers would afford women privacy by not reporting their name, or by assigning them another alias. There is also evidence that the military may have expunged the records of women soldiers. There are instances where male soldiers were court martialed when women soldiers were discovered in their units. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people didn’t want these stories told–making it excruciatingly difficult for those who do want to tell them.

Yes, I plan to continue researching women soldiers because I think there is more to learn. All it takes is the discovery of one soldier’s letter or diary entry, or one newspaper article to provide a missing piece of the puzzle-such as a correct name–that will either bring that woman’s story to fruition or debunk it.

I plan to include new research in a second book on women soldiers. It will have a broader focus that will encompass all women soldiers of the Civil War, not just those with Mississippi connections.

All in all, what would you say these women, who fought on both sides, contributed to the war effort–and why do we need to know about them?

As mentioned earlier, they were statistically irrelevant. Their presence on the battlefield didn’t change the course of an engagement or the war. They weren’t there promoting social change. They weren’t feminists fighting for women’s rights. These women were simply uncommon soldiers experiencing the common trials of war alongside men. They performed the same duties as men, endured the same hardships. They suffered debilitating wounds. They sacrificed their lives for causes that men shared. And we should honor them all the same. These women soldiers helped pave the way for women to serve in our current military.

Shelby Harriel will be at Lemuria on Saturday, May 4, at 2:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi.

Charles Frazier’s ‘Varina’ is an immersion in the Civil War South

By Guest Author

On April 16, 2018

In Civil War, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Southern Fiction

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 15)

As historical fiction, Charles Frazier’s Varina can be seen as an imagined memoir of the widow of Confederate President Jefferson Davis—but only barely.

varina It draws heavily from the verified facts about the former Varina Howell of Natchez, but is seamlessly layered with the insightful thoughts and personality of a woman from an attractive belle to an arch and wise matron in her later years. It’s truly a fascinating journey.

It covers her courtship as a young girl with the then-widowed Davis more than a decade her senior, from living on their plantation at Davis Bend near Vicksburg to moving to Washington, D.C., when he was first a congressman from Mississippi, then a U.S. senator, to being secretary of war, and, finally their days after the Civil War.

Davis himself does not get off lightly in her estimation. For example, she confided to one newspaper reporter after his inauguration as the Confederate leader that sometimes even she wanted to murder him. (Married folk can relate!)

But she speaks fondly of him, too, recalling his young man’s dream of being simply a country lawyer who wrote poetry; much as she wistfully recalled her own dream of being First Lady, not of the South, but residing on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., back when Davis was a U.S. senator and war hero. It seemed a likely prospect at the time.

The tale is told through her words to a black man who tracks her down as she is living out her later years in New York. The man, James Blake (or James Brooks), was known as Jimmie Limber when she and Davis took him in as a child from the streets of Washington and raised him, until they were split apart by the war.

As oddly as it might sound to the uninitiated, the story of a black child being raised side by side with their other children is true—at least, for a short time until the war intervened.

Some of the most gripping of the narrative (a la Gone with the Wind) involves Varina and Blake’s flight for Havana and hoped-for sanctuary in an arduous journey that ended on the Florida-Georgia border as their world came crashing down.

Frazier, known for his masterful work Cold Mountain, draws the reader in with broad strokes of often quite profound observation, along with period details, powerful accounts of the hard life of citizens after Sherman’s march, and thoughtful reflection.

For example, how she came about understanding the complex nature of slavery as a child amazed her, how even slight gradations of skin color could be so determinant. It boiled down to the sense “that a strong line cut through all the people she knew and everybody who existed,” one that “traced divisions clear and precise as the sweeping shadow of a sundial.”

And it was firmly enforced, in society, in public, in private, in homes and churches, a biblical injunction (Luke 12:47): “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”

The South and all in it were beaten down by it, wholly, individually, even the land itself “defaced and haunted with countless places where blood … would keep seeping up for generations to come.”

It makes one wonder, have the scars ever healed?

Frazier has produced a time machine where the reader is immersed in the Civil War era, pondering through the eyes of Varina Howell Davis the complexities, mysteries, brutalities and banalities of days long gone.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Charles Frazier will be at the Eudora Welty House on Thursday, April 26, to sign and read from Varina, Lemuria’s April 2018 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Category: Civil War

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Complex campaign, Grant’s triumph given in-depth, rousing treatment in Donald Miller’s ‘Vicksburg’

Author Q & A with S.C. Gwynne

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Grant bio ‘Hold On with a Bulldog Grip’ makes ideal entry into storied life

Author Q & A with Shelby Harriel

Charles Frazier’s ‘Varina’ is an immersion in the Civil War South

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