In this Virginia History Blog on Civil War Battles, we consider
Prosecution of the Civil War in Virginia. Accounts of the ferocity during the Civil War are related in “A Savage Conflict” describing guerilla war perpetrated on both sides, and “Haunted by Atrocity” describes conditions in Civil War prison camps. Two titles are from the Union perspective, “The Union War” for preservation of the Union, and “Meade’s Army” taken from a privates notebook.
Civil War Battles 1861-1863. Two books narrate the exploits of Stonewall Jackson, “Three Days in the Shenandoah” about Front Royal and Winchester, and “Shenandoah 1862” about Jackson’s Valley Campaign. “The Monitor Boys” describes the crew of the Union’s ironclad in 1862.
Civil War Battles 1864-1865. “In the Trenches at Petersburg” relates the construction of Confederate field works and their eventual defeat there in 1865. “The Battle of the Crater” tells the story of a failed Union incursion into the lines at Petersburg in 1864 and “Into the Crater” focuses on the mine attack creating the crater there. The “Shenandoah Summer” describes Jubal A. Early’s 1864 Confederate Valley Campaign. “Bloody Crimes” tells the story of the pursuit of Jefferson Davis in the final days of the conflict.
Prosecution of the Civil War in Virginia
The Union War
Gary W. Gallagher wrote The Union War in 2011. It is available from the Harvard University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “The Union War” on Amazon here. A companion to the author’s The Confederate War (1999). See also Jonathan W. White Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014), and Allen C. Guelzo Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012).
Belief in Union as the self-governing American Republic motivated Union politicians, soldiers, and home front to defeat the Confederacy, “more than any other factor by far”. It outweighed either hatred of slavery or a desire for emancipation. The exceptional United States of America provided political freedom, economic opportunity and social mobility unavailable elsewhere on earth. Defeating the rebellion of slaveholding aristocrats would preserve the Union as a democratic beacon of liberal ideals in a world of resurgent monarchy following the failed European republics lost since the 1840s. European immigration continued to man Northern factories and fill Union regiments.
While the political issue of slavery expansion precipitated the Civil War, emancipation was essentially seen by most Northerners as a means to preserve the Union. Rather than the first year’s policy of returning escapees to their rebel owners, and a “loyal opposition” calling for a peace restoring “the Union as it was”, the “hard war” of emancipation military policy implemented by advancing Federal armies subtracted nearby “self-emancipating” slave labor from the Confederate war effort by their planting food supplies in Union occupied regions in the hundreds of thousands, driving army wagons and repairing U.S. Army railroad track in the thousands, and soldiering in numbers approaching 200,000.
Buy “The Union War” on Amazon here. Also by this author, The American War: A History of the Civil War Era (2016), Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, Lee’s artillerist (1989,1998), The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (2010), Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (2013).
Meade’s Army
David W. Lowe edited Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman in 2007. Available from the Kent State University Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Meade’s Army” on Amazon here.
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman provides intimate descriptions of Virginia’s late war landscape from northern to southern Tidewater, westward into the Piedmont at war’s end. David W. Lowe of the National Park Service edits and annotates an important reference used extensively in military histories of the Army of the Potomac’s Virginia Campaign of 1864-1865. He is careful to provide context in Lyman’s biography, but also in the social and military world of a 19th century American army.
LtCol. Lyman’s detailed notebooks include sketch maps of virtually every one of Meade’s headquarter camps between the Rapidan River to the Appomattox. The staff officer also had a keen eye for physical descriptions of the commanding officers surrounding him with their comings and goings. Occasionally he offered opinions on Army and political issues that he was careful to conceal from superiors.
Buy “Meade’s Army” on Amazon here. See also Frank Wilkeson memoir Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Republic (1887, 2018), George R. Agassiz (ed.) Theodore Lyman’s Memoir, Meade’s Headquarters 1863-1865 (1922, 2014).
A Savage Conflict
Daniel E. Sutherland wrote A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War in 2009. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “A Savage Conflict” on Amazon here.
Sutherland posits that guerrilla conflict in the Confederacy is underestimated. Rebel partisans extended the Civil War, made it bloodier and costlier, and ultimately it contributed to their defeat. In a field made difficult by definition, Sutherland chooses to summarize irregular warfare for local defense. They were partisan rangers, home guards, bushwackers, deserters. Unionists in the Appalachians of Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina formed units in self-defense and to harass Confederate movement.
The romantic vision of Civil War guerrillas as incarnations of Revolutionary Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox) was misapplied then and now. Initial efforts by Jefferson Davis and his military commanders to control Confederate guerrillas failed. The early raids on Federal supply lines and cutting telegraph lines soon degenerated into robbery, looting, extortion, and murder. Outlaws and deserters formed into marauding bands preying on the southern populace with no loyalty to either side. Union forces retaliated against continuing banditry by administering civilian executions.
The Confederate Congress found that Partisan Rangers stole cattle from loyal Confederates for government bounties rather than risk crossing behind Union lines, so they were abolished. The sustained domestic pillaging and mayhem visited on the South by outlaw and deserter marauders took away any potential support for a post-war Confederate Spanish-style resistance mounted against Napoleon’s occupation, and the die-hard proposals were opposed by both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
Buy “A Savage Conflict” on Amazon here. Also by this author, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: the Dare Mark Campaign (2010), Seasons of War: The Ordeal of the Confederate Community, 1861-1865 – Culpeper County VA (1998), The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876 (2000). See also Joseph M. Beilein Jr. Bushwackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri (2016), and Bruce E. Stuart Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia (2018).
Haunted by Atrocity
Benjamin G. Cloyd wrote Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory in 2010. It is available from the Louisiana State University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Haunted by Atrocity” on Amazon here.
Generally, Civil War historians have ignored the military prisons that expanded after the early days of frequent paroles and exchanges between the contending armies. Haunting memories of Civil War military prisons have been manipulated for several historiographic purposes, beginning with memoirs written immediately after the conflict by survivors of those like Andersonville, the Confederate prison in Georgia, and Elmira, the Federal prison in New York. The accounts of brutality on both sides inflamed sectional acrimony by rehearsing the awful deaths of 56,000 Union and Rebel prisoners.
Three major interpretations emerged. The predominating northern memory portrayed Confederate prisons, their commanders and overseeing politicians as exceptionally “barbaric”. The southern memory sought to restore honor to the Great Rebellion and embroider the Lost Cause mythology by emphasizing Northern suspension of the prisoner exchange cartel. African Americans at Memorial Day turned out by the thousands at the site of the Andersonville Prison to commemorate Union prisoner sacrifice.
Cloyd explains that sectional reconciliation, racism and commercialism have overshadowed the “emancipationist” memory and serve collectively to marginalize the atrocities suffered by military prisoners detained in overcrowded Civil War prison compounds. The book briefly addresses Virginia’s prisons at Danville and Belle Isle, without mention of Castle Thunder in Richmond.
Buy “Haunted by Atrocity” on Amazon here. See also Ovid L. Futch History of Andersonville Prison (2011), Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners (2011), Michael P. Gray Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered (2018).
Civil War Battles in Virginia 1861-1863
Three Days in the Shenandoah
Gary Ecelbarger wrote Three Days in the Shenandoah: Stonewall Jackson at Front Royal and Winchester in 2008. Available from the University of Oklahoma Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Three Days in the Shenandoah” on Amazon here.
In this book, Ecelbarger offers a corrective interpretation of Jackson’s Valley Campaign. In the Spring of 1862, Union forces were advancing under McClellan up the Lower Peninsula towards Richmond from the east, preparing to advance south onto Richmond under McDowell, and blocking the lower Shenandoah Valley approach north under General Nathaniel Banks. On May 16, Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson initiated his first sustained tactical offensive at Front Royal and Winchester to strike Union forces under Banks before he could swing towards Richmond from the west.
Jackson’s success driving Banks before him sent shock waves through both U.S. and Confederate War Departments. It was an important victory for the morale of Jackson’s command. Nevertheless, both sides suffered from the “fog of war”. Jackson was lax in scouting and committed his numerical superiority piecemeal. He failed to account for fatigue of troops on the march, and several vital messages were unclear. On Banks’ part, while he successfully extracted his command, he failed to deploy cavalry to screen the Luray Valley east of the Massanutten Mountain against Jackson’s approach, and he poorly deployed his command around Winchester.
Buy “Three Days in the Shenandoah” on Amazon here. See also Richard R. Duncan Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861-1865 (2007), and Jonathan A. Noyalas ed., “We Learned That We are Indivisible”: Sesquicentennial Reflections of the Civil War Era in the Shenandoah Valley (2015).
Shenandoah 1862
Peter Cozzens wrote Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign in 2008. Available from the University of North Carolina Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Shenandoah 1862” on Amazon here.
In this military historian’s revisionist account of Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson’s Valley Campaign in the Spring of 1862, Cozzens offers some critical conclusions about both sides, although both generals and soldiers generally performed well. He notes that Jackson’s secretive command style left subordinate commanders confused as to his intent. When the campaign concluded, over extending fatigued troops by the General resulted in divided opinions among his command regarding Jackson’s effectiveness. For the part of the Union forces, Cozzens observes that the otherwise well performing regiments fell prey to a dysfunctional Union command system that laced any unification of command.
Most of Cozzens’ analysis is confined to the first and last chapters, with the intervening chapters given over to a narrative based on new source material describing the unfolding campaign of six battles and numerous skirmishes, giving a balance of credit and criticism for both sides. The bibliography was described by one reviewer as “the most comprehensive” of the subject, supporting this, “the definitive work” on the campaign.
Buy “Shenandoah 1862” on Amazon here. See also and John O. Casler’s memoir, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade (1906, 2016), William A. McClendon and Keith S. Bohannon, McClendon’s memoir, Recollections of War Times: By an Old Veteran while under Stonewall Jackson and General James Longstreet (2011), and Stephen W. Sears Chancellorsville (2014).
The Monitor Boys
John V. Quarstein wrote The Monitor Boys: The Crew of the Union’s First Ironclad in 2011. It is available from The History Press, on Kindle and online new and used. A companion to Richard Snow Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle that Changed History https://amzn.to/2zBi8tc (2016 reprint). Buy “The Monitor Boys” on Amazon here.
In the world of Civil War scholarship, relatively little is devoted to naval operations on the rivers and at sea. Most of that is committed to senior leadership of the Union and Confederate navies or technological innovations such as armored warships, undersea mines and submersibles.
Quarstein describes life aboard the prototype sea-going ironclad. While ridiculed at the time as a “cheese box on a raft”, it and others like it eventually dissuaded the British Navy from any attempt to reestablish the South’s cotton supply to English textile manufacturers. Routines and discipline are described as Quarlstein offers crew member biographies. Officers and crew particularly enjoyed swimming and did not like the ship’s food, they sported elaborate tattoos, and drank too much, leading to unnecessary drownings.
Buy “The Monitor Boys” on Amazon here. Also by this author, The CSS Virginia: Sink Before Surrender (2013), A History of Ironclads: The Power of Iron over Wood (2007). See also Bern Anderson By Sea and By River (1989), and Jack D. Coombe Thunder Along the Mississippi (1996).
Civil War Battles in Virginia 1864-1865
In the Trenches at Petersburg
Earl J. Hess wrote In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat in 2009. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “In the Trenches at Petersburg” on Amazon here. A companion to his Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee (2011).
This is the third of a three-volume series on field fortifications in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. Hess continues to extend his thesis that entrenchment in the armies on both sides came about, not from the lethality of the rifle musket, but from Grant’s ability to sustain close contact with Lee’s army during his maneuvering.
In this view, Petersburg was less “siege warfare” than a traditional field campaign with “some limited aspects of siege warfare”. The highly mobile campaign that Grant launched in May 1864 at the Wilderness then developed in a series of offensives, counteroffensives, and trench raids. Encircling Lee at Petersburg, Grant’s renewed offensives stretched Lee’s lines ever further westward until frontal assaults on the Confederate Petersburg line could be successful on April 2, 1865. The Union’s earthworks and mining raids contributed to both strategic and grand strategic operations in Virginia. Hess describes both the technical engineering and construction aspects and soldier life in quarters, rations, morale and desertion. Maps and photographs highlight the descriptions.
Buy “In the Trenches at Petersburg” on Amazon here. Also by this author, Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation (2017), The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth (2016), Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864 (2013). See also A. Wilson Greene A Campaign of Giants – The Battle for Petersburg (vol. 1 and 2).
The Battle of the Crater
John F. Schmutz Jefferson wrote The Battle of the Crater: A Complete History in 2009. Available from McFarland and Company Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “The Battle of the Crater” on Amazon here.
The Battle of the Crater took place at the Confederate trenches near Petersburg on July 30, 1864. A Union tunnel was dug under Confederate entrenchments and a mine was successfully exploded under defending fortifications. The follow-up attack was botched leading to over 4,000 Union casualties, nearly one-third of the losses sustained at Cold Harbor six weeks before.
Federal Major General James H. Ledlie, a former coastal defense officer in Union-held North Carolina, held the smallest, weakest and least experienced division in Burnside’s IX Corps. He drew the shortest straw in Burnside’s command choice of lead divisions for the assault around the crater and into the Confederate trenches. The Union assault was misdirected into the crater itself, and successfully countered by a South Carolinian brigade under the command of Stephen Elliott.
Buy “The Battle of the Crater” on Amazon here. Also by this author, Volume 1: “The Bloody Fifth” – The 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood’s Texas Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia: Secession to the Suffolk Campaign (2016), and Volume 2: “The Bloody Fifth” – The 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood’s Texas Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia: Secession to the Suffolk Campaign (2017).
Into the Crater
Earl J. Hess wrote Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg in 2010. It is available from the University of South Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Into the Crater” on Amazon here.
The Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864, was one of the Civil War’s most controversial events. This was a frontal assault gamble on prepared entrenchments at Pegram’s Salient that Grant and Meade hoped would quickly end the Civil War. It was badly chosen due to depth of defense and deployed artillery batteries. The black troops were trained to skirt the crater to take advantage of the initial blast shock. General Meade at the last minute placed them behind uninstructed white regiments, and at the signal to attack, they poured into the crater itself followed by the reinforcements.
In this account, Hess focuses on the perspective of the fighting soldier rather than senior commanders and their staffs. The untrained white regiments were without participation of their division commander who stayed behind. Horrific failure came due to poor planning on the part of Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, his staff, and selecting a badly officered lead division by picking straws.
Buy “Into the Crater” on Amazon here. See also Andrew Ward River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War (2005).
Shenandoah Summer
Scott C. Patchan wrote Shenandoah Summer: The 1864 Valley Campaign in 2007. Available from the University Nebraska Press, Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Shenandoah Summer” on Amazon here.
The major military operations in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia began in July 1864 with General Jubal Early’s withdrawal from the outskirts of Washington DC. Early’s actions in the initial phases of maneuver altered the course of the war in Virginia partly by impacting political developments in the North. After an initial reversal at Winchester, Early defeated the Union commander at Kernstown, then raided Chambersburg, Pennsylvania with cavalry, who were then defeated in an attempt at cutting the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad supplying Grant’s army from the Midwest Ohio Valley.
Early’s movements did indeed cause redeployment from Grant before Petersburg to the Valley. Grant consolidated four commands into the new Middle Military Division, reinforced the two army corps with two cavalry divisions, and appointed General Philip Sheridan as overall commander of the Valley over Generals George Crook and David Hunter, leading to Union victories at Winchester and Cedar Creek.
Buy “Shenandoah Summer” on Amazon here. Also by this author, Second Manassas: Longstreet’s Attack and the Struggle for Chinn Ridge (2011).
Bloody Crimes
James L. Swanson wrote Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse in 2010. It is available from the William Morrow Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Buy “Bloody Crimes” on Amazon here. A companion volume to his Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (2007), and Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution (2008).
In a Spring of 1865 manhunt parallel to the search for Lincoln’s assassin, Union troops ranged deep into the South in a frantic search for Lincoln’s escaped counter-part, Jefferson Davis. The one-time president of the “disappeared” Confederacy as Davis would later describe it, was ultimately cornered in Georgia after a chase lasting over a month.
Swanson notes the parallels of both presidential executives arriving to their respective capitals at the outset of the Civil War by train, Lincoln ridiculed for his secrecy at arrival to his, Davis ridiculed for his secrecy at departure from his. Swanson relates details of Lincoln’s autopsy carried out as Davis fled south. This narrative of the chase for Jefferson Davis is a companion to the author’s previously published book on the search for Lincoln’s assassins.
Buy “Bloody Crimes” on Amazon here. See also, Harold Holzer President Lincoln Assassinated!!: the Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning (2015), and Harold Holzer and Craig Symonds The New York Times: Complete Civil War, 1861-1865, book & CD (2010).
TVH Era Webpage for Civil War Virginia
The TVH webpage for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction Eras, 1824-1883, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years.
The Table of Contents divides Political and Economic Virginia, 1824-1883 into (a) Antebellum Virginia Policy 1820-1850, (b) Antebellum Virginia Economics 1820-1850, (c) Sectionalism and Civil War 1850-1865, and Reconstruction Virginia Policy 1865-1883. Topical history is treated under headings of Social History, Gender in Virginia, and Religious Virginia.
African American Virginia, 1820-1883 is divided into (a) Plantation Slavery 1820-1865, (b) Free Blacks, Artisans and Slave Hires 1820-1850, and (c) Reconstruction African Americans 1863-1883. Finally, wars are featured under (1) Mexican War, (2) Civil War Combat and (3) CivilWar Home Front.
See Also
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.