In this Virginia History Blog on four Civil War titles, we review “On to Petersburg” about the Overland Campaign in Virginia, “Midnight in America” concerning soldiers dreams and their interpretations, “Sex and the Civil War” on the introduction of pornography to the army and its opposition, and “Stepdaughters of History” about Southern women who were elite, yeomanry and enslaved during the Civil War.
Summer 2018 journal titles begin with the Colonial Virginia Era i , Colonial Virginia Era ii, Revolution and New Nation, Jefferson and Madison, and Antebellum Civil War.
Spring 2018 journal titles can be found in previous Virginia History Blogs at Colonial Virginia – Spring 2018, Revolutionary Virginia – Spring 2018, and Civil War Virginia – Spring 2018, and New South and Modern Virginia – Spring 2018.
On to Petersburg
Gordon C. Rhea wrote On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864 in 2017. It is available from the Louisiana State University Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and the Journal of American History. See also, Rboert M. Dunkerly No Turning Back: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May4-June 13, 1864 (2014), and A. Wilson Greene A Campaign of Giants—The Battle for Petersurg: Volume 1: From the Crossing of the James to the Crater (2018).
In this final volume of Rhea’s 5-part series on the Overland Campaign in Virginia, the author examines the last leg of this phase of the war. Beginning with Cold Harbor trench assault, Union forces consolidated to new positions and turned back Confederate assaults at Fletcher’s Redoubt and White’s Farm. Grant successfully disengaged and traversed across the deployed front of Lee’s army warding off probing Confederate attacks at old battlefield sites at Glendale, White Oak Swamp, and Malvern Hill, then successfully crossing the James River to close on Petersburg.
Grant’s grand strategic goal to encircle and destroy Lee’s rebel army include 1864 assaults on Petersburg, and pincering movements at Trevilian’s Station to the northwest and the Lynchburg campaign to the southwest.
Lee and Grant formulated plans, assessed resources, calculated enemy strategy, and considered options with their staffs. Rhea reveals the uncertainty of the process, analyzing personalities and traits of field grade officers on both sides. He provides a thorough examination of the logistical details comprising Grant’s successful encircling movement, including covering forces, naval riverine support, wagon trains, and field engineer construction.
Buy the “On to Petersburg” on Amazon here. Previously in the series: The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864 (2004), The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7-12, 1864 (2005), To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864 (2000), Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864 (2002)
Midnight in America
Jonathan W. White wrote Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War in 2017. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of the Civil War Era.
See also Drew GilpinFaust This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2009), and Mark S. Schantz Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death (2008). Also of interest: Bell Irvin Wiley’s companion volumes: The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (2008), The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (2008).
White observes that the fitful sleep that came to participants in the Civil War was punctuated by dreams. Mid-century Americans had a fascination with dreams as indicators of both premonition and spirituality. They looked to dreams for meanings, messages and omens. They often shared them to motivate, to guide and to warn one another. Soldiers dreamed of their fear of flinching in battle or their sweethearts giving up hope. They often dreamed of home, longingly in anticipation of reuniting, but also in fear of death or infidelity.
Soldiers separated from loved ones often shared their dreams with folks back home as a way of maintaining connections, including revelations about the dreamers’ hopes and fears, desires and struggles, guilt and shame. White builds on dreams revealed in soldier letters to include civilians, African Americans, and dreams of the dying. White also addresses the role of dreams in popular American culture and two of Lincoln’s most famous dreams about Lincoln on a sailing ship, and Lincoln at a White House funeral.
Buy “Midnight in America” on Amazon here.
Sex and the Civil War
Judith Giesberg wrote Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality in 2017. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of American History and the Journal of the Civil War Era.
See also Thomas P. Lowry The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War (2012) and Catherine Clinton Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War (2006).
While the soldiers of both armies were seized with widespread religious revivals in 1865, some of the material left behind in abandoned army camps included an alternative literature. The advent of the penny press in the generation before the Civil War brought a “democratization” of subject matter including pornography found in erotic fiction, playing cards and stereographs delivered into camps from sutlers and by mail.
As revealed in Union courts martial records, Giesberg frames a debate in army camps between Bible readers and consumers of pornography. She develops connections between the army experience and social issues including prostitution and abortion, relating the personal history of Anthony Comstock who rose to post-war prominence in the social morality movement and the YMCA in New York City. The federal “Comstock” law against use of the U.S. mails for obscenity was passed in 1875 during the Grant administration.
Buy “Sex and the Civil War” on Amazon here.
Stepdaughters of History
Catherine Clinton wrote Stepdaughters of History: Southern Women and the American Civil War in 2016. It is available from the Louisiana State University of Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of the Civil War Era. See also Karen L. Cox Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (2003).
Even women of the educated Southern elite became “stepdaughters of history” when their trust in a failed state left them with no claim to a political identity. Their material and familial loss along with infrastructure and economic destruction was interpreted through a lens of personal sacrifice. They ensured that their losses would not be in vain by creating an enduring Lost Cause literature and tradition at once romantic, inaccurate and harmful.
Others were “impermissible patriots” who did not conform to a standard of femininity, “true womanhood”. These included nonconforming women of the yeomanry who were spies, actors, smugglers and soldiers. Some few Southern women were also slave liberators and bread rioters.
The “sisters” of the Lost Cause created a negative stereotype of a devoted and stoic “Mammy” to deny enslaved women’s autonomy. But protesting historians constructed a positive stereotype of a black super-woman while those who were actually enduring the privations of slavery did so along with fear of army presence from either side, extremes of deprivation, and lost family.
Buy the “Stepdaughters of History” on Amazon here.
See Also
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: two that are widely used in Virginia college courses, and one to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019. Titles are organized by topics related to Political and Economic Virginia, Social, Gender, Religious, African American Virginia, and Wars in Virginia during this time span.
The Table of Contents divides Political and Economic Virginia, 1750-1824 into Revolution and Constitution Policy, and New Nation Policy. Topical history is treated under headings of Social History, Gender in Virginia, Religious Virginia and African American Virginian. Finally, two wars are featured under American Revolution and the War of 1812.
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.