​The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave
David A. Powell
Savas Beatie, 2015, 726 pp., $39.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-202-0
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
Every once and a while, there comes a series of books which redefine how we think of the engagement.  While volumes have been dealt with concerning the Battle of Gettysburg or Antietam, there have been lesser works on the Battle of Chickamauga which left quite a bit to be desired for the Civil War student.  Last year, a great series of books began by David A. Powell named The Chickamauga Campaign.  The first in the series was The Chickamauga Campaign: A Mad Irregular Battle and gave an incredible detailed account from August 22nd to September 19th, 1863.  The second in the series, Glory or the Grave, gives us a look into the action on September 20th.
David A. Powell is a graduate from the Virginia Military Institute of the Class of 1983 with a BA in History.  The majority of his research and his passion has been the Chickamauga Campaign to which he has authored many articles in many different magazines along with publishing a few other works on the people and the battle itself.  He has previously authored The Maps of Chickamauga; An Atlas of the Chickamauga Campaign, including the Tullahoma Operations, June 22 – September 23, 1863, and The Chickamauga Campaign: A Mad Irregular Battle.  He was the recipient of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table Richard Barksdale Harwell Award in 2010 for Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joseph Wheeler, and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign.
Once again, Powell shows the breadth of his knowledge in this massive volume adding to the trilogy of works he is writing on the campaign.  When I first read A Mad Irregular Battle, I was astounded by the amount of knowledge in the pages, but in Glory or the Grave, he continues to fill this large work with just as much information as the last.  What was most fascinating to me was the ability to do so with information concerning a single day of battle.  The second volume in his trilogy, while large, never feels its length as the narrative is so well written, it pushes you forward and forward until you are wanting more.  Not only does he chronicle the one day of battle more incredibly than I have ever read before, he does so through the time tables of action seen on the field.  I have rarely seen a book outside of the Gettysburg Campaign handle such a time table like this and it is good to have for ease of reading.  Filled with photographs and maps of the battle, there is never any confusion from the reader on what is going on in the strange battle.  While the first volume may have been titled A Mad Irregular Battle there were moments in which I felt the same thing when handling this text.  It may not have been as mad or irregular as the previous work, but the tension between the forces was still incredibly palpable.
I highly recommend The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave to anyone interested in the Chickamauga Campaign.  As I said in my introduction, every once and a while, a series comes along which makes a bold statement about a campaign.  Right now, Powell is to be applauded and revered for the work he is placing within these volumes.  I wait with much excitement at the coming, and final, volume.

​The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead
Meg Groeling
Savas Beatie, 174 pages + 18 pages introduction, $14.95, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61121-189-4
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
One of the most cited numbers of the American Civil War is the amount of casualties which occurred in the entirety of the conflict.  While the number of casualties throughout the war is important, one of more unanswered questions in people’s minds are “what happened to all of the bodies after the numerous battles?”  While there are some answers to those questions, there are many opportunities to understand the process and location of some of the Civil War dead.  In The Aftermath of Battle, Meg Groeling helps us to understand the sometimes complicated process which took place in order to bury the soldiers who sacrificed everything for their country.
                Meg Groeling is one of the many contributing writers to the Emerging Civil War blog.  Along with being a writer, she is also a teacher and a curriculum developer since 1987.  She has taught at both elementary and middle school levels for over thirty years and she graduated from California State University in Long Beach with a B.A. in Liberal Studies.  She is also currently a master’s candidate at American Public University majoring in Military History with a Civil War specialization.  The Aftermath of Battle is part of the ever growing Emerging Civil War Series published by Savas Beatie.
                In The Aftermath of Battle, not only does Groeling discuss the process of the burial of the dead, but the creation of some of the most famous graveyards at Civil War battlefields.  While certain battlefields, such as Gettysburg and Antietam, have well documented burials of the dead, there are many other cases of questions which come up in Civil War discussion.  One of the highlights of the book for myself was the chapter on the burial of the horses.  Some of the images in this chapter were both strange and heartbreaking.  One in particular was an Alexander Gardner photograph of a horse which looks to be resting, but is actually one of the many dead on the Antietam battlefield.  It was also interesting to discover how some of the horse’s remains were dealt with after the battle; one of the many ways was to burn the carcass since they were too large to move.  Another chapter was about moving the bodies from the battlefield to home bringing up certain methods such as embalming and ice coffins.  The amount of information within the pages of this book handling the eerie subject matter are handled with a great amount of grace that while this information may make some queasy, the writing tends to lessen it.  This book, like all others in the Emerging Civil War Series, is also filled with appendices from other contributors to the “Emerging Civil War Blog.”  The short articles written by other contributors only add to the great narrative which Groeling has written here.
                I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the American Civil War, especially when questions rise about how they handled the Civil War dead.  The book is filled with maps and images which aid in the reading of the work and the subject, though morbid to some, is handled with the greatest professionalism and ease that anyone can find this book interesting.  This is one of the many works which offered something different and exciting to offer the realm of Civil War writing.