What They Endured, What They Wrought: Comparing Regimental Casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg

Kerry Hotaling

Outskirts Press, 2013, 84 pages, $10.95

Image courtesy of oldbonessearch.com

ISBN: 978-1-4787-0340-2

                This work is a study on comparing the regimental strengths and losses during the Gettysburg Campaign and while the title is intriguing, it is a bit misleading as to the cause of the book.  By comparing the numbers and losses, I thought the work to be an analysis on what it would be like to see what casualties the 24th Michigan inflicted on the 26th North Carolina along with many other regiments who had famous duels at Gettysburg.  Instead, there was a list of regiments with high percentage losses, some of which were not as clearly labeled as others, and a statement that it would never be a complete work.  What this small study is, however, is a general statement on what happened during the first day at the Battle of Gettysburg.

                Kerry Hotaling is a land surveyor in Western Massachusetts and is a self proclaimed Gettysburg buff.  He is a member of the Gettysburg Foundation along with membership to the Civil War Trust.  He is also very involved in youth sports while volunteering to replace many wooden fences on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

                The hope for this work is to create an analytical study of the regimental losses at Gettysburg which has also been done in other major works on the battle.  Hotaling took a different approach, however, by making lists of the worst regimental deaths, wounded and captured throughout the battle.  While this is an interesting concept, it is something which Hotaling does in his work but losses the feeling of comparing regimental casualties.  He focuses on day one of battle which is some of the worse combat throughout the battle, which is why mentions these regiments.  However, he talks about the 26th North Carolina as fighting only in day one of combat forgetting that they would take part in Pickett’s Charge later on in the third day of fighting.  There are also some of the Union regiments who are mentioned in the first day that take part in the second and third day of battle mainly on the area of Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill and are lightly engaged.  The First and Eleventh Corps are only mentioned in the lists which is a study in itself.  But since this work is supposed to be on the comparison of the regimental strengths and losses at Gettysburg, the purpose of this work is left in the rearview mirror.  The desire to see what this study could have been is something I would still like to see and I hold the hope of a second edition.  The presentation of the book is one of the saving graces of what this work is.  The only negative on the presentation is the lack of the footnotes for the sources he uses throughout the text.

                What They Endured, What They Wrought is the beginning of a study into the comparison of the regimental losses at the Battle of Gettysburg.  However, this book is not what it says it is and therefore should not be called what it is.  Some of the facts within the text are incorrect when considering the Eleventh Corps and the 154th New York.  Along with that, the bibliography at first glance is missing the Official Records, but they are used as parentheticals throughout the text which is not professional in the historical field.  The use of footnotes is more desirable than what has happened here.  This may be more of an editorial issue than something the author has done in his work.  With the hopes of a second edition, much more expanded than the first edition, I hope that the means of this work is not lost in the translation of what is needed.  Listing off what regiments did during the battle is not comparing the regimental losses at Gettysburg.  What we have here is more of a stud on the first day of combat than a comparison of the regimental losses at Gettysburg.

The Silent Mutiny at Gettysburg and the Maneuvers North of the Army of Northern Virginia: General Lee’s 1863 Northern Invasion Plan – The Sesquicentennial Edition

A Roman

Createspace Publishing, 2013, 564 pgs.

ISBN: 9781492303527
Image courtesy of amazon.com

                The topic of this work is quite interesting  Did the men of the Army of Northern Virginia have a silent mutiny against Lee during the Gettysburg Campaign?  Was there a movement to take him out of his position due to the lack of leadership he was giving during the battle?  Was Longstreet, Ewell and Hill qualified to lead the army without the tactics of Lee?  All very interesting points the author brings up but never does he answer the questions, at least through the amount I have read.

                There is no author biography in the text, but is easily found on amazon.  A. Roman is a graduate of American Military University with a Masters in Land Warfare.  He is author of another work called “The Art of Betting on Baseball” and is a telecommunications consultant.  While I would have liked to learn more about A. Roman, there is just nothing on the man I can find on the internet.

                I really wanted to like this book.  I enjoy self-published works due to the information these authors want to bring to the realm of scholarship of the field.  But in the realm of this book, I could not get into it.  I have to be honest when I say that I could not finish this book and barely got past the first hundred pages without throwing it to the side.  The first problem I encountered was the foreword to the work which he spent talking about the railroad industry and what it had to do with the Civil War.  While this is interesting to talk about, it has nothing to do with the Battle of Gettysburg and the premise of his book.  Next, in his introduction, instead of talking about the battle, he talks about the umbrella man in the Kennedy Assassination.  Thinking that it could get better, I pushed on and began to read what he had to say about the people who fought in the Army of Northern Virginia since his work was based solely on the mutiny in the Army of Northern Virginia.  It takes a lot for me to get frustrated with a book and this one got me frustrated immediately.  He states the same quote two different times when describing Richard Ewell from one book, the secondary source of the quote, and then another book, which was the initial creation of the quote.  Within the same page, he gives the same quote twice from two different books.  While they are both cited, the problem stemmed from when he went from standard endnotes to the parenthetical in text citation.  This was not only confusing for the reader, but not to standard for historical writing.  Even halfway through the prologue, the first chapter did not being until page 74 and the prologue did not even state what the purpose of this study was.  I attempted to keep going with the author until I realized that the work was just another book on Gettysburg with nothing new to say on the topic.  The premise of the book was lost between page 1 and page 74.  Lastly, the bibliography was formatted in many different ways and the end notes were confusing at best.  Overall, I had really high hopes for this book and I was incredibly disappointed at what was printed here.

                It is really a bad sign that this book could not be finished.  I think the premise is really quite interesting and should be pursued more, but the idea was lost almost instantly.  Throughout the text, he even goes for to insult previous historians for not reading the official records properly and not understanding what the meaning behind the words were.  Another confusing thing was the printed idea of the Sesquicentennial Edition printed on the front of the book.  Published in 2013, the only edition at the time was the Sesquicentennial Edition.  Please do not consider your work an edition base on the anniversary of the war unless it is a reprint with added material.  In conclusion, this work is not something I recommend even to the beginner of the Battle of Gettysburg.  This, instead, needs a whole reworking on the initial premise of the silent mutiny at Gettysburg.  

Silver Sping and the Civil War

Robert E. Oshel, PhD

The History Press, 2014, 176 pgs.

ISBN: 978-1-62619-417-5

Image courtesy of Confederate Book Review

                The town of Silver Spring played an important role in what some historians consider the assault of Washington D.C.  Robert E. Oshel, PhD, has produced a work which chronicles the town during the battle and even talks about what happened before the fighting erupted.  From the homestead of the Blair family to the invasion of Jubal Early and his men, the town of Silver Spring was more than just a city in Maryland, it hinged the fate of the Union.

                Robert E. Oshel, PhD, has written many articles and works on the town of Silver Spring including a history of the library and a walking tour of one of the parks: Woodside Park.  He has lectured on the topic and has a monthly column in the Woodside Park Voice. He is a professor of medicine and biometrics at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, F. Edward Herbert School of Medicine.  He lives in the Woodside Park area in Silver Spring, Maryland.

                During the Gettysburg Campaign, it was General Jubal Early who was notorious for taking the city of York, Pennsylvania, hostage along with many other cities in the Southern Central Pennsylvania area and demanded a ransom.  Robert E. Lee often called Early his “Bad Old Man.”  While the Civil War was fought with a sense of honor, Early always seemed to be the exception to the rule and would often allow his men and himself to do what they thought was right which was not always socially acceptable.  Here, in Silver Spring in 1864, Early would take the limelight again and face off against the defenses of Washington D.C.  Oshel writes a narrative which is both easy to follow and engaging and it brings the reader into a moment in history when the fate of the capital hung in the balance.  Showing both the political and the military end of what was happening in the Union at the time of Early’s attack on Washington, Oshel brings a greater sense of humanity to Abraham Lincoln and his family.  Too often, there seems to be an immortal writing style of Lincoln and that nothing bad could ever happen to him.  But here, in the attack on Washington, the president would place himself in a seat of danger and even be ordered to remove himself for his own safety.  Oshel also talks about the urgency of the capital as it attempted to bring some reinforcements up from the Petersburg Campaign to halt the offensive of Early.  As his station during the attack, Early used Silver Spring and its resources for the battle.  There is even some debate today as to whether or not Early and his men burned down the estate of the Blair family.  But what is most prevalent about the account and narrative by Oshel is that Silver Spring offered the best position for Early and his men to strike at not only one fort surrounding Washington but a few others as well.  This work also shows the growing career of Jubal Early from the Gettysburg Campaign.  There, his men shined under competent leadership during the first day of combat only to be stifled by the higher command structure leading to his failure there.  At Silver Spring, he was making the decisions of attack and therefore would not have anyone in the high command structure slowing him down.  His failures at Silver Spring would be of his own and Oshel shows that great experience of growth in the man.

                In Silver Spring and the Civil War, Oshel brings us a narrative which is inspiring to discover more than what is written in the history books.  Many times, the attack on Washington gets overlooked by the actions taking place at Petersburg.  This work proves that there is always something new to learn about the Civil War even though the conflict has been over for one hundred and fifty years.  I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the city of Washington during the Civil War and anyone interested in the career of Jubal Early.

Concord and the Civil War: From Walden Pond to the Gettysburg Front

Rick Frese

The History Press, 2014, 128 pgs.

ISBN: 978-1-62619-294-2

Image courtesy of Concord Bookshop

                When many think of the town of Concord, Massachusetts, our minds generally move directly towards the American Revolution where the Patriot forces faced off against the might of the British Army.  Or we think of authors such as Alcott and Hawthorne.  While both are great moments in the history of the country, the town of Concord contributed greatly to the American Civil War.  In his work on Concord and the Civil War, Rick Frese has compiled a history of the town and what their contributions were to the War Between the States.  What is truly amazing is the amount of information placed in this work and the people who served both on the battlefield and the home front.

                Rick Frese is a veteran of the United States Army and chaired the Concord 350th Anniversary Committee.  He is a professor of government and sociology at Bently University and has been a political commentator in both print and screen.  He also received the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence at Bently University and is semi-retired.

                While most work on towns in the Civil War give a detailed analysis on what the units from the town did in the war, Frese adds something a bit more to the mix.  While talking about the deeds of the units, he also talks about the home front and the people who lived there.  From Emerson to Hawthorne to Alcott and Thoreau, the authors of the Concord area had a great significance on the war effort, a point he makes clearly throughout the text.  He also states that the Concord people did not shirk from the war effort and when the threat of a draft reared its ugly head, the people responded that it would comply.  Throughout his narrative, Frese shows the contributions from home sent to the soldiers and the cost of the supplies they were given.  These details of what it was like at home brings about more of an appreciation for those who could not serve in the war.  One of the most powerful parts of the narrative was his chapter on the Melvin Brothers and the monument erected to them in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  These three brothers died in many different ways, be it from disease to battle wounds to imprisonment in Andersonville, the details of their lives and service are both honorable and haunting.  The entries of the journal from Andersonville prison are not for the squeamish readers.  Some of the writings are very disturbing from Samuel Melvin.  The fourth Melvin brother was the one who dedicated his life to erect the monument and to ensure that the memory of his brothers lived on.

                Rick Frese has given us something here which is unusual for the Civil War audience but works in a way that brings about a beautiful narrative.  He has not only brought the battlefield experiences of the Concord soldiers to life, but the home experience as well.  This narrative should be celebrated as a great contribution to Civil War research with hopes that Frese can give us another work about Concord and its impact on society.  Not many realize what one town can do for the country.  Here, in Concord and the Civil War, Frese shows us that one small town can make a difference in the larger pictures of American History.

The Petersburg Campaign Volume II: The Western Front Battles September 1864-April 1865

Edwin C. Bearss and Bryce A. Suderow

Savas Beatie, 582 pages, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61121-104-7

Image courtesy of tower.com

                Every once and a while, a work comes out about a campaign that redefines how we think about certain battles and how we study these events.  With the Petersburg Campaign Volume II, the chronicle of battles from the campaign comes to a finish and the excellence put forth in Volume I continues in Volume II. 

Edwin Bearss is one of the most respected Civil War historians of our age and got his start at the Vicksburg National Military Park.  From there, he has stretched himself all around the Civil War world as an authority on the campaigns and the people.  A Marine who has served in World War II, he was severely wounded in the Pacific.  From 1981 to 1994, he served as Chief Historian to the National Park Service and has authored many works and was pivotal to raising the USS Cairo.  Bryce Suderow is a Civil War writer and researcher and has published many articles and is considered one of the finest archivists in the country.  If it were not for Suderow, this work might never have come to light.

The battles studied in this volume show how the slow decline of the Confederate army not only destroyed their numbers but brought down morale as well.  Bearss mentions the importance of the campaign because the excessive number of engagements not only makes it one of the longest sieges in American history, but one of the most violent.  But one thing noticeable in the work, both in Volumes I and II, is the politicking going on in the Union army compared to that in the Confederate army.  There seemed to be more to step around in the Union army while the Confederate army held a high regard for each other.  Once again, as in Volume I, Bearss narrative is sometimes interrupted or introduced by Suderow which is a positive thing for the reader.  For those not aware of what was happening during the campaign, these editorials throughout the narrative aid in the understanding of the battle.  Bearss essays written for the use of the park service in Virginia, show us that even though they had been written years ago prove that there is something new to learn not only about the battles, but about the war as a whole.  Those readers familiar with the Gettysburg Campaign will notice many characters reappearing in higher rank showing their talents and how much they have grown since those three days in July.  In the essay about the Battle of Fort Stedman, one in particular, John Brown Gordon, shows that he is a capable commander in the field and is well trusted by his superiors.  Once again, Bearss gives more of a narrative of Gordon’s actions at Fort Stedman instead of giving you too much background information.  The importance is not his actions previous, but his actions at Petersburg.

As stated before, this collection should be on the bookshelf of every Civil War historian.  Much like his work on the Vicksburg Campaign, this two volume work is the definitive source on the Petersburg Campaign and a great introduction into the decline of the Confederate army in Virginia.  Bearss and Suderow have created something which will be talked about among Civil War historians for quite some time.