Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: June 12, 1862

Another false alarm. Whole brigade in arms. Scouted about some. Nothing unusual. Grazed my horse.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 18

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: June 13, 1862

Issued rations in the morning. Moved camp over the river west. Pitched our tent in a splendid grove in a secesh corn field. Found some mulberries.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 18

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: June 14, 1862

Wrote a letter home. Mail came bringing home letters and Independent. Issued rations to four companies, to go the next morning on expedition five days. Moved the Second Battalion again half a mile. After work had a gay time finding our tent. Wandered all through the woods.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 18

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: Sunday, June 15, 1862

A beautiful Sabbath morning. Would love to be at home or somewhere to enjoy peaceful rest. Read the Independent. Wrote to Emma McWade.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 18

In the Review Queue: The Tennessee Campaign of 1864

The Tennessee Campaign of 1864

Edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear

Contributors include Stewart Bennett, Andrew S. Bledsoe, John J. Gaines, John R. Lundberg, Jennifer M. Murray, Paul L. Schmelzer, Brooks D. Simpson, Timothy B. Smith, Scott L. Stabler, Jonathan M. Steplyk, D. L. Turner, and William Lee White.

Few American Civil War operations matched the controversy, intensity, and bloodshed of Confederate general John Bell Hood’s ill-fated 1864 campaign against Union forces in Tennessee. In the first-ever anthology on the subject, The Tennessee Campaign of 1864, edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, fourteen prominent historians and emerging scholars examine the three-month operation, covering the battles of Allatoona, Spring Hill, and Franklin, as well as the decimation of Hood’s army at Nashville.

Contributors explore the campaign’s battlefield action, including how Major General Andrew J. Smith’s three aggressive divisions of the Army of Tennessee became the most successful Federal unit at Nashville, how vastly outnumbered Union troops held the Allatoona Pass, why Hood failed at Spring Hill and how the event has been perceived, and why so many of the Army of Tennessee’s officer corps died at the Battle of Franklin, where the Confederacy suffered a disastrous blow. An exciting inclusion is the diary of Confederate major general Patrick R. Cleburne, which covers the first phase of the campaign. Essays on the strained relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and George H. Thomas and on Thomas’s approach to warfare reveal much about the personalities involved, and chapters about civilians in the campaign’s path and those miles away show how the war affected people not involved in the fighting. An innovative case study of the fighting at Franklin investigates the emotional and psychological impact of killing on the battlefield, and other implications of the campaign include how the courageous actions of the U.S. Colored Troops at Nashville made a lasting impact on the African American community and how preservation efforts met with differing results at Franklin and Nashville.

Canvassing both military and social history, this well-researched volume offers new, illuminating perspectives while furthering long-running debates on more familiar topics. These in-depth essays provide an expert appraisal of one of the most brutal and notorious campaigns in Civil War history.

ISBN 978-0809334520, Southern Illinois University Press, © 2016, Hardcover, 280 pages, Photographs, Maps, Notes at the end of each essay & Index. $34.50.  To purchase this book click HERE.

Diary of Judith Brockenbrough McGuire: Wednesday Night, April 12, 1865

We have heard nothing new to-day confirming the report of the surrender, which is perhaps the reason my spirit feels a little more light. We must hope, though our prospects should be as dark as the sky of this stormy night. Our wounded are doing well — those who remain in our hospital and the convalescents have been ordered to “Camp Jackson.” Indeed, all the patients were included in the same order; but Miss T. having represented that several of them were not in a condition to be removed, they have been allowed to remain where they are.

Colonel R. is improving, for which we are most thankful.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 353

Diary of Sarah Morgan: Sunday, November 22, 1863

A report has just reached us that my poor dear Gibbes has been taken prisoner along with the rest of Hayes's brigade.

SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary, p. 422

Diary of Sarah Morgan: November 26, 1863

Yes! It is so, if his own handwriting is any proof. Mr. Appleton has just sent Brother a letter he had received from Gibbes, asking him to let Brother know he was a prisoner, and we have heard, through some one else, that he had been sent to Sandusky. Brother has applied to have him paroled and sent here, or even imprisoned here, if he cannot be paroled.

SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary, p. 422

In The Review Queue: A Self-Made Man

A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 – 1849

By Sidney Blumenthal

The first of a multi-volume history of Lincoln as a political genius—from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction. This first volume traces Lincoln from his painful youth, describing himself as “a slave,” to his emergence as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln.

From his youth as a “newsboy,” a voracious newspaper reader, Lincoln became a free thinker, reading Tom Paine, as well as Shakespeare and the Bible, and studying Euclid to sharpen his arguments as a lawyer.

Lincoln’s anti-slavery thinking began in his childhood amidst the Primitive Baptist antislavery dissidents in backwoods Kentucky and Indiana, the roots of his repudiation of Southern Christian pro-slavery theology. Intensely ambitious, he held political aspirations from his earliest years. Obsessed with Stephen Douglas, his political rival, he battled him for decades. Successful as a circuit lawyer, Lincoln built his team of loyalists. Blumenthal reveals how Douglas and Jefferson Davis acting together made possible Lincoln’s rise.

Blumenthal describes a socially awkward suitor who had a nervous breakdown over his inability to deal with the opposite sex. His marriage to the upper class Mary Todd was crucial to his social aspirations and his political career. Blumenthal portrays Mary as an asset to her husband, a rare woman of her day with strong political opinions.

Blumenthal’s robust portrayal is based on prodigious research of Lincoln’s record and of the period and its main players. It reflects both Lincoln’s time and the struggle that consumes our own political debate.

ISBN 978-1476777252, Simon & Schuster, © 2016, Hardcover, 576 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $35.00.  To purchase this book click HERE.

Diary of Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle: Sunday, April 26, 1863

At 11.30 A.M., M'Carthy drove me in his buggy to see the San Pedro spring, which is inferior in beauty to the San Antonio spring. A troop of Texan cavalry was bivouacked there.

We afterwards drove to the “missions” of San José and San Juan, six and nine miles from the town. These were fortified convents for the conversion of the Indians, and were built by the Jesuits about one hundred and seventy years ago. They are now ruins, and the architecture is of the heavy Castilian style, elaborately ornamented. These missions are very interesting, and there are two more of them, which I did not see.

In the afternoon I saw many negroes and negresses parading about in their Sunday clothes — silks and crinolines — much smarter than their mistresses.

At 5 P.M. I dined with Colonel Bankhead, who gave an entertainment, which in these hard times must have cost a mint of money. About fourteen of the principal officers were invited; one of them was Captain Mason (cousin to the London commissioner), who had served under Stonewall Jackson in Virginia. He said that officer was by no means popular at first. I spent a very agreeable evening, and heard many anecdotes of the war. One of the officers sang the Abolition song, “John Brown,” together with its parody, “I'm bound to be a soldier in the army of the South,” a Confederate marching – song, and another parody, which is a Yankee marching-song, “We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.”

Whenever I have dined with Confederate officers they have nearly always proposed the Queen's health, and never failed to pass the highest eulogiums upon Her Majesty.

SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 52-3

Diary of Judith Brockenbrough McGuire: Tuesday Night, April 11, 1865

No light on our sorrow — still gloomy, dark, and uncertain.

I went to-day to the hospital, as was my duty. My dear friend S. T. cheers me, by being utterly incredulous about the reported surrender. As usual, she is cheerfully devoting her powers of mind and body to her hospital. For four years she has never thought of her own comfort, when by sacrificing it she could alleviate a soldier's sorrow. Miss E. D., who has shared with her every duty, every self-sacrificing effort in behalf of our sick and wounded soldiers, is now enduring the keenest pangs of sorrow from the untimely death of her venerable father. On the day of the evacuation, while walking too near a burning house, he was struck by a piece of falling timber, and the blow soon closed his long life. Alas! the devoted daughter, who had done so much for other wounded, could do nothing for the restoration of one so dear to her.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 352-3

Diary of Sarah Morgan: Monday, November 9, 1863

Another odd link of the old, stale story has come to me, all the way from New York. A friend of mine, who went on the same boat with the prisoners, wrote to her mother to tell her that she had formed the acquaintance of the most charming, fascinating gentleman among them, no other than my once friend. Of course, she would have been less than a woman if she had not gossiped when she discovered who he was. So she sends me word that he told her he had been made to believe, as long as he was on parole in New Orleans, that we were all Unionists now, and that Brother would not allow a Confederate to enter the house. (O my little lisper, was I unjust to you?) He told her that I had been very kind to him when he was in prison, and he would have forgotten the rest and gladly have called to thank me in person for the kindness he so gratefully remembered, if I alone had been concerned; but he felt he could not force himself unasked into my

brother's house. . . .

She told him how false it was.

SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary, p. 421-2

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 27, 1862

Huzza for Gen. Stuart! He has made another circumvention of the enemy, getting completely in Pope's rear, and destroying many millions worth of stores, etc.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 150

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 28, 1862

Pope's coat was captured, and all his papers. The braggart is near his end.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 150

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 29, 1862

Bloody fighting is going on at Manassas. All the news is good for us. It appears that Pope, in his consummate egotism, refused to believe that he had been outwitted, and “pitched into” our corps and divisions, believing them to be merely brigades and regiments. He has been terribly cut up.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 150-1

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 30, 1862

Banks, by the order of Pope, has burnt 400 Yankee cars loaded with quartermaster's and commissary stores. But our soldiers have fared sumptuously on the enemy's provisions, and captured clothing enough for half the army.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 151

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 31, 1862

Fighting every day at Manassas.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 151

Diary of Colonel William F. Bartlett: Saturday, March 14, 1863

Got the order at midnight to start at three A. M. It made a wild picture in the dark morning, the camp fires blazing high, surrounded by dark forms. A little piece of the old moon just rising in the east. We bade good-by to the camp, marched through the town, and about daylight struck the Bayou Sara road towards Port Hudson. We knew then for the first time in which direction we were going.

It was very pleasant marching in the cool of the morning through the heavy woods. The road was perfectly straight, and we could see it narrowing until the trees on each side seemed to meet, miles ahead. About nine A. M. we reached the river, Bayou Montesino. Two bridges crossed it, a pontoon and a plank. At this time, General Banks passed through the lines to the front. All was silence. I could not help thinking of the time, nearly a year ago, when we were marching in the same way, on a road very similar, towards Yorktown, when McClellan passed along through the army, and for miles and miles the cheers were deafening. We halted at the bridge some time for the wagons to get over. At noon we halted near a farm-house, fourteen miles from Port Hudson. The men made sad work with the poultry and stock. This army will be demoralized, if this pillaging is allowed to go on. My regiment think it hard that I won't let them go in and plunder when every body else is doing it. These marauders not only steal poultry and other live meat, but in some cases even go into the houses, and take the food off the table, steal jewelry, and other valuables. I believe in “living on the enemy's country,” but the beef and other food should be taken by the proper officers and issued to the troops as it is required, not slaughtered recklessly and left untouched to waste. Besides, it is the moral effect on troops, if they are allowed to steal and kill, each one for himself. They soon become lawless and ungovernable, — an armed mob.

My regiment shall not pillage in this way, if every other regiment in this army does.

These people will be likely to favor the advance of a federal army, if their houses are to be ransacked, furniture broken, etc., by a mob of soldiers, every time a brigade passes their door. Banks must publish some severe order to stop this thing, or I wouldn't give much for his army in a month's time.

(Since writing the above a week ago, an order has been issued to remedy this evil. It is not severe enough yet.)

We marched a few miles farther and went into bivouac, in a large open field, and pitched the shelter tents.

I had been in the saddle since three in the morning, twelve hours, but it made me laugh to myself, at hearing other mounted officers complain of “being all tired out,” etc. I found a good place for the horses in a barn near by, and then lay down on the grass and fell asleep, waiting for the wagon with my tent and food to come up. Got the tent pitched about sundown. Some hay made a luxurious bed, into which I crawled as soon as I had attended to everything, which was near nine P. M. Grover's advance is within four or five miles of the enemy's works; Emory's between us and Grover. I went to sleep the moment I touched the ground. Was awakened at eleven by heavy cannonading at the front, towards the river. It was the gunboats. We slept after this with one eye open, hearing the terrific roar of artillery.

SOURCE: Francis Winthrop Palfrey, Memoir of William Francis Bartlett, p. 73-5

Diary of 2nd Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott: Saturday, February 20, 1864

A very pleasant day but not warm. The men have been playing ball this afternoon; very dull otherwise; paymaster has come; have been very busy having men sign pay rolls. There is a detail for picket tomorrow, but I am not going.

SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 20

Diary of 2nd Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott: Sunday, February 21, 1864

Cloudy, but no wind, threatening rain before night; regiment left for picket at 9 a. m.; very quiet in camp; religious services were held in the chapel at 4 p. m. by Rev. Mr. Parker of Waterbury, Vt. and a prayer service this evening, but I have not attended either. All's quiet.

SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 20-1