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At the Battle of Stones River, General David Stanley's Union cavalry repeatedly fought General Joseph Wheeler's Confederate cavalry. The campaign saw some of the most desperately fought mounted engagements in the Civil War's Western Theater and marked the end of the Southern cavalry's dominance in Tennessee. This history describes the events leading up to the battle and the key actions, including the December 31 attack by Wheeler's cavalry, the Union counterattack, the repulse of General John Wharton by the 1st Michigan Engineers and Wheeler's daring raid on the rear of Williams Rosecrans' army. The author reassesses the actions of General John Pegram's cavalry brigade.
Finalist for the Lincoln Prize! Traditional histories of the Civil War describe the conflict as a war between North and South. Kenneth W. Noe suggests it should instead be understood as a war between the North, the South, and the weather. In The Howling Storm, Noe retells the history of the conflagration with a focus on the ways in which weather and climate shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns. He further contends that events such as floods and droughts affecting the Confederate home front constricted soldiers’ food supply, lowered morale, and undercut the government’s efforts to boost nationalist sentiment. By contrast, the superior equipment and open supply lines enjoyed by Union soldiers enabled them to cope successfully with the South’s extreme conditions and, ultimately, secure victory in 1865. Climate conditions during the war proved unusual, as irregular phenomena such as El Niño, La Niña, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean disrupted weather patterns across southern states. Taking into account these meteorological events, Noe rethinks conventional explanations of battlefield victories and losses, compelling historians to reconsider long-held conclusions about the war. Unlike past studies that fault inflation, taxation, and logistical problems for the Confederate defeat, his work considers how soldiers and civilians dealt with floods and droughts that beset areas of the South in 1862, 1863, and 1864. In doing so, he addresses the foundational causes that forced Richmond to make difficult and sometimes disastrous decisions when prioritizing the feeding of the home front or the front lines. The Howling Storm stands as the first comprehensive examination of weather and climate during the Civil War. Its approach, coverage, and conclusions are certain to reshape the field of Civil War studies.
The American Civil War saw the creation of the largest, most potent artillery force ever deployed in a conflict fought in the Western Hemisphere. It was as sizable and powerful as any raised in prior European wars. Moreover, Union and Confederate artillery included the largest number of rifled pieces fielded in any conflagration in the world up to that point. Earl J. Hess’s Civil War Field Artillery is the first comprehensive general history of the artillery arm that supported infantry and cavalry in the conflict. Based on deep and expansive research, it serves as an exhaustive examination with abundant new interpretations that reenvision the Civil War’s military. Hess explores the major factors that affected artillerists and their work, including the hardware, the organization of artillery power, relationships between artillery officers and other commanders, and the influence of environmental factors on battlefield effectiveness. He also examines the lives of artillerymen, the use of artillery horses, manpower replacement practices, effects of the widespread construction of field fortifications on artillery performance, and the problems of resupplying batteries in the field. In one of his numerous reevalutions, Hess suggests that the early war practice of dispersing guns and assigning them to infantry brigades or divisions did not inhibit the massing of artillery power on the battlefield, and that the concentration system employed during the latter half of the conflict failed to produce a greater concentration of guns. In another break with previous scholarship, he shows that the efficacy of fuzes to explode long-range ordnance proved a problem that neither side was able to resolve during the war. Indeed, cumulative data on the types of projectiles fired in battle show that commanders lessened their use of the new long-range exploding ordnance due to bad fuzes and instead increased their use of solid shot, the oldest artillery projectile in history.
A mere handful of battlefields have come to epitomize the anguish and pain of America's Civil War: Gettysburg, Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga. Yet another name belongs on that infamous list: Stones River, the setting for Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die. It was here that both the Union and Confederate armies lost over one-quarter of their forces in battle casualties. The Confederacy's defeat at Stones River unleashed a wave of dissension that crippled the army's high command and ultimately closed Tennessee to the South for two years. The loss deterred the British and French from coming to the aid of the South in the Civil War, with tragic effects for the Southern cause. In the 126 years since the guns fell silent at Stones River, few books have examined the bloody clash and its impact on the war's subsequent outcome. No Better Place to Die recounts the events and strategies that brought the two armies to the banks of this central Tennessee river on December 31, 1862. Cozzens re-creates the battle itself, following the movements and performance of individual regiments. A series of maps clarifies the combat activity. Cozzens frequently lets the men who fought the battle speak for themselves, through letters, diaries, memoirs, and battlefield communications. Here we learn about such critical moments as General Philip Sheridan's gallant defense along the Wilkinson Pike, one of the war's most tenacious stands against overwhelming odds, and the bravery in battle exemplified by Brekenridge's attack on the Union left, a doomed assault with the poignancy of Pickett's charge. Over twenty thousand Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured in the bloody New Year's battle of Stone's River. The impact of their struggle extended far beyond the thousands of shattered human lives, ultimately imperiling the fortunes of the Confederacy. No Better Place to Die pays tribute to the heroes, the scoundrels, the mistakes, the bravery, and the grief at Stone's River.
In the first comprehensive treatment of the subject, Stephen Z. Starr covers in three volumes the dramatic story of the Union cavalry. In this first volume he presents briefly the story of the United States cavalry prior to the Civil War, describing how the Union cavalry was raised, organized, equipped, and trained, and offering detailed descriptions of the campaigns and battles in which the cavalry engaged -- the Peninsula, Shenandoah Valley/Second Bull Run, Lee's invasion of Maryland, Kelly's Ford, Stoneman's May 1863 Raid, Brandy Station (Fleetwood), Aldie-Middleburg-Upperville, and Gettysburg. Starr focuses on the officers and men of the Union cavalry -- who they were; how they lived, fought, behaved; what they thought. Starr tells their story -- drawn from regimental records and histories, memoirs, letters, diaries, and reminiscences -- whenever possible in the words of the troopers themselves.