"The Battle of South Mountain" Now Available

It was in early March of last year when I signed a contract with the History Press to write a short, narrative history of the often overlooked Battle of South Mountain for publication as part of its Civil War Sesquicentennial Series.

Eleven months later, I am very pleased to say that that book is now available.

It has been a great, great pleasure working with the History Press, from my first telephone call with Doug Bostick, managing editor of the Sesquicentennial Series, through all the frequent interractions with Adam Ferrell, Jaime Muehl, and everyone else. They have all been extremely helpful and professional, and all have shown a willingness to work with me in bringing this book to print. I do hope I am able to work the History Press again someday.

The book was originally scheduled for release on March 8; then it got bumped up to February 11. Imagine my surprise, then, when this past Friday, February 4, when I was stepping out for a clear-your-head kind of trip down to Gettysburg when I saw the boxes piled up outside my back door.

I could not be more pleased with the finished product. The book looks great and my only hope is that I have met the expectations placed in me to write this history. The Battle of South Mountain is a tough one to explain and I am sure that despite my best efforts and despite the dozens of times I read through the manuscript, that there will inevitably be some mistakes/errors. But now that the book is done I can only hope that I have succeeded in my goal of helping to bring to light the history of this often forgotten battle, waged on September 14, 1862, just three days before Antietam, and further our understanding of the Maryland Campaign.

To everyone who helped me along the way. . .from Eric Wittenberg, who first put me in touch with Doug Bostick, and Mannie Gentile, who once again did an excellent job developing the maps for this book. . . .from my Park Service colleagues Brian Baracz and Christopher Gwinn who read the entire manuscript and offered very helpful suggestions and pointed out my errors, to Dr. Thomas Clemens, Scott Hartwig, and Ted Alexander who were each of great assistance, as were Isaac Forman, Dave Maher, Dan Vermilya, and James Rosebrock. . .to all of you, and to so many others, I say thanks. Your support, your assistance was all very much appreciated.

The Battle of South Mountain can be purchased either through its publisher at http://www.historypress.net/ or through any of the major online book retailers. It will also soon be available at various bookstores in the area. I also have some book signing events lined up for ther year ahead, if you wanted to come on out and say hello.

The book runs 224 pages, with over 50 illustrations and eight maps. It retails for $21.99.

I would love to know your thoughts on the book; if you enjoyed it, post a review on amazon; if you didn't. . .well, you can always send me your thoughts via email ;)

South Mountain Book Set For March Release

I am very pleased to say that my history of the long-overlooked September 14, 1862, Battle of South Mountain is tentatively set for release on March 8.

What I sought to accomplish with this work was to provide a good narrative accounting of this important battle, examining the events that led up to it, focusing extensively on the fighting at the three main gaps (Crampton's, Fox's, and Turner's/Frosttown), and analyzing its consequences and significance to the overall Maryland Campaign.

The book will form part of the History Press' Civil War Sesquicentennial Series. I was first put in touch with the series editor, Doug Bostick, through my friend Eric Wittenberg, to whom I would like to extend my thanks. Last year, Eric's excellent book on the Battle of Brandy Station was published as part of the same series. It was an honor to be asked to write this book, and I can only hope my work meets the faith they both put in me for this project. It has been a great pleasure to work with Doug and with everyone at the History Press, who at every step were very encouraging and diligent. It was a great experience working with this company, and I do hope I may get to work with them again one day.

So, mark your calendars for March 8 (or thereabouts). The book will be heading off to the printer today. . .January 14.

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December 20, 1860 & The Reasons For South Carolina's Secession

South Carolina Ordinance of Secession

Passed December 20, 1860

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This date marks an important one in commemorating and reflecting upon the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. 150 years ago today, South Carolina declared it was no longer a part of the United States, a declaration made just six weeks after the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln as the nation's Sixteenth President. Sitting President James Buchanan believed secession was illegal and unconstitutional, but also believed that same Constitution prohibited him from taking any action to bring the state back under the fold of the Union. Six more states followed South Carolina's lead even before Lincoln took the Oath of Office, on March 4, 1861. No president had thus inherited a more difficult task.

The secession of South Carolina was the culmination of decades' long sectional strife and tension, at the root of which was slavery. I have no patience for those who deny slavery as the principal cause of secession, since one need only examine all the national debates and tensions in the years leading up to South Carolina's departure from the Union. From the debate in the Philadelphia's Carpenter's Hall in the Summer of 1787 over the three-fifth clause, to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War & Wilmot Proviso, the admission of California into statehood in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, the Ostend Manifesto, Dred Scott, John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry, and finally the presidential election of 1860, it is clear the nation faced serious challenges in its first eighty years. And those challenges and all the national crises listed above had one thing in common. . .at the root of them all was the issue of slavery and its expansion. Neither do I have patience for those who claim slavery was a dying instituion; quite the contrary: in the 1840, there was just over two million enslaved persons in the United States; twenty years later, there was four million.

Considering all that transpired before the secession of South Carolina and claiming it had nothing to do with slavery is just plain wrong and essentially ignores the first eighty years of America's history.

Now, this is not to be confused over why a particular soldier--whether North or South--fought. Motivations behind an individual's enlistment should not be lumped into a discussion of why a state decided to leave the United States.

While the secession of South Carolina was the culmination of decades' long tensions over the issue of slavery and its expansion into new lands and territories, it was also the spark that lit the powder keg of the Civil War, a devastating war and one of the most tragic episodes in American history. For this reason, today we should by no means celebrate the secession of South Carolina. We should simply reflect upon what it meant to a nation and its peoples.

As the old saying goes, don't take my word for it. . .Four days after South Carolina adopted its Ordinance of Secession, it then explained why in its Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, which read in part:

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. [Slavery] The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions [Slavery]; and have denied the rights of property [Slaves] established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property [Slaves] of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party [Lincoln's Republican Party] has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

December 24, 1860

The bold-print and thoughts in brackets in the above are mine, but it cannot be stated any more clearly. The leaders of the South Carolina secession movement made it known the reasons for secession and it had everything to do with slavery.

And for this reason as well, this is not a day to celebrate.

Update On The South Mountain Book. . .

I am pleased to report that on December 3, I submitted the completed first-draft manuscript of my South Mountain book to the History Press for publication as part of its Civil War Sesquicentennial Series. Yesterday it went through the copyedit and received its ISBN. If things continue to roll along, then look for it to "hit the shelves" sometime in the spring of 2011.

Mexican War Volunteers--Civil War Generals

The Battle of Buena Vista (Library of Congress)

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 have long been fascinated with this somewhat overlooked war and several years back, I began compiling a list of all those Mexican American War volunteers who went on to become generals in the American Civil War, fourteen or so years later. These men were not the West Point-trained U.S. Regulars (such as Lee, McClellan, Bragg, and so on); rather, the following are those who fought as volunteers in Mexico and then later earned their stars in the nation's fratricidal conflict.

Preceding the list of these officers, are some introductory words. I once thought of turning this into an article but that never went anywhere. . .

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U.S. Forces Under Winfield Scott Land at Vera Cruz

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The Mexican-American War has often been referred to as a training ground for a host of young army officers who would go on to rank among the Civil War’s highest-ranking commanders. From the battles of Monterrey and Palo Alto to the capture of Mexico City, these young men received first-hand experience in the school of soldiering and learned key lessons in the art of war by the likes of Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Tales of daring exploits and of remarkable bravery exhibited by these young officers who would later gain much fame during America’s fratricidal conflict are legion and known well to most serious students of the Civil War. Familiar is the story of twenty-four-year-old Captain Ulysses S. Grant who, although serving as the regimental quartermaster of the 4th U.S. Infantry, repeatedly rode to the front, seeing action at Resaca de la Palma, Palo Alto, and Monterrey, where he put his renowned horsemanship to good use by riding unscathed through a hail of bullets. Famous, too, is the story of Captain Robert E. Lee who, along with fellow engineer Lt. Pierre G.T. Beauregard, conducted a bold reconnaissance of Santa Anna’s left flank at Cerro Gordo and narrowly avoided detection and probable capture. We hear also of twenty-year-old Lieutenant George Brinton McClellan, another of Winfield Scott’s engineers, who had two horses shot from beneath him while scouting Mexican positions near Contreras and who was twice brevetted for gallantry. At the battle of La Hoya, we discover a young artillerist by the name of Thomas Jonathan Jackson who deployed his guns with great effect and stood steadfast, like a stonewall, amid a storm of shot and shell. Lieutenant Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana was severely wounded and left for dead on the heights of Cerro Gordo, while, not too far from where he fell, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Eggleston Johnston of the Voltigeurs, was also dangerously wounded. It was also at this same battle where Major Edwin Vose Sumner of the 2nd Dragoons was struck squarely in the forehead by a bullet, which, allegedly, simply bounced off earning him the sobriquet, “Old Bullhead.” While these officers survived their Cerro Gordo wounds, Lieutenant Thomas Ewell did not. He died hours after the fight with his brother Richard by his side. And finally, there is the oft-told tale of Lieutenant James Longstreet of the 8th U.S. Infantry who fell with a thigh wound while carrying the American flag in an attack against the walls of Chapultepac. Grabbing the flag from the wounded Longstreet, of course, was another young lieutenant who had graduated last in his West Point Class the previous year, George Edward Pickett. These and other such stories are seemingly endless and can truly fill volumes.

In addition to going on to earning great laurels or garnering much notoriety in the American Civil War, all of these men had another thing in common: they were all graduates of the United States Military Academy and were, thus, all regular army officers. Yet, of the nearly 100,000 men who served in Mexico, only about twenty-five to thirty percent—some 25,000-30,000 soldiers—were Regulars. The rest were volunteers.

Volunteer units hailed from twenty-four of the nation’s twenty-eight states as well as from the District of Columbia; Iowa and California, which at the outbreak of hostilities had yet to achieve statehood, also furnished troops. In all, between 70,000 and 75,000 volunteers, comprising the ranks of 76 regiments and several additional companies, enlisted during the war. Thousands of these men would later serve in both the blue and the gray during the Civil War. And because of their former military experiences in Mexico, most would enter America’s sectional conflict as commissioned officers primarily at the regimental level, being mustered in as lieutenants, majors, or colonels, and subsequently rising through the ranks. Take, for example, C. Roberdeau Wheat. Before organizing the famed Louisiana Tigers in 1861 and falling dead while leading his regiment at the battle of Gaines’s Mill in June 1862, the 6’4” Wheat served as captain of the Tennessee Company of Mounted Volunteers in Mexico. His is just one of countless examples of volunteer officers who served in both the Mexican and Civil Wars.

Of the thousands of Mexican-American War volunteers who would later serve in the Civil War, more than sixty would become general officers during the latter conflict. This number does not include West Point graduates who served in volunteer organizations in Mexico and as generals in the Civil War, men such as Jubal Early, Henry Naglee, Samuel R. Curtis, Lloyd Tilghman, Goode Bryan, and Humphrey Marshall. Instead, the Mexican War volunteers who later became Civil War generals, for the most part, lacked a formal military education, but exhibited an avid interest in martial endeavors and were typically members of a local militia company. And they were those who willingly left their civilian lives behind twice to serve in uniform.

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Mexican-American War Volunteers--Civil War Generals

[Note: Those names in blue became generals for the United States Army during the Civil War; those in red, for the Confederacy]

Arkansas

John Selden Roane, Colonel, Mounted Arkansas Volunteers

Albert Pike, Captain, Mounted Arkansas Volunteers

James Fleming Fagan, Arkansas Mounted Gunmen

Georgia

Alfred Iverson, 2nd Lieutenant, Battalion of Georgia Volunteers

George Thomas Anderson, 2nd Lieutenant, Independent Co. of Georgia Volunteers

Edward Lloyd Thomas, 2nd Lieutenant, Independent Co. of Georgia Volunteers

Alfred Iverson

Indiana

Robert H. Milroy, Captain, 1st Indiana Volunteers

Lewis Wallace, 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Indiana Volunteers

Nathan Kimball, Captain, 2nd Indiana Volunteers

Lovell Rousseau, Captain, 2nd Indiana Volunteers

James Lane, Colonel, 3rd Indiana Volunteers

Willis A. Gorman, Colonel, 4th Indiana Volunteers

Ebenezer Dumont, Lieutenant Colonel, 4th Indiana Volunteers

Thomas J. Lucas, 2nd Lieutenant, 4th Indiana Volunteers

Mahlon Manson, Captain, 5th Indiana Volunteers

Nathan Kimball

Kentucky

Thomas Leonidas Crittenden, Lieutenant Colonel, 3rd Kentucky Volunteers

Walter C. Whitaker, Lieutenant, 3rd Kentucky Volunteers

John Cabell Breckinridge, Major, 3rd Kentucky Volunteers

John Stuart Williams, Colonel, 4th Kentucky Volunteers

William Preston, Lieutenant Colonel, 4th Kentucky Volunteers

William Thomas Ward, Major, 4th Kentucky Volunteers

James Shackleford, 1st Lieutenant, 4th Kentucky Volunteers

Edward Hobson, 1st Lieutentnat, 4th Kentucky Volunteers

Cassius M. Clay

Green Clay Smith

Speen Smith Fry

Roger Weightman Hanson, 1st Lieutenant, Independent Kentucky Volunteers

Thomas James Churchill, 1st Kentucky Mounted Riflemen

William Thomas Ward

Illinois

John "Black Jack" Logan, 2nd Lt. Illinois Volunteers

James D. Morgan

Michael Lawler

Richard Oglesby

Leonard Fulton Ross

Isham M. Haynie

Edward Baker, Colonel, 4th Illinois Volunteers

William H.C. Wallace, Private, 1st Illinois Volunteers

Benjamin Prentiss, Captain/Adjutant, 1st Illinois Volunteers

John Logan

Maryland/D.C.

John Kenley, Major, Maryland/D.C. Volunteers

Joseph R. West

Michigan

Alpheus Starkey Williams, Lieutenant Colonel, Michigan Volunteers

Mississippi

Carnot Posey, 1st Lieutenant, 1st Mississippi Rifles

Thomas C. Hindman, 2nd Mississippi Infantry

Carnot Posey

Missouri

Sterling Price, Colonel, 2nd Missouri Infantry

William Yarnell Slack, Captain, 2nd Missouri Infantry

Mosby Monroe Parsons, Captain, 1st Missouri Regiment of Mounted Volunteers

John Dunlap Stevenson, Captain, 1st Missouri Regiment of Mounted Volunteers

James Craig

Thomas T. Crittenden

William Yarnell Slack

Ohio

Samuel Beatty, 1st Lieutenant, 3rd Ohio Volunteers

George F. McGinnis, Captain, 5th Ohio Volunteers

Robert B. Mitchell, 1st Lieutenant, 5th Ohio Volunteers

William H. Lytle, Captain, Independent Company, Ohio Volunteers

William H. Lytle

Pennsylvania

James Scott Negley, 1st Sergeant, 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers

Thomas Algeo Rowley, 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers

James Nagle, Captain, 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers

Thomas Welsh, Private, native of Pennsylvania, served with 2nd Kentucky Volunteers

John White Geary, Colonel, 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers

John White Geary

James Negley

South Carolina

Samuel McGowan, Quartermaster, Palmetto Regiment

Tennessee

William Brimmage Bate, 1st Lieutenant, 3rd Tennessee Volunteers

Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, Colonel, 3rd Tennessee Volunteers

William B. Campbell, Colonel, 3rd Tennessee Volunteers

Samuel Read Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, 3rd Tennessse Volunteers

William Brimmage Bate

Texas
Benjamin McCullough, Colonel, Mounted Company, Independent Texas Volunteers
Thomas Green, Captain, 1st Texas Mounted Rifles

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It is evident, then, that the Mexican-American War was training ground not just for the West Pont-trained, career army men who would later reach highest echelon of command in the Civil War. It was also a training ground for the thousands of citizens-turned-soldiers who twice volunteered their services, first in 1846-47 and again in 1861, either as commissioned officers at the regimental level or as general officers.

Soldiers of the 48th: Major Jacob Wagner, 48th Pennsylvania

It has been quite some time since I last posted a Profiles piece on a 48th Pennsylvania soldier, so today I thought I'd focus in on Jacob Wagner, who served creditably throughout the entirety of the war, rising through the regimental ranks.

Jacob F. Wagner was twenty-one years of age when, in September 1861, he was mustered into service as a private in Company H, 48th Pennsylvania. He stood 5'6 1/2" in height, had a dark complexion, dark eyes, and black hair. His occupation was listed as painter and his residence was Pottsville, home to most of the men in Company H. Only two and a half weeks later, however, Wagner was named as the regiment's Quartermaster Sergeant, a position he held until December 1862, when he was promoted once more, this time to lieutenant and given then position of full Quartermaster.

The regimental history of the 48th penned by Oliver Bosbyshell refers many times to Wagner and his great efforts in keeping the soldiers well fed and comforted. One such example was on the night of September 17, 1862, when near the Burnside Bridge, the famished soldiers of the 48th were greatly relieved to see Wagner "with a fine lot of boiled beef and fresh coffee, which he had prepared by the cooks. . . .What a relish that midnight repast had!" Other references to Wagner in Bosbyshell's work hint that the quartermaster was much respected by the soldiers and throughout the war always performed his important duties with credit.

Jacob Wagner served as the 48th's Quartermaster throughout most of the conflict, but on June 21, 1865, was promoted one final time, to major. He held this rank for less than one month, being mustered out of volunteer service with the regiment on July 17, 1865 and holding the distinguished title of "Veteran." Yet Wagner's time in uniform was not finished. Apparently taking a liking to military life, Wagner returned not to Pottsville and his pre-war vocation as painter, but instead entered the U.S. Army as a First Lieutenant in the 29th Infantry. In July 1867, he was serving at Norfolk where he held the triple duties of Post Adjutant, Acting Assistant Quartermaster, and Assistant Comissary of Subsistence.