The Battle of Fredericksburg

The December 13, 1862, Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, marked the defeat of Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, an important setback for the Union cause and military effort to seize the Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia. The battle and military campaign preceding it, which occurred primarily along the Rappahannock River at the city of Fredericksburg and in adjacent Stafford and Spotsylvania counties, was the most lopsided victory the Army of Northern Virginia achieved during the American Civil War, with the Union Army sustaining combat casualties equivalent to more than double those suffered by Confederates. The campaign also saw the use of urban combat, military occupation, and the direct role of civilians at the center of the November and December military maneuvers around the city, which was positioned approximately equidistant between Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Principal battle locations included the Confederate position of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s corps on Marye’s Heights behind the city, the Union artillery position on Stafford Heights, the position of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Confederate corps at Prospect Hill south of the city of Fredericksburg, and the Rappahannock River itself, which was crossed only after Union engineers built a pontoon bridge under fire. The campaign is noted for Union Army shelling of the city itself as a military position, the failed, multiwave Union infantry assaults against fortified positions, and the destruction of property on December 12 as the town itself was sacked.

The Chattanooga and Knoxville Campaigns

Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee besieged Union forces in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George Thomas took control of the Union Army there and exploited the complex mountainous topography to create a “Cracker Line” to the west. With the siege effectively broken by late October, Bragg sent Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps to Knoxville to retake that railroad city, which had been occupied by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Ohio since early September. In late November the Union Army of the Cumberland and Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s recently arrived Army of the Tennessee broke out of Chattanooga while Burnside’s men defeated Longstreet’s attack on Knoxville’s Fort Sanders. The Union Army’s successful Chattanooga and Knoxville military campaigns opened Georgia to Union invasion, confirmed Grant’s suitability for leadership over all Union forces, and recalibrated the politics of loyalty in a bitterly divided section of the South.

The Union Occupation of Coastal North Carolina

In 1861 and 1862, Union forces invaded and occupied eastern North Carolina. This chapter explores the origins, execution, and consequences of this invasion, looking at its military, social, and political significance. It highlights the weakness of Confederate fortifications along the North Carolina coast and the Union military leadership of Cmdr. Silas Stringham, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, Brig. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, and Capt. Louis Goldsborough. As one of the first sites in the South occupied by the Union Army, coastal North Carolina created an early venue for wartime Reconstruction. The chapter emphasizes how African Americans responded to the Union invasion, escaping from slavery, forming refugee camps in Union enclaves, and working for the Union war effort. In 1862, Military Governor Edward Stanly tried to reinstitute slavery.

Vicksburg and Port Hudson

Two sieges of Confederate bastions on the Mississippi River resulted in the Union conquest of the Mississippi Valley in July 1863. The fall of Vicksburg deeply wounded Confederate Mississippi, fractured White support for the Southern cause, and cracked open slavery in the west central part of the state. Tens of thousands of Black refugees fled plantations for the Union Army, many joining newly created Black regiments that would occupy Union posts in the valley. The fall of Vicksburg eliminated the most powerful Confederate blockade to Northern commercial use of the Mississippi River and played a pivotal role in boosting Northern and depressing Southern war morale. Problems associated with Confederate repatriation of thirty thousand paroled soldiers contributed to the breakdown of the prisoner exchange system. The fall of Port Hudson, overshadowed by Vicksburg, nevertheless completed Union conquest of the valley and allowed Northern merchant vessels to steam to New Orleans once again. The emotional benefit of these twin victories was worth the physical effort in reducing both strongholds, emboldening the North and dispiriting the South.

Photographers of the Civil War Era: Frank H. Price of Elizabeth and Newark

This article is another about the generation of New Jersey photographers who began their career during the U.S. Civil War, initiated with the consideration of Theodore Gubelman in the Winter 2020 issue of New Jersey Studies. Please see that issue for a general introduction. This essay is a case study about Frank H. Price, who also served in the Union Army, and although, like Gubelman, Price had a successful business over a number of years, he had different personal and professional experiences that broaden our understanding of life in the Garden State in the second half of the nineteenth century. Experiencing many of the same events as his portrait subjects, Price is an exemplar of the ambitious young men who personified what Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized in 1844 as “the Young American,” who engaged in the marketplace of ideas and commerce in “a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.” Although Price did not live to old age, he made his mark among his contemporaries. His story includes typical and exceptional experiences, triumphs and tragedies. Note: You can find additional Frank Price photos here: https://web.ingage.io/Pfs9hng.

Words on Fire

In May, 1861, when Kelso stood in front of his hometown’s courthouse, voiced support for the Union, and denounced his secessionist neighbors as traitors, he had a lot to lose. He had remarried, graduated from college, opened his own school, and lived with his wife and three children on a beautiful little farm in Buffalo, Missouri. But conscience and a sense of virtuous manhood made him declare his unpopular political sentiments as Missouri fractured with the beginning of the Civil War. A week later he interrupted a secessionist rally and, risking getting shot down in front of a crowd of angry, armed men, gave a rousing speech to rally Unionists to the American flag. He became a major in the Home Guard militia, but then, after the disastrous Union loss at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, headed to the state capital to join the Union army.

Comrades and Campfires

During and after the Civil War, Union army soldiers and veterans attempted to make sense of their military camping experiences, which could exemplify generational camaraderie, political organization, and national belonging. This chapter follows the career of John Mead Gould, a soldier from Portland, Maine who kept an extensive diary and published a camping manual in 1877. It also discusses the role of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ organization that organized reunions in the form of annual encampments as part of a campaign to lobby the government for veterans’ pensions. Its form of camping put forward the veteran as a new exemplar of the ideal citizen for a modern commercial age. Veterans claimed a meaningful place in a world where the nation’s social and economic underpinnings were in flux and understandings of citizenship, manhood, work, and success were shifting under their feet.

Two Humanitarianisms in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

Witt begins by observing that although the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is often anthologized and has long been a staple of high school curricula and the subject of music videos, television, and film, it is not typically thought of as a study in the dilemmas of humanitarian law. But, Witt argues, it is just that. The story depicts an execution for violation of the laws of war. Its author was a Union Army veteran. Moreover, the text embodies a central tension in the laws of war, one that emerged in Bierce’s time and persists today. On the one hand stands a sentimental humanitarianism that aims to minimize the human suffering of war. On the other, a righteous humanitarianism chafes at the constraints that sentimental humanitarianism places on the pursuit of justice. Witt demonstrates that Bierce’s “Owl Creek” straddles the two planks of the modern laws of war, conveying the power of both views.

Leadership in Social Movements: Evidence from the “Forty-Eighters” in the Civil War

This paper studies the role of leaders in the social movement against slavery that culminated in the US Civil War. Our analysis is organized around a natural experiment: leaders of the failed German revolution of 1848–1849 were expelled to the United States and became antislavery campaigners who helped mobilize Union Army volunteers. Towns where Forty-Eighters settled show two-thirds higher Union Army enlistments. Their influence worked through local newspapers and social clubs. Going beyond enlistment decisions, Forty-Eighters reduced their companies’ desertion rate during the war. In the long run, Forty-Eighter towns were more likely to form a local chapter of the NAACP. (JEL D74, J15, J45, J61, N31, N41)