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and we hold further, that the claimed, and in none of them has ing, until it has now secured to mode of its formation subjects it the State Government complied its aid the power of the com-
namely: the law of compact. We Constitution. The State of New the forms of the Constitution, a
between two or more parties, the law in conformity with her con- in that Article establishing the 520 Folly Road, Suite 25 PMB 379 Charleston, SC 29412 obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parstitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has Executive Department, the means
ties to perform a material part of led her more recently to enact self. A geographical line has been
analysis of the latest and most scholarship. Contact email: Book
The 6th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. By Eric R. Faust. Illustrated, note appendices, index, bibliography, 2020, McFarland and Company,
The 6th Michigan Volunteer Infantry enrolled 2,000 volunteers over their four years of h service. Earlier biographies, e. Benjamin C. Johnson’s “Sketches of the 6th Michigan Infantry,” and Edward S, Bacon’s “Among the Cotton Thieves,” proved either too complimentary or overly accusatory. Eric Faust, however, does an excellent job of present ing a balanced, fair, and object account of both the heroic servi and numerous depredations characteristic of the 6th Michigan. The vast majority of voluntee in the 6th Michigan enlisted to save the Union. Extreme views on the slavery question were rar Patriotism to the old Union was their calling card. Their first, most beloved, commander, Col. Frederick Cortenius, did not hes itate to point out that “one cou place no reliance on soldiers once they were removed” from the moral restraints of home and
family. Thus, as they endured months of monotonous drilling in the swamps of Louisiana, they frequently pillaged, engaged in
drunken and lewd behavior, and reveled in disobeying their offi cers. Yet, when their time came to “see the elephant,” they foug like the devil at the Battle of Baton Rouge, where they suffered 19 killed and 40 wounded, and the futile attacks at Po Hudson where they sustained another 17 killed and 101 wounded. They also endured malaria, dysentery, and squalid camps that bred disease causing more deaths and disability. In addition to their two major battles, the 6th Michigan fought numerous guerrilla encounters and enjoyed success in the Ponchatoula Raid. By the time they mustered out in August 1865, 528 of their members had died and 327 were discharged for disability. Physical and psychological wounds lasted for decade after the war. Nostalgically, at unions lasting until 1922, they celebrated their loyalty and cou age glossing over more sordid depredations of pillaging, profi teering, and near mutiny. This book is well written, hi torically accurate, and treats t good and bad in a balanced fashion. The addition, as an appendi of a complete roster is an inval able reference for any scholar wishing to further examine the contributions of this unit. Thus it is easy to highly recommend this book for anyone interested Michigan units during the Civil War.
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and Past President of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He has authored numerous books and articles highlighting the common soldier in t Civil War.
CWN A Provocative reframing of the American Civil War
The Second American Revolution: The Civil WarEra Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic. By Gregory P. Downs. Notes, Bibliography, and Index,
The Civil War was more than a fight between two regions of the United States; it was greater th a domestic struggle, or a fight preserve the nation. The differences were not only national but international as well. It spille into many other nations and confronted how the world was going to change. Would countries be free-labor republics and governed by a constitution without slavery or would empires continue to dominate many countries and regions. In the end, Americans called four-year nineteenth century con flict such names as the Rebellio or the War of Secession. During the early 20th century, people phrased the term Civil War as an effort to depoliticize the strug gle between the states and reconcile better relations with whi Southerners. Some people even used the phrase second American Revolution for this momentous period in U.S. history. The New York Herald used this phrase on March 4, 1869, to describe the change happening with the upcoming Ulysses S. Grant presidential inauguration. The paper emphasized that the Union gener-
al would help bring about a tran formational change. Significant modifications were the end of slavery, citizenship for freed people, forcing the Southern states to accept voting rights
for African American men and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments with the threat of martial law. In the end, Gregory Downs makes the excellent point that these reforms came about due
to a violent reconstructing of a reunified nation’s political str ture. Downs explains that peo-
ple in the post-bellum time peri od wanted to see how the United States would influence old traditional powers such as Great Britain, France, Spain, and others as an emerging world power. This wonderful monograph starts off by detailing, not only chang that occurred because of the Civ War and the passage of the Civil War/Reconstruction amend ments, but how citizens reevaluated our founders, their legacy the First American Revolution, and the establishment of a new government under a ratified constitution. The chapter titled Th Civil War the World Made goes into great detail concerning how the U.S. helped bring about an end to global slavery as well as bringing about the establishment of constitutional republics and increased freedom and rights for colonial controlled countrie such as Cuba. Chapter three assesses what the Civil War and Reconstruction accomplishe and what disappointments happened to race relations and civi rights due to the Jim Crow era. The author further notes that, due to turmoil that occurred in the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and Spain, the resulting changes failed to go far enough in Weste Hemisphere countries undergoing their own revolutions and in dependence in the years following the Civil War and the Second American Revolution. Finally, the chapter titled “Afterward” posits that the Second American Revolution is unfinished today and did not go far enough in the nineteenth century. This excelle historian demonstrates that many changes were significant such as
the freeing of four million individuals held in bondage, the greatest emancipation in world history, and the largest confiscation of property in any one nation’s history. Downs shows
that the Civil War reshaped the United States, politically, soci ly, and economically. In the end
bigger changes could have happened faster concerning the civil rights for African Americans, assistance for, and alliances wi Atlantic world emerging revolutionary nations and their indepe dence from old world countries such as Spain. Using numerous primary and secondary sources, Downs bypassed many opinions of previous authors and presented an important new and insightful inter pretation of a great deal that h not been studied in the past. He makes a substantial contribution to understanding what comprehensive deviations arose in the U.S. and in the world by providing fresh insight that hel us understand the motivation, strategies, tensions, controversies, and triumphs that have cha acterized the work and lives of people and nations discussed in this excellent book. While this volume contains six important illustrations, it would have bee helpful to all readers to have i cluded many more images and a few maps. Highly recommended by this reviewer.
David Marshall is a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-three years. A l long Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil War Round Table Book Club. In addition to numerous reviews in tions, he has given presentation to Civil War Round Tables on Joshua Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, the Batt of Gettysburg, and the Common Soldier.
Arguing Until Doomsday opens with Stephen A. Douglas striking a familiar pose: engaging in a vigorous debate. This introductory vignette, however, is not drawn from the celebrated campaign of 1858, during which the portly Illinois senator met his Republican rival Abraham Lincoln in seven, outdoor debates across the Prairie State. Instead, author Michael E. Woods, an associate professor of history at Marshall University and the author of two previous books on the sectional crisis, re covers the scene from the floor o the U.S. Senate. There, in 1859, the “Little Giant” attempted to land the latest blow in a long si mering quarrel with his fellow Democrat Jefferson Davis, the lanky senator from Mississippi. That quarrel is the subject of this impressive new book, which deftly recovers the dynamism and disagreements that animated, and ultimately destroyed, the Democratic Party on the eve of the Civil War. The political cris of the 1850s is often portrayed a a struggle between a newly ascendant Republican Party and a Democratic Party that, beholden to racism, consistently truckled the Slave Power. This overly simplistic and ultimately misleading view has effaced contentious debates within the Democratic Party over the fate of slavery in the western territories, the defi nition of property rights, and th
nature of democracy. Historians have marveled at the rather unlikely coalition of Whigs, Free Soilers, abolitionists, Nebraska Democrats, and nativists that forged the Republican Party, — they have paid considerably less attention to the sectionalism tha plagued the Democrats. “The party could stand for white men’s democracy or white masters’ property,” Woods writes, “but not both” (178). Indeed, the book supplies an archaeology of the deep, structural schism that resulted in the 1860 collapse of the Democratic Party. Hardly the consequence of “short-term” events, the road to the fated Charleston convention looped through decades of mutual suspicion and mounting distrust (45). “No political coalition,” the author concludes, “i ever monolithic” (227). Braided throughout the book, the personal and political biogra phies of Woods’ two protagonists bring his larger arguments into sharp relief. Woods begins by reminding his readers that Douglas and Davis were “western men” who embraced “zealous expansionism, shrill racism, and strident nationalism” (41). Despite these striking similarities, thei differences mattered much more in the end. Championing a capacious vision for a “Greater Northwest,” Douglas advocated federal land grants, internal improvements, a homestead bill, and, above all, political sovereignty for the citizens of the new western territories. Though he harbored no special sympathy for Free Soilers, Douglas sought to empower his western constituents to make their own decisions about slavery on the ground, without and beyond federal intervention. To the contrary, Jefferson Dav refused to leave slavery’s future in the west to chance. Embracing the “common property doctrine,” he insisted on “special federal protection” for the peculiar inst tution (103). During the 1850s, southern Democrats tapped out a steady drumbeat of impatient demands, including a federal slave code and calls to reopen th transatlantic slave trade. In October 1854, Abraham Lincoln famously denounced popular sovereignty as “covert real zeal for the spread of slavery.” Woods is no Douglas apologist, but he demonstrates that our narratives have perhaps too often parroted Lincoln, staking out “popular sovereignty as
a proslavery perversion of democracy” (91). In reality, white southern slaveholders regarded the doctrine with no small distrust. To slaveholders, popular sovereignty seemed only to open the path to more free states. Jus as it failed to resolve debates o slavery’s expansion into the west ern territories, then, Douglas’s cherished doctrine proved no analgesic for Democratic Party unity. Unwilling to make any concession to the ballot box or whit majority opinion, southern slaveholders betrayed their anti-democratic proclivities. Ironically, these proclivities would contribute to the failure of the Confederate project. Tonedeaf policies, imperious confisca tion measures, and burdensome taxes-in-kind eroded popular support for the slaveholder’s republic during the war. Not unlike the Union that Douglas sought to save in the last months of his li the Confederacy collapsed. A short review can only tally some of Woods’s important arguments. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act,” the author concludes, “was largely a victory for slaveholder but it sowed suspicion among antislavery and proslavery critics alike” (132). Democrats shared racist beliefs, but those views led adherents in radically differ ent directions. Given their ideas about property rights and majoritarian rule, many white southerners believed that Douglas posed no less a threat than Lincoln in 1860. While the South was hardly a homogenous political entity, Douglas galvanized much opposition among white slaveholders. Diligently researched, closely argued, and clearly written, Arguing Until Doomsday is an essential book for students of an tebellum politics and the road to Civil War. Woods makes clear that when antebellum Americans debated slavery’s fate in western territories, they also debated th meaning of democracy, self-government, and the very nation they would soon tear apart.
Brian Matthew Jordan is associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University and the author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History.
Obstinate Heroism-–The Confederate Surrenders After Appomattox. By Steven J. Ramold. Maps, illustrations, photos, notes, index, bibliography. 490 pp. 2020. University of North Texas Press, untpress.unt.
One of the biggest misconceptions of American history is that all the fighting in the Civil War ended when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. U.S. Grant at Appomattox, Va., April 9, 1865. As Steven J. Ramold, a professor of American History at Eastern Michigan University, points out, this was not the case. While Lee had to surrender because he was surrounded and had no rations, there were still thre major Confederate armies and numerous smaller forces, that could have continued the war if their commanders had wanted. However, within weeks all major Confederate land forces had surrendered. Appomattox and the collapse of the Confederate government led to realizing the hope lessness of continuing the war. Furthermore, all Confederate forces saw an epidemic rise in desertions. While Lee’s surrender was neat and tidy, and set th terms for all following surrender the others were at times difficul proving, as the author notes, it easier to start a war than to end one. It was not until more than a year after Lee’s capitulation, th President Andrew Johnson formally declared an end to all hostilities on August 20, 1866. The book is broken down into detailed examinations of individual surrenders starting with Joseph Johnston’s surrender to William T. Sherman in North Carolina. The decision to discuss it first was wise since the polit
firestorm Sherman created in his over generous terms to Johnston (which is very well examined) would overshadow all future surrenders. Unfortunately, there is little new information presented. Even worse, there are misspellings of names and some historical errors. Furthermore the autho spends too much time discussing the military campaigns that led t the surrender. Next is Richard Taylor’s surrender to Edward Canby in Alabama. Again, the author spends too much time discussing the military campaigning before the surrender. Some may also take issue with him lumping Nathan Bedford Forrest’s surrender together with Taylor’s. However, the examinations of the actual surrenders are excellent. The discussion abou Confederate forces surrendering to James Wilson is the one episode where a detailed looked at military operations is appropriate. Wilson’s raid through Alabama and Georgia led to numerous small Confederate forces giving up and brought peace to the region where the raid took place. Ramold makes a convincing argument that Wilson’s Raid deserves more attention than it has received. The last examination is perhaps the best, the discussion of Edmond Kirby Smith and the end of the Trans-Mississippi Department. The book does an excellent job of setting up the situation and explaining issues Smith faced in what was one of the toughest and most thankless postings on either side of the wa Smith did not formally surrender his army, a la Lee, because in th end he had nothing to surrender thanks to desertions and junior officers surrendering their commands. In fact, Smith escaped to Cuba rather than surrender himself. Overall this is a book where t parts are better than the whole. Some tighter editing and more time spent on the complexities of the surrenders would have made this a much better book. Nonetheless, this is a good book that shows the end of the war did not take place only in a Virginia parlor, but was a drawn out, and complicated process. Tom Elmore examined Johnston’s surrender to Sherman in his 2012 book A Carnival of DestructionSherman’s Invasion of South Carolina.
of Civil War-Era Free Labor Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil America. By Brian P. Luskey. Images, notes, bibliography, in dex, 279 pp., hardback, 2020. University of North Carolina
“Free Soil, Free Labor, and Fremont” was an early rally cry for the emerging Republican Party in the mid-1850s. To many of its Northern proponents, the idea of free labor provided not only a better economic model, but also staked claim to moral high ground over the labor system practiced in the 15 slave states. As most Northerners per ceived it, allowing laborers th ability to choose their profess and their employer, and to earn their living by the sweat of th brow or by their ingenuity and intellect, without competition from slave labor was clearly su perior. Northerners also felt t slave labor hindered innovation and discouraged industrial trad However, as Brian P. Luskey informs us in Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America, the
free labor system was not withou its fair share of flaws. Organized into six chapters, Men is Cheap includes a helpful contextual introduction and fitting conclusion. In this study w see that the Civil War provided good testing ground for the free labor system. As the war progressed, political decisions and military actions produced events that offered certain individuals and organizations, who were perhaps more interested in personal gain than national advancement, numerous opportunities to cash in. Corruption involving Union war materiel manufacturing contracts has long been part of Civ War scholarship, but until recen ly, labor fraud in relation to t Union cause has largely remained out of the spotlight. Focusing heavily on what were then called “intelligence offices,” that operated somewhat like a shadier version of today’s employment agencies, Luskey exposes a clear contradiction between the ideals of free labor, and how under the pressures of wartime necessity it sometimes became manipulated into the corrupt exploitation of vulnerable and marginalized populations who had few options. While viewed by many Northerners at the time as less than model citi zens, intelligence office broker also ironically filled the manpower needs, on the battlefront as well as on the home front, th ultimately helped facilitate Uni victory. They provided quite the intriguing paradox. Not surprisingly intelligence office brokers seemed to target the most vulnerable. They sought out the unemployed and immigrants in the North to fill substitute roles for men who could afford to buy their way out of military service. These middlemen also located recently freed
African American men, once they were finally allowed to officiall enlist, to fill state quotas requ by the Federal government. Agents combed refugee camps to find freedwomen and children, as well as white Unionist refugees, to work in Northern homes and on Northern farms at low wages. Even the Confederate soldier was not out of bounds to these brokers. Confederate prisoners and deserters who pledged the oath of allegiance to the United States even could obtain employment with the Federal government through intelligence office agents. For a price, agents moved workers where the work was needed, often, of course, with li tle regard for the working conditions or ultimate fate of the wor er. In doing so, these middlemen commodified the worker, not so differently than how the slave trader had done the enslaved. Men is Cheap did not provide much discussion about reform efforts, nor the use of fraudulent free labor as a political to Perhaps there were few attempts at reform due to the constant focus on prosecuting the war, but I would be surprised, if at minimum, the Democratic Party or “Copperhead” factions did not at least mention instances of thi abuse in an effort to gain politi ground. Regardless, Men is Cheap makes a significant contribution to the body of Civil War scholarship, particularly that relating the growing genre of labor history. How the United States came to regard labor developed in part from the Civil War years, and its relevance is still clearly presen in today’s society.
Tim Talbott is the Director of Education, Interpretation, Visito Services, and Collections at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Va. He is currently researching soldiers captured during the Petersburg Campaign.
The Maryland Brigade. By Daniel Carroll Toomey. Images, notes, bibliography, index, 160 pp., soft cover, 2018. Toomey Press, Baltimore, MD.
As stated in the introduction, much of Maryland’s Civil War history has been written by those of the Southern persuasion Toomey has, with several earlier books, and now The Maryland Brigade, begun redeeming those Marylanders who fought for the Union. Appropriately, the Brigade began with the First Maryland Regiment (US) that had the tough luck of fighting fellow, but vet an, Marylanders at Front Royal. The Federals performed well, but were doomed by a lack of support and overwhelming numbers in a running fight northward to Winchester. It would be awhile before they were back in action, but they are, for many “Th Union Marylanders.” Toomey has thrown down a gauntlet of sorts. No study of a Federal Maryland regiment approaches Robert Driver’s First and Second Maryland Infantry, CSA. The Maryland Brigade is a short, concise work beginning to raise awareness of the source available to present comparable studies. It was probably not an easy task as the Brigade was assigned to guard the Baltimore an Ohio Railroad for a goodly portion of their existence. That se vice brought some regiments into combat but they missed much of the “big show” involving Army of the Potomac campaigning until 1864. Their service changed after
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Gettysburg when the Brigade was assigned to the I Corps as th Third Brigade, Third Division, to make up some of the losses occurred in July. They saw action as the Army of Northern Virginia waited for the Potomac River to fall enough so they could cross. Later that fall, the Brigade participated in the northern Virgini campaigning. After winter camp the Brigade was transferred to the V Corps as its Third Brigade of the Second Division for the Overland Campaign. Th fought along the Orange Plank Road in the Wilderness, then at Spotsylvania’s Laurel Hill and Harris Farm. They finished the war in front of Petersburg and then marched to Appomattox. The Brigade was initially composed of the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th Maryland Infantry Regiments and Alexander’s Light Artillery. The companies were recruited across the state; a heavy leavening of Baltimoreans was matched by men from northern and western counties. Few came from the southern counties. The book is well illustrated, particularly the two maps showing where they served late in the war. There are many images of the Brigade’s members and some show their gear as well. The bibliography is sparse, but for the introduction to a brigade it provides numerous starting points for additional, much needed follow up research. Toomey’s Maryland Brigade will serve for some time as the unit’s reference work and, more importantly, the basis for studie on the unit’s regiments and their service. It is recommended for schools and for anyone wanting to add to their knowledge about the Overland Campaign, guarding Union logistical lines, and Maryland’s Union soldiers.
Larry Babits is, among other things, a rear rank private in th First Maryland Infantry and formerly Director of the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. He worked on Civil War wreck sites including the USS Otsego, Maple Leaf, Star, and CSS ram Neuse. His main areas of interest are the private American soldier and musketry.
Scott L. Mingus Sr., “a scien and consultant in the global pul and paper industry,” has publish numerous books and articles on south-central Pennsylvania during the American Civil War, including Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Confederate Expedition to the Susquehanna River, June 1863. Mingus’s solidly researched contributions to Civil War historiography help frame often overlooked aspects o the Civil War and the Gettysburg Campaign. In Targeted Tracks: The Cumberland Valley Railroad in the Civil War, 1861–1865, he partners with Cooper H. Wingert, author of The Confederate Approach on Harrisb The Gettysburg Campaign’s Northernmost Reaches, to tell the story of the Cumberland Valley Railroad (CVRR) during America’s deadliest conflict. The authors begin by explorin the origins of the CVRR during the first half of the nineteenth tury, when the economic growth of the Cumberland Valley “gave rise to the need to move even larger quantities of freight and passengers quickly” (4). While it initially ran from Harrisburg Chambersburg, Penn., the CVRR ultimately acquired a neighboring railroad and came to run the seventy-four miles through the Cumberland Valley down to Hagerstown, Md. With the railroad established in the opening chapter, the authors employ a narrative model for the remainder of the book, focusing on the leadership of CVRR President Franklin Watts (1841–1873) and
the role the CVRR played during the American Civil War. In the remaining chapters, the authors engage in a microcosmic study that demonstrates the importance of the CVRR as “a small part of the vast railroad system that the Federal government could use to move supplies, food, medicine, and soldiers into position to implement Lincoln’s decision to preserve the Union by force” (41). Steeped in primary-source research, it is a well-told, fast-paced tale that illustrates the CVRR’s, sometimes “incidental,” role in many landmark events, including John Brown’s Harpers Ferry Raid, the First Manassas Campaign, the Antietam Campaign, the raid on Chambersburg, the Gettysburg Campaign, the burning of Chambersburg, and the Lincoln Assassination and Fune Procession (33). The authors also explain that the railroad served important post-war function, taking thousands of soldiers home and offering transportation to numerous veteran reunions, including the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg. There is an old saying in the military and among military historians that “amateurs talk about tactics while professionals study logistics;” Targeted Tracks certainly illustrates the logistical portance of the CVRR during the Civil War. At times, the CVRR served as the means for getting Union soldiers and supplies into both offensive and defensive positions. At other times, it serve as a vital line of escape and evacuation for civilians alarmed by Confederate invasions into Maryland and Pennsylvania. At other times, it served as an avenue for Confederate smugglers and spies. As the authors illustrate, the “onset of the Civil Wa offered a unique opportunity to prove both the strategic and tactical value of rail transportatio on a scale never before seen,” the CVRR is but one example (42). While a more compelling thesis and a more robust conclusion that offered further context and exploration of the legacy and importance of the CVRR could have strengthened the work, Mingus and Wingert have provided a well-researched, engagingly written story about “one of the Civil War’s most bitterly con tested Northern railroads.” (238)
Jason M. Frawley, Ph.D., is a his tory professor at Tarrant County College, Northwest Campus, in Fort Worth, Texas.
CWN Black Military’s Quest For Raci Duty Beyond The Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight For Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870–1920. By Le’Trice D. Donaldson. Illustrated, Notes, Bibliography, Southern Illinois University Press, 2020, 200 pp. softcover.
This book provides a contextualized paradigm to trace how black soldiers created a new identity to define manhood and how their military service coul become part of a larger civil rights movement. Proving manhood, demonstrating citizenship and preserving racial pride wer some motivating factors behind African American enlistments from the Civil War forward. Thu beginning with the Mexican War, the frontier service of Buffalo Soldiers, the Spanish American War, the Cuban invasion, and th Philippine insurgency, black so diers enlisted to show their de votion to American ideals and t
uality become symbols of racial pride and community leadership. Despite racial barriers evident in the U.S. military during the Jim Crow era, black soldiers withstood discrimination as an end to the greater goals of full izenship, social equality, educational advancement, and as icons of “racial warriors.” The author then extends her thesis to the post WWI era where she contends the “new Negro” emerged with an aim to enact systemic change in America through racial militancy. To illustrate this perspective she hig lights the military service of tw black military pioneers, Henry O. Flipper and Charles Young. Flipper, the first black graduate West Point, had a stellar career his early years of service during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Despite being later dismissed from the service, he was not supported by the black community to clear his name because of his belief in the self-made ma philosophy through education and achievement promoted by the Booker T. Washington school of thought. In contrast Charles Young, an adherent to the W.E.B. DuBois school of thought, carried the mantel of his race and country as a more militant “race man” in the early twentieth century. This earned him the support of the black press and the Africa American community at large. Particularly after WWI this more militant approach to the acquisition of civil rights became the accepted path by the black press, military members, and civil right leaders. This book is historically accu rate, well written, and illustrat of the struggle for racial equali
The only limiting factor is the failure to admit to the many de redations of black soldiers dur this period, including their ch lenges to superior officers, th Houston Riots, the David Fagen affair, etc. Likewise, the auth support of the DuBois school of militancy is evident, giving li credence to the later Tuskegee model. Despite these limitations, the book is recommended for those interested in African American military history, the role of black soldiers in the q for social equality, or the mea ing of military service in the nition of manhood.
Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War specializing in t role of the common soldier.
