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Civil War News book reviews provide our readers with timely analysis of the latest and most significant Civil War research and scholarship. Contact email: BookReviews@CivilWarNews.com.
Only 582 Came Home The 6th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. By Eric R. Faust. Illustrated, notes, appendices, index, bibliography, 2020, McFarland and Company, mcfarlandbooks.com, 293 pp., softcover. $49.95. Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf
The 6th Michigan Volunteer Infantry enrolled 2,000 volunteers over their four years of hard service. Earlier biographies, e.g. 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 presenting a balanced, fair, and objective account of both the heroic service and numerous depredations characteristic of the 6th Michigan. The vast majority of volunteers in the 6th Michigan enlisted to save the Union. Extreme views on the slavery question were rare. Patriotism to the old Union was their calling card. Their first, and most beloved, commander, Col. Frederick Cortenius, did not hesitate to point out that “one could 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 officers. Yet, when their time came to “see the elephant,” they fought like the devil at the Battle of Baton Rouge, where they suffered 19 killed and 40 wounded, and the futile attacks at Port 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 decades after the war. Nostalgically, at reunions lasting until 1922, they celebrated their loyalty and courage glossing over more sordid depredations of pillaging, profiteering, and near mutiny. This book is well written, historically accurate, and treats the good and bad in a balanced fashion. The addition, as an appendix, of a complete roster is an invaluable 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 in 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 the Civil War.
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October 2020
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, 232 pp., 2019. The University of North Carolina Press. www.uncpress.org. $27.95. Cloth. Reviewed by David Marshall
The Civil War was more than a fight between two regions of the United States; it was greater than a domestic struggle, or a fight to preserve the nation. The differences were not only national but international as well. It spilled 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 the four-year nineteenth century conflict such names as the Rebellion or the War of Secession. During the early 20th century, people phrased the term Civil War as an effort to depoliticize the struggle between the states and reconcile better relations with white 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 general would help bring about a transformational 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 structure. Downs explains that people in the post-bellum time period 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 changes that occurred because of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil War/Reconstruction amendments, 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 The 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 countries such as Cuba. Chapter three assesses what the Civil War and Reconstruction accomplished and what disappointments happened to race relations and civil 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 Western Hemisphere countries undergoing their own revolutions and independence 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 excellent 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, socially, and economically. In the end bigger changes could have happened faster concerning the civil rights for African Americans, assistance for, and alliances with Atlantic world emerging revolutionary nations and their independence 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 interpretation of a great deal that has 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 helps us understand the motivation, strategies, tensions, controversies, and triumphs that have characterized the work and lives of people and nations discussed in this excellent book. While this volume contains six important illustrations, it would have been helpful to all readers to have included 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 lifelong Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil War Round Table Book Club. In addition to numerous reviews in Civil War News and other publications, he has given presentations to Civil War Round Tables on Joshua Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Common Soldier.