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  • Phantoms of the South Fork: Captain McNeill and His Rangersby Steve French
  • Keagan LeJeune
Phantoms of the South Fork: Captain McNeill and His Rangers. By Steve French. Civil War Soldiers and Strategies. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi, 294. $39.95, ISBN 978-1-60635-309-7.)

An addition to Kent State University Press's Civil War Soldiers and Strategies series, Phantoms of the South Fork: Captain McNeill and His Rangers offers a detailed overview of McNeill's Rangers. A partisan band of Confederates led by Virginian Captain John Hanson McNeill until his wounding at Meems Bottom, McNeill's Rangers roamed portions of West Virginia, western Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, and the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, and Steve French employs a fluid, approachable narrative to unfold the group's history. In nearly moment-by-moment detail, French presents the group's various engagements in vivid prose. The strategies of various leaders become clear as French describes McNeill's outfit ambushing northern supply wagons, surprising various Union troops on the move and in camp, and using guerrilla tactics to pester the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. French also traces the reputation for daring and considerable fighting prowess that McNeill and his men garnered with each successful raid.

The book begins with the Confederate Congress's passage of the Partisan Ranger Act of 1862, which coincided with McNeill's service in the Missouri State Guard and his capture and imprisonment while a member of that force. According to the text, this stint in captivity did not stymie McNeill's willingness to fight for the Confederate cause, and after escaping and making his way to Virginia, he formed his partisan band, which could operate somewhat independently, though it did on occasion join other partisan groups and act as support for regular Confederate troops. From there, the book traces the exploits of McNeill's irregular band of Confederate fighters from small opportunistic seizures of Union hay wagons and stock to grander endeavors involving raids of towns and the demolition of bridges. The book's narrative builds, as did the partisan band's daring, to its highest point—a dramatic nighttime kidnapping of Union generals George Crook and Benjamin Kelley from their hotel beds in Cumberland, Maryland. The book closes with the band's hurried getaway after the kidnapping and a few minor final dustups until Robert E. Lee's surrender and the group's disbandment.

French draws from newspapers of the day, official government records, diaries, and a great many other sources to create an engaging episodic retelling of the actions of McNeill's Rangers, and he excels at providing the reader a lens into these skirmishes and maneuvers. In places, the reader nearly becomes a member of the partisans, but this engaging approach can be limiting. We see some, but perhaps not enough, of civilians' experiences with and reactions to this group, and many readers may complain about the book's rather quick discussion of the nature and merits of Confederate partisan bands in terms of their broader sociological or military implications. Moreover, while the book includes some of [End Page 1007]the opposition leveled by fellow Confederates, even by Lee, against McNeill, some readers might have hoped to see more. Perhaps this distanced view could have come at the book's end, which is engaging but seems hasty.

French strives to heighten the reputation of McNeill's Rangers to that of John Singleton Mosby's famous partisan group, at least in the minds of Civil War historians, but the book's primary goal is to supply a compelling book-length account of McNeill's understudied yet successful outfit. One can hardly argue that the book does not succeed in this goal. French presents his material in vivid detail, and the connections made between the band and the region's larger campaign mean the book would be engaging to those interested in the region and would be of use to those interested in general Civil War historiography. At the very least, the text builds a strong case that McNeill's Rangers warrant further attention.

Keagan LeJeune
McNeese State University

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