From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin (review)

Book Reviews From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin. By George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. x, 297 pp. $45.00. ISBN 0-8173-1526-8. During the summer of 1862, a court-martial convicted Russian émigr é Col. John Basil Turchin of dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer, and disobeying orders, charges stemming from his actions in the sacking of Athens, Alabama. Even though Turchin was dismissed from the army, all but one of the officers of the court signed a petition recommending leniency, and the Senate actually confirmed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s nomination of the colonel to the rank of brigadier general even before the trial ended. Although Turchin briefly left the army, Abraham Lincoln eventually overturned the verdict of the court and restored Turchin’s commission. George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen’s From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin explores the events at Athens and what those events meant to the conduct of the Civil War. The authors contend that the pillage of the town marked a turning point in the conflict. Turchin’s actions violated the initial Federal policy of conciliation, which required Union forces to respect the property rights of southerners in occupied territory. Lincoln and others hoped that secession had been the work of a handful of fanatics and that the majority of southerners remained loyal to the Union. They presumed that if southern civilians were treated as citizens of the United States, their allegiance to the federal government would reemerge . By the spring of 1862, however, most northerners realized that secession had widespread support among southern whites. Therefore, some Union officers and men, including Turchin and his command, saw little need to treat southerners with the respect accorded U.S. citizens . Yet many northern generals, such as Turchin’s superior Don Carlos Buell, still hoped to lure the rebels back to the Union by protecting their rights and property, including slaves. Turchin and his men resented any such ideas. They wanted retribution for the southern arrogance they had witnessed as they marched along the roads of Tennessee and Alabama. Southern guerrilla actions supported by the local populace only fueled increasing resentment and the desire for vengeance. By examining J U L Y 2 0 0 7 223 Turchin’s background and court-martial, the attitudes and backgrounds of the volunteers under his command, and the public reaction to the verdict , Bradley and Dahlen attempt to demonstrate that the North gradually abandoned Lincoln’s lenient policy and prepared to wage a harsher war on the recalcitrant South. The authors do a fine job of describing the events at Athens, highlighting their importance to evolving Union policy, and demonstrating what this new war would mean to the South. This is the second book on the events at Athens to appear in the last four years. The first, Stephen Chicoine’s John Basil Turchin and the Fight to Free the Slaves (Westport, Conn., 2003), shares the same thesis but is conspicuously absent from Bradley and Dahlen’s bibliography. Other similarities between the two works exist: both contend that the events at Athens and the subsequent northern reaction led to the harsher Federal policy toward the South; neither castigates Turchin, despite his courtmartial and obvious guilt; and both downplay the severity of federal actions at Athens. Chicoine’s hero worship of Turchin leads him to make disturbing understatements such as that the sacking of Athens was “perhaps not right” (p. 78). The book jacket of the Bradley and Dahlen text is equally restrained: “By modern standards, the outrages were minor.” It is difficult to understand how these authors can view looting, drunkenness, and the rape of a black woman as anything but grievous atrocities that never should have occurred. Clearly, Turchin should have controlled his men, and the soldier guilty of the rape should have been punished. The two books illuminate the interesting juxtaposition of attitudes toward modern military conduct and federal actions against southern civilians . Americans quickly condemn...