War's Desolating Scourge: The Union's Occupation of North Alabama by Joseph W. Danielson (review)

As the Union army spread across the western theater, its military objectives transitioned from ending the rebellion and preserving the Union to include the liberation of African Americans and reunification of the country. Throughout the war, Union armies invaded the Confederacy and undertook the daunting task of occupying unfriendly territory. Joseph W. Danielson examines the Union occupations of North Alabama that began in April 1862, under Gen. Ormsby Mitchel and seven thousand soldiers from the Third Division of the Army of the Ohio. Gen. Don Carlos Buell implemented President Abraham Lincoln's policy of conciliation in the region, but the army quickly discarded it in favor of more punitive strategies that culminated in hard war against brazenly defiant Confederate soldiers and civilians. Danielson determines that the genesis of the Union's harsh civil-military policies occurred in North Alabama and began much earlier than others have suggested.

The sizable cooperationist population of North Alabama, which encompassed the Tennessee Valley and Hill Counties regions, mobilized to strongly support the Confederacy following President Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand troops. Danielson asserts, "Their initial caution during the secession crisis was not a sign of their lack of commitment to southern independence or to the institution of slavery" (11). General Mitchel's invasion of North Alabama garnered success as part of a larger Union offensive in the western theater to capture and maintain control of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. During the subsequent five-month occupation, civilians engaged in daily acts of defiance that ranged from verbal assaults to ambushing and killing. Confederate women's shunning and taunting of Union soldiers proved vital to the resistance, which "revealed a glaring miscalculation by Lincoln, Buell, and other supporters of conciliation" (44).

General Mitchel initially eroded Confederate morale through the punitive strategies of arresting dissidents, administering loyalty oaths, censoring information, and confiscating cotton. The Union war department and President Lincoln supported shifting towards a pervasive hard-war strategy that included the wide-spread confiscation of foodstuffs and destruction of property. Danielson describes Union colonel John Basil Turchin's brutal sacking of Athens on May 2 as the North's "most destructive attack on a Confederate town during the 1862 occupation" (76). General Buell's unpopular adherence to an archaic conservative strategy clashed with General Mitchel's harsh tactics, which Danielson suggests influenced the Second Confiscation Act of mid-July. The author notes that Union soldiers across the South adopted Mitchel's hard-war mentality and proposes that "the 1862 occupation of North Alabama ultimately played an integral role in leading the Union toward Emancipation" (112).

Danielson's study confirms that a prolonged Union presence significantly disrupted the institution of slavery in the region and revealed deepening cracks in Confederate nationalism. Yet, slaves who escaped to Union camps or enlisted in military service experienced only partial freedom and protection, despite providing sensitive information regarding the whereabouts of former masters and Confederate soldiers. In 1863, repeated Union raids and unrelenting punitive policies combined with Confederate military setbacks to deteriorate civilians' morale, especially women who "expected to be protected from their northern foe" (123). The Battle of Chickamauga brought civilians temporary relief, but the siege of Chattanooga increased their suffering. Additionally, North Alabama unionists, emboldened by President Lincoln's 10 percent plan, cooperated with Union soldiers to destabilize the Confederate home front. By 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman extended hard-war tactics against the defiant civilians of North Alabama, whose "region resembled a wasteland of barren fields, ruined property, and shattered dreams" (151). Danielson concludes that rapid Union demobilization and President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies allowed southern nationalists to openly defy the Thirteenth Amendment by enacting black codes after returning to political power.

War's Desolating Scourge certainly provides the most detailed and comprehensive account of the Union occupation of North Alabama. Danielson consults dozens of collections to present personal letters, diaries...