Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West (review)

236Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober Union and Confederate forces, as well as those by women and men not involved with the fight on die field. While the editors took great effort to provide a geographical balance, areas widi large German populations such as Missouri, the Ohio RiverValley, and Texas are naturally well represented. The first half of the book contains letters written by those fighting and living in the eastern theater and the second half by those found in the western theater. These letters contain details ofmajor batdes such as Vicksburg and Gettysburg as well as lesser known skirmishes; personal viewpoints on national, state, and local politics; struggles faced by women on the home front; hardships of soldier life; and so forth. Also, since diese letters were written by German immigrants, many events are filtered through their German cultural perspective, adding another dimension to their content for historians to sift through. Letters written by German Texans will prove useful for those researching this group. The better known German enclaves are well represented in the Texas section . There are letters from those who lived in the eastern Texas enclave of the Industry-Cat Spring-Brenham area to the western enclave in the Texas Hill Country region ofNew Braunfels-Boerne-Comfort. Several sets ofmultiple letters written by one person are especially interesting to read. One such set are those written by Capt. Robert Voigt, CSA, a store owner and postmaster from Industry, who spent a great deal ofthe war in Vicksburg providing in-depth details ofthe Union siege. Another interesting set are letters exchanged between Pvt. Ludwig (Louis) Lehmann, CSA, and his wife, Friederike. These writings reveal a caring relationship as this couple, though separated, tried to bring normalcy to their lives during uncertain times. Another group records one of the better known events ofTexas German Civil War history: the batde of the Nueces River (also referred to as the Nueces Massacre). The letters of Unionist sympathizers Capt. Ernst Cramer and Ferdinand Simon provide excellent detail of the skirmish along the Nueces River involving a group ofsixty-eight Union sympathizers mosdy from die Comfort area fleeing to Mexico to escape Confederate conscription. Thejourney ended instead with Confederate soldiers chasing and hunting them down, killing thirty-six of their group. While there are scores of books containing Civil War letters, those dedicated solely to a specific immigrant group are less common. Germans in the Civil War sheds light on how one immigrant group felt about the war, the United States, the Confederacy, military leaders, and military decisions, among many other things. It will prove useful to historians and students of the U.S. Civil War and German American history while still engaging the casual reader. Texas Lutheran UniversityJudith Dykes-Hoffmann Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West. By Gary D. Joiner. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Pp. 326. Foreword, illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 1572335440. $39.95, cloth.) Before the publication of this work only two books examined the Red River campaign in its entirety. Gary D. Joiner, an expert on the Red River campaign, published one of the previous studies, tided One Damn Blunderfrom Beginning to 2007Book Reviews237 End (winner ofthe 2004 Albert Castel Award and 2005 A. M. PateJr. Award), along with several edited collections ofthe letters and memoirs ofthe men who fought in the operation. Though there are some overlapping material and themes in these books.Joiner provides a sufficient amount ofnew material to warrant this new book on the campaign. The differences include new information, additional maps, and appendixes containing timelines, primary sources, and orders of battle. The most noted difference is howjoiner incorporates into the entire book die congressional investigation conducted by theJoint Committee on the Conduct of the War about the campaign. Through theHowling Wildernessis a comprehensive examination ofthe Union'sjoint army and naval campaign to capture Shreveport, Louisiana. In the spring of 1 864, a Union army and naval detachment, under the command of Gen. Nathaniel Banks, amassed a large number of men and boats in hopes of capturing the capital ofthe Confederate Trans-Mississippi theater. General Banks also wanted to hold elections for Union political offices...