Book Notes

A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans: The Journals and Reports of Albert Gaius Hills of the Boston Journal. Ed. Gary L. Dyson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2013. ISBN 978-0-7864-7193-5, 204 pp., paper, $45.00.

Civil War–era journalist Albert Gaius Hills extensively covered the Union capture of the city of New Orleans in 1862. In this new volume, Gary Dyson edits Hills’s personal journal and newspaper accounts that chronicle Union naval operations against the Crescent City in impressive detail. The editor has also included biographical details and additional correspondence in New Orleans beyond the initial fall of the city.

The Civil War and American Art. Eleanor Jones Harvey. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-300-18733-5, 352 pp., cloth, $65.00.

This new work, published in conjunction with a major art exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is filled with stunning photographs, drawings, and paintings. The volume also contains explanations and commentary on the evolution of the Civil War era’s visual culture. Harvey concentrates on emancipation, wartime photography, landscapes, and the human face of war.

In the Shadow of the United States Capitol: Congressional Cemetery and the Memory of the Nation. Abby Arthur Johnson and Ronald Maberry Johnson. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9860216-0-2, 432 pp., paper, $28.00.

This fascinating new study traces the history of the nation’s first national burial ground, the Congressional Cemetery. The authors trace the origins and development of the cemetery, its evolution through the nineteenth century into the twentieth and its resurrection after falling into a state of disrepair. The volume includes an entire chapter on the Civil War and is accompanied by numerous photographs.

The Best Station of Them All: The Savannah Squadron, 1861–1865. Maurice Melton. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8173-1763-8, 632 pp., cloth, $69.95.

Maurice Melton’s exhaustive new study explores Confederate naval personnel stationed around Savannah, Georgia, during the Civil War. Organized chronologically, the work traces the lives and experiences of the white and black naval men and their families who guarded the city. It concludes with the Savannah Squadron’s journey to central Virginia, as the men fought around Appomattox Court House in the war’s final days. The volume contains numerous images and drawings and details several personalities and military and naval engagements. Anyone interested in naval history or the city of Savannah will relish this well-researched examination of the Civil War.

Books Received

Dolley Madison: The Problem of National Unity. Catherine Allgor. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8133-4759-2, 175 pp., paper, $20.00.

The Republic in Crisis, 1848–1861. John Ashworth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-107-63923-2, 209 pp., paper, $22.99.

Thirty-Eight Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier’s End. Scott W. Berg. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-37724-1, 384 pp., cloth, $27.95.

Ruined by This Miserable War: The Dispatches of Charles Prosper Fauconnet, a French Diplomat in New Orleans, 1863–1868. Ed. Carl A. Brasseaux and Katherine C. Mooney. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-57233-859-3, 272 pp., cloth, $37.95.

The Battle of Carthage, Missouri: First Trans-Mississippi Conflict of the Civil War. Kenneth E. Burchett. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2013. ISBN 978-0-7864-6959-8, 240 pp., paper, $35.00.

The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad in the Civil War. James C. Burke. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2013. ISBN 978-0-7864-7154-6, 272 pp., paper, $35.00.

I Fear I Shall Never Leave this Island: Life in a Civil War Prison. David R. Bush. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8130-4408-8, 272 pp., paper, $19.95.

African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album. Ronald S. Coddington. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4214-0625-1, 384 pp., cloth, $29.95.

Louis Trezevant Wigfall: The Disintegration of the Union and Collapse of...