Rebels on Lake Erie: The Piracy, The Conspiracy, Prison Life (review)

BOOK REVIEWS91 bringing his sources together in a readable manner and supplying the necessary commentary and explanation to unify the whole. It might also be noted that the University of Tennessee Press did a first class job in producing the book. James L. McDonough David Lipscomb College Rebels on Lake Erie: The Piracy, The Conspiracy, Prison Life. By Charles E. Frohman. (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio Historical Society. 1965. Second printing, 1975. Pp. vi, 159.) In Sandusky Bay in the western waters of Lake Erie, between the city of Sandusky and the Marblehead Peninsula, lies Johnson's Island . About a mile in length and half that in width, the island served as site of one of the principal military prisons of the Civil War. Between April, 1862 and September 1865, it housed an aggregate population of nearly 9,000 prisoners, with a high enrollment of 3,209 reported on December 31, 1864. Throughout this time it was used almost entirely as a prison for southern officers, including a number of colonels, brigadiers, and major generals, a sufficient number to staff an army and navy of 80,000 men. In the last years of the Civil War, the depletion of southern manpower resources combined with Confederate military reverses to produce a number of plots (and rumors of plots) to free the prisoners on Johnson's Island that they might be restored to positions of leadership in Southern forces. The "Northwest Conspiracy," seeking to take advantage of Canadian sympathy and midwestern Copperheadism, reached its apogee on September 19, 1864, when Confederates and their sympathizers actually seized two ships in the waters of western Lake Erie but failed to capture the Federal gunboat, U.S.S. Michigan, guarding the prisoners at Johnson's Island. Charles Frohman, whose personal and family identification with Sandusky and the Bay area has been truly distinguished over a long period of time, has written a history of the Johnson's Island prison and the Northwest (or Lake Erie) Conspiracy that deserves to be read by students of the Civil War. With source materials gleaned from regional and national archives, combined with local items including some in his own family's possession, he has written an account of prison location, construction, security, life, health, escapes, raids, and rumors of raids that has pace, excitement, and appeal for the reader. His chapters on the aborted Lake Erie Conspiracy , including the pursuit, capture, and imprisonment of its principals, Charles H. Cole, John Yeats Beali, and Bennet G. Burley , are particularly useful. With the addition of an index, sub- 92CIVIL WAR HISTORY titles, and a new positioning of maps and illustrations, the second printing of this book is an improvement over the original printing of ten years ago. Phillip R. Shrivkr Miami University BOOK NOTES The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest. By John A. Wyeth. (Dayton: Morningside Bookshop, 1975. Pp. xx, 653. $20.00.) Dr. John A. Wyeth spent the last two years of the Civil War in an Alabama cavalry regiment that once had served under Forrest. Wyeth himself was not directly under Forrest but commented that he was "impressed by the enthusiastic devotion to him of these veterans, who had followed his banner for the first year of the war, and who seemed never to tire in speaking of his kind treatment of them, his sympathetic nature as a man, his great personal daring, and especially of his wonderful achievements as a commander." Wyeth based this account upon interviews, correspondence with Forrest's veterans, and the public record of the war. What he produced was a highly-regarded volume, invaluable to students of Forrest and the cavalry war in the Mississippi Valley and points east. Wyeth's first edition (1899) went out of print in 1924; Harper's published a second edition in 1959 under the title That Devil Forrest (reviewed in CWH, March, 1960, pp. 105-107). The current edition, by Morningside, is a worthy successor to the earlier volumes . Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier and Staff Officer under Johnston, Jackson and Lee. By McHenry Howard. Introduction by James I Robertson, Jr. (Dayton: Morningside Bookshop, 1975. Pp. xx, 483. $20.00.) In his introductory comments, James I. Robertson, Jr. describes...