The Army's Navy Series. Vol. 2: Assault and Logistics: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861-1866 (review)

270CIVIL WAR HISTORY have expressed their sorrow, elation, and the remembrance of that trauma in numerous memorials. Beginning with the erection of the first one in honor of Capt. John P. Gleeson in 1 866, some sixty-five have been dedicated, the last one in 1 993 in honorofGen. Samuel Garland, Jr. As Susan Cooke Soderberg asserts, "Monuments are testaments to the important events and people of our national past and how we interpret them affects our national identity" (xi). In "Lest We Forget" she chronicles that expression in a book designed both as a guide and as a historical reference for "people interested in Maryland and in architectural history, and social historians" (vii). Reflective of commemorative monuments from the late nineteenth century until the 1920s, they bear the imprint of a "Renaissance aesthetic of beauty" (xxiii). The most popular forms were the statue of the solitary soldier and the obelisk embellished with romantic and classical inscriptions. Larger monuments , in demanding more intricate sculptures, as Soderberg asserts, "gave new life to artistic sculpture in America" (xxiv). Contrary to the assumption that the "soldier-at-parade-rest" was mass produced, the statue was actually tailored from a standard model to meet local demands. By 19 15 the number of companies engaged in their production had grown to sixty-three. Soderberg sees three phases in their use: funereal in honoring the dead, reconciliation in marking the end of hostilities, and commemorative in emphasizing education and historical interpretation. Usefully she divides her book into five tours or chapters, plus a sixth for those not fitting into them. With the exception of those dedicated to Generals Reno, Garland, and Meade, all were erected by Maryland groups, the state, or by the federal government. Numerous private organizations, such as the Society of Army and Navy of the Confederate States in the State of Maryland, United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Women's Relief Corps, and the Grand Army of the Republic, promoted their construction. Importantly she catalogs these monuments, markers, and plaques with illustrations and data that include dedication date and ceremonies, location and tour maps, the medium of the monuments, artists, donors, and inscriptions. For cemeteries, such as Green Mount, New Cathedral, and Loudon Park in the Baltimore area and Mount Olivet in Frederick, she provides maps to mark memorials and the graves of prominent figures. Fortunately for Marylanders, Civil War buffs, and historians, Soderberg has produced a fine handbook that not only reminds us of that history but provides an excellent guide to explore it. Richard R. Duncan Georgetown University The Army's Navy Series. Vol. 2: Assault and Logistics: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861-1866. By Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson. (Camden, Maine: Ensign Press, 1995. Pp. xxi, 655. $45.00.) book reviews271 This oversized volume provides an encyclopedic review ofthe unglamorous and sometimes overlooked activities of the U.S. Army's quartermaster department in procuring and operating vessels of various descriptions for the support ofthe army's land operations. As the title suggests, these activities took place both along the southern coastline and on the many rivers that wound deep into the southern heartland and encompassed both direct combat support and the transportation of supplies. The combat support role included the army's procurement and operation of transports and surf boats for effecting amphibious landings on the southern coast as well as transports and even gunboats and rams for operations on the western rivers. This latter role reached its highest development in the "Mississippi Marine Brigade," a curiously hybrid unit that included riverboat-borne infantry and cavalry as well as army-manned and operated gunboats and rams. Nevertheless, its chief mission was, in a sense, logistical: patroling the western rivers to combat Confederate guerrillas and keep those waterways open and safe for the use of Union transports and supply vessels. This was especially true in the latter stages of the war, after the fall of Vicksburg and the establishment of at least nominal Union control of the Mississippi. The purely logistical side of the Union army's waterborne effort was more mundane and more important and has received even less attention in the otherwise voluminous literature of...