Struggle for the Heartland: The Campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth by Stephen D. Engle (review)

papers gave filibusters extended coverage and theatrical performances celebrated filibustering, like the 1850 Philadelphia production of " The Invasion of Cuba"as well as songs such as " The Filibuster Polka." Most intriguingly,May SuggeStS that filibusterers constituted " a distinct,if often overlooked, antebellum American subculture" ( 111). Correcting the conventional association made by historians between filibustering and the South,May demonstrates its strong roots in northern cities. Filibusterers recruited from an urban male underclass created by the rise of industrialization in the cities. And May shows the similarities between filibustering and other forms of urban male culture of like boxing, gambling, and volunteer fire companies. Future students of filibustering might probe further into the links between filibustering and the urban class formation in the North, especially regarding the construction of racial identities. Though May makes a creative and convincing case for the pervasiveness of filibustering in America during the 1850s, the author is less clear on its importance . The numbers of people involved in filibustering ,even including those on its margins,seem small. Similarly,even if the State Department spent an " inordinate amount of time" ( 216) on filibustering ,as May says,what was its weight relative to other diplomatic issues? Finally,even if filibustering was discussed during the secession crisis, how critical did it prove to be in the deliberations of Republicans, secessionists or moderates at the time? Nonetheless, Manifest Destiny' s Underworld is a very good and important bookstrongly researched , creatively approached, and carefully argued . It should deservedly become the standard work on antebellum American filibustering. Mitchell Snay Denison University SPRING 2003 Stephen D. Engle. Struggle for tbe Heartland:The Campaigns from Fort Henry to Corintb. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,2001. 264 pp. ISBN: 0803218184 (cloth), $ 34.95. truggle for tbe Heartland is part ofthe " Great Campaigns of the Civil War Series"being published by the Universitr of Nebraska Press. Like the other volumes in this series, this book provides a synthesis of recent scholarship and attempts to place military campaigns within a larger political and social context. Stephen Engle, author of biographies of Franz Sigel and Don Carlos Buell, focuses on the catiipaigns in 1862 that began with the Union advance against Forts Henry and Donelson and ended in late Mav 1862 with the seizure of the important rail juncture of Corinth, Mississippi. The winter and spring campaigns of 1862,Engle argues, reflect the inability of the Union high command in the western theater to work together effectively . Major Generals Henry W. Halleck and Don Carlos Buell " failed to encourage productive relationships , states Engle, " which precluded them from effectively harnessing the strengths of their forces and seizing important strategic opportunities soonen" xviii) While these principal Union commanders repeatedly refused to cooperate, subordinates such as Ulysses S. Grant took the initiative to engage the Confederates and seize key points. Grant succeeded in part because Jefferson Davis did not recognize the significance of the vast region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi Riven The Confederate president therefore failed to give General Albert Sidney Johnston the resources needed to defend the region and Johnston in turn left the defense of important points to incompetent subordinates. Johnston's abandonment of middle Tennessee after the disasters at Forts Henry and Donelson demoralized the region's populace and dealt a serious blow to Confederate logistics,but the southern army managed to regroup and attack at Shiloh. 47 REVIEWS The withdrawal of the Confederate Army after Shiloh to Corinth offered Halleck an opportunity to pursue and inflict niore damage on the southerners. Halleck believed that the next big battle in the western theater after Shiloh would be at Corinth,but his glacia] advance against the town allowed the Confederate forces to effect a withdrawal . In the process of evacuating Corinth, the Contederates surrendered a significant southern railroad ( the Memphis and Charleston)and all of western Tennessee. In the wake of the Union Army's stunning seizure of vast stretches of the Confederate heartland, Engle writes that the struggle in the region " became more accurately a people's war" XX). The frustrating effc, rts of federal troops to deal with recalcitrant southern civilians and guerillas challenged northern beliefs in a limited war. Union generals and common soldiers...