The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865 by Robert R. Mackey (review)

expectations of the soldiers of 1861 and effectively demonstrates that, by the autumn of 1862, combat had transformed the soldiers, blunting their idealism and causing them to look more critically upon officers, political leaders, and civilians at home. Making use of soldiers' memoirs, letters and diaries ( including those in private collections), and official reports, the volume presents the reader with a striking and moving narrative of life and death in the Iron Brigade. Tbe Men Stood Like Iron also raises issues of state, regional, and national identities and how these influenced the soldiers and the war itself. Throughout the book, the soldiers' identifications with their states as well as their region is evident . Less clear is the relationship state and regional loyalty had to nationalism and the national army The author finds that the troops moved away from state loyalties and began to think in terms of nation during the months spent drilling in George B. McClellan' s Army of the Potomac ( 4445 )and shows that soldiers continued to support McClellan after Lincoln removed him from command in November 1862. Throughout the work, the soldiers'support for their commander, John Gibbon, a native of Pennsylvania who had been raised in North Carolina,is equally evident,as is their sense of themselves as westerners: Badgers, Hoosiers, and Wolverines. We learn that the army, through its battles and sacrifices, had become not McClellan' s but Lincoln' s,a national army committed to purging the nation of slavery and providing a " new birth offreedom." Yet the role of state and regional identity in this process remains unclear ( 216). Moreover, the work misses opportunities to expand on the army' s relationship with civilians, the transition from limited to total warfare, and the evolution of soldiers 'views on slavery and emancipation. It does,however,highlight the compelling experiences of individual soldiers,including Ohioan Rufus Dawes, captain in the Sixth Wisconsin,whose memoir and letters are a central source of the work,and John Cook of Cincinnati, who went to war as a bugler at the age of fourteen and earned a medal of honor for his service as a gunner at Antietam. Through these voices and many others, the author deftly depicts western soldiers' experiences in camp and in combat in the eastern theiter . The paperback edition of 7be Men Stood Like Iron will make that story all the more accessible to readers interested in western soldiers' experiences during the first half of the Civil Wan Christine Dee Fitchburg State College Robert R.Mackey. * e Uncipit War:Irregular Warfare in tbe Upper South,18611865 . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,2004. 288 pp. ISBN 0806136243 hardcover), $ 19.95. obert Mackey' s study of Confederate I\. irregular warfare displaces romanticized accounts of Nathan Bedford Forrest , Robert Mosby,and other unconventional warriors. 7be Uncivil War presents three case studies from the Upper South, each illustrative of a different category SUMM ER 2006 67 BOOK REVIEWS R 14 f IRREGL LAR WARFARE N THE 6 UPPER SOUTH, 18611865 of ii regular waitaie: Arkansas guerrillas, Virginia partisans, and cavalry raiders in Tennessee and Kentucky These accounts suppoit Mackey s central claim, that nineteenthcentury theory and practice of irregular warfare,not the twentieth century' s revolutionary " people' s wars, best inform our understanding of Confederate unconventional forces, and that federal countermeasures, combined with Confederate mistakes, ultimately rendered ineffective, albeit annoying, these cases ofirregular wrarfare. Mackey' s case studies shine a spotlight on episodes of the Civil War otherwise marginalized by the attention given to major campaigns and conventional batties . The clear structure ofthis book lends itself to use as a re:ference tool,with narrative chapters describing each instance of irregular warfare paired with chapters concentrating on the federal response. In constructing each discrete story,Mackey consulted an exhaustive list of published sources, including local Arkansan newspapers . His research in university special 2 < fi. . collections, including Germany' s Ruhr A' University where an immigrant letter cold lection yielded insight into civilian suffering amidst a guerrilla war,sets a high 4 standard for the scholarship of Confederate irregular warfare. Mackey's introductory discussion contrasts nineteenthcentury theories of irregular warfare on the one hand, with military theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz and Baron Antoine Henry Jomini as well as jurist Francis Lieber constructing a conceptual framework for unconventional forces operating in support of conventional armies, with the twentiethcentury experience ofpopular revolutionary warfare aimed at transforming a social order on the other. Understandably, the Confederacy avoided overindulgence in irregular warfare, especially guerrilla warfare, owing to the innate conserva tism of its goal to maintain a hierarchical society built on slavery Thus,irregular warfare in the Upper South ended when Robert E. Lee's and Joseph E. Johnston' s men surrendered. Mackey does much to clarify the terminology of irregular warfare. His introduction includes a spectrum of unconventional warfare in the Civil War" ( 9), ranking the different examples from least organized ( brigands and criminal gangs) through most organized ( Mosby' s Rangers ). But his account minimizes contemporary confusion over irregular warfare. Two problems emerge from his scholarly typology. First, the reality of irregular 68 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY I. e I warfare conflates theoretically discrete *" categories. Mackey acknowledges that iIn truth, all three types of irregular warfare existed simultaneously throughout the Upper South" ( 6).Second, since Mackey,an officer in the U.S. Army,addresses a current military audience as well as an academic one,732 Unci« oil War has to answer to being useful, not just interesting or accurate. Mackey's study begs the question ofhow contemporary federal officers ,charged with the task ofresponding to Confederate irregular warfare,could be · expected to identify correctly the type of irregular warfare they were facing when a wide range of types of unconventional warfare coexisted simultaneously and contemporary observers often inaccurately identified the type of irregular warfare they faced. As a work of history that claims from popular Civil War historical writing a facet of the conflict for the academic community,7be Uncibil War is a firstrate piece of original scholarship and an important contribution to the field of the history of irregular warfare. It is heartening to read accounts of successful federal countermeasures, such as fortified bridges and blockhouses in response to the cavalry raids of Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan, and welldefended agricultural communities of Unionists in northern Arkansas. Irregular fighters are not destjned to defeat conventional forees , as twentiethcentury histories might suggest. Inventive local responses by federal officers, who tried, erred, and tried again to contain and conquer Confederate irregular warriors, eventually won. It is beyond the scope of Mackey' s book to apply lessons of nineteenthcentury irregular warfare to the modern challenges of counterinsulgency or counterguerrilla operations. Yet * e Unci· vil Wai does raise interesting questions about the value of historical case studies for the training of America' s officers in the twentyfirst century. Mark Stepsis Fordham University John M.Carroll.RedOrange andtbe Rise ofModern Football.Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999; reprint 2004. 271 pp. ISBN 0252071662 ( paper ), 21.95. ports heroes hold a unique place in the heart of Americans, maintaining their lore, often profiting from the continued transmission through generations of misty memories that extol their profesSUMMER 2006 69 ...