To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond: Stabilization and Reconstruction in Tennessee and Kentucky, 1864–1866 by Benjamin Franklin Cooling (review)

Noted Civil War historian Thomas Connelly aptly named the upper Confederacy west of the Appalachians the “Heartland,” a name since adopted by Civil War scholars. This area, consisting primarily of Tennessee and parts of surrounding states, was one of the richest in the entire South, boasting abundant natural resources and countless farms and artisan shops. Additionally, the major cities of the Heartland were critical manufacturing and transportation hubs, vital to both sides. If the Confederacy hoped to achieve its independence, it needed to control this region. Conversely, if the rebellion were to be crushed, the Union must conquer it. Moreover, with the victories of 1862 and subsequent occupation, the Union used the upper Heartland as a laboratory for developing restoration policies.

Several historians have written excellent political, military, or socioeconomic studies of the importance of the Heartland in the Civil War, yet few have tried to blend all aspects of the struggle to control this vast region. The best attempt to date is Benjamin Franklin Cooling’s trilogy of works on the struggle in Kentucky and Tennessee. With Forts Henry and Donelson: The Key to the Confederate Heartland (1988), Cooling began a study of the battles for the forts and a deeper examination of the society around the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers during the Civil War. He expanded this examination in Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (1997). This volume delved deeper than the first by chronicling the impact of the war on Tennessee and Kentucky during the first two-and-a-half years of the war. In exploring the nature of the war in this region, Cooling discovered a complex struggle of conventional battles, evolving Union occupation policies, Rebel partisan activities, Confederate cavalry raids, and Union counterinsurgency operations—all combining to produce a dangerous and uncertain atmosphere. The war in Tennessee and Kentucky was a struggle to impose Union will on an often hostile population that resisted in virtually every way. The results of this struggle for civil and military control shaped future Union occupation policies and eventually led to the most revolutionary social policy—emancipation.

This third book in the series covers the last year and immediate aftermath of the war. Cooling continues to explore the nature of the conflict Tennesseans and Kentuckians experienced. He notes that by 1864 it still was not apparent which side would prevail. Moreover, the war had grown increasingly brutal as both sides became exhausted and frustrated. Despite the Federal occupation of Kentucky and most of Tennessee for years, the region’s secessionists continued to frustrate Union authorities’ efforts to compel them to accept defeat and Federal rule. The result was violence and deprivation. While Kentucky remained relatively calm, Tennessee did not. With the exception of John Bell Hood’s doomed Tennessee invasion, which floundered at Nashville, conventional Confederate military action was limited to cavalry raids. Constant guerrilla actions, however, led to harsh and punitive Union occupation policies. Bandits that plagued the countryside added to the destruction and misery. As a result, lawlessness and economic devastation reigned. Cooling’s story demonstrates the ever-growing war-weariness of the divided populations, yet also their determination not to accept defeat in the face of so much sacrifice.

Cooling’s familiarity with national security affairs has led him to apply the modern concept of hybrid or compound war to the Heartland’s experience. Much like modern-day Afghanistan and Iraq, the Heartland experienced conventional battles, partisan activity, banditry, counterinsurgency operations, and a breakdown of civil authority. Moreover, the occupying force had to contend not only with various enemy groups, regular and irregular, but also with efforts at stabilization and reconstruction—what today might be called nation-building. Cooling even suggests that the concept of compound war can teach historians about the...