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LITTLE TO EAT AND THIN MUD TO DRINK |
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| Gary Joiner, editor |
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| University of Tennessee Press |
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A collection of letters and manuscripts from both Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians.
University of Tennessee Press www.utpress.org
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| BOOK INDEX |
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CONTENTS
Foreword Peter S. Carmichael, Series Editor
General Editor’s Note & Introduction Gary D. Joiner
1. James A. Jarratt and the Consolidated Crescent Regiment in the Red River Campaign of 1864 Edited by Gary D. Joiner
2. A Vermont Soldier’s Experience at the Battle of Mansfield Edited by Gary D. Joiner
3. Lieutenant Edward Cunningham: A Kirby Smith Loyalist Complains about Richard Taylor Edited by Gary D. Joiner
4. Private Julius Knapp, U.S.A.: A Union Soldier’s Point of View Edited by Gary D. Joiner and Jimmy H. Sandefur
5. Confederate Letters Edited by Gary D. Joiner, Jimmy H. Sandefur, Thomas A. Pressly, Nancy B. Wilson, Molly Wiggins, Dyson Nickles,Ann Turk, Steve Mayeux, Bryan James Maedgen, and Allan C. Richard Jr.
6. Union Letters Edited by Gary D. Joiner, Jimmy H. Sandefur, Tara Z. Laver,and Monica Peels
7. Miss Sidney Harding: A Daughter of Privilege Flees Northward Edited by Gary D. Joiner and Cheryl H. White
8. Joseph Pitty Couthouy: The Death of a Sailor-Scientist Edited by Gary D. Joiner and Jimmy H. Sandefur
9. J. E. Hewitt: Commemorating Mansfield Edited by Gary D. Joiner
10. The Battle of Mansfield Song Edited by Marilyn Murrell Segura Joiner
Appendix 1. Orders of Battle for the Red River Campaign 265
Appendix 2. Mississippi Squadron Vessels
Appendix 3. Red River Campaign Time Line
Appendix 4. Julius L. Knapp Diary, January and February 1864
Appendix 5. Sidney Harding Diary Entries before March 1864 and after the Campaign
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| REVIEWS |
| Doug Cooper |
". . .this may be the best one yet by Gary Joiner, Poet Laureate of the Red River Campaign."
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| Andrew Wagenhoffer |
As Voices of the Civil War series editor Peter Carmichael writes in the foreword, Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink is a fresh attempt at a new kind of campaign history, one constructed from the ground up. Rather than a narrative dominated by generals and politicians, this superbly edited compilation stresses the individual experience, the necessarily limited perspective of a single person caught up in the swirling chaos of battle, the passage of armies, or the remembrance of defining moments of the past.
General Editor Gary D. Joiner begins the study with a brief discussion of the historiography of the Red River Campaign. The writers of the first person accounts he and his team edited are then introduced. Each account [letters, diaries, memoirs, even a song] is prefaced with a nice contextual introduction by one of the editors. Of course, the value of works of this type are limited without explanatory notes and the ones provided in this volume are uniformly excellent. The notes are lengthy, numerous, and exquisitely detailed. Exhibiting the depth of the editor(s)' knowledge, they are enormously helpful to general readers and specialist researchers alike.
While readers with no prior familiarity with the Red River Campaign may run into some difficulties in understanding the larger picture1, Joiner and his team do a fine job of tying the individual experiences to the wider events of the campaign, and also to each other where possible. For instance, Consolidated Crescent Regiment soldier James Jarratt's Mansfield memoir2 is nicely dovetailed with that of a Vermont member of Nims' Battery. These two units faced each other almost head-on at Mansfield.
In an attempt to broaden our understanding of the conduct and consequences of the Red River Campaign, both military and civilian accounts were selected. Writings of participants below officer level are rare for this campaign, and their inclusion here adds greatly to the value of the study. Some selections serve as a counterpoint to prevailing wisdom. For example, while Edmund Kirby Smith is roundly criticized in the literature, the editors chose to include a private letter sympathetic to the commanding general, written by one of his staff officers to a family member3. On the civilian front, the diary of a young woman (Miss Sidney Harding) forced to flee her home is included, along with a commemorative song written by two local ladies. The memorial theme is most prominently examined in J.E. Hewitt's monument dedication pamphlet.
Unusual for a book of this type, Thin Mud is well stocked with cartography, photos, and other illustrations. Maps range from large area views to detailed tactical expositions. The Mansfield maps are particularly well done, both for their level of detail and for their close relationship with the text (e.g. Joiner placed numbers on the Mansfield maps, that, as indicated in his explanatory notes, correspond to places and events described in Jarratt's detailed memoir).
Five appendices provide both standalone information and supplementary materials. Orders of battle are included, along with a listing of Mississippi Squadron vessels and a helpful campaign timeline. Additional annotated Harding and Knapp diary entries are placed here.
A multifaceted work that delightfully exceeded my expectations, Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink is a uniquely valuable addition to the historiography of the Red River campaign. I heartily concur with Carmichael's stated hope that prospective Voices editors will seek to emulate for other campaigns the interpretive approach4 that Joiner and his team have so successfully employed with this one. Highly recommended.
Notes:
1 - For these readers, the campaign timeline included as an appendix should be quite helpful in this regard. For a quick but thorough introduction, I would recommend Ludwell Johnson's classic Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War or Gary Joiner's One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End .
2 - Jarratt's remembrance is one of the finest personal accounts covering the Red River Campaign; it's only enhanced by the fact that the author grew up near the battlefield and is intimately acquainted with the landscape. Although written decades after the battle, his articulate account is richly detailed and challenges many of the established interpretations of events from the Battle of Mansfield.
3 - Lt. Cunningham's case is not persuasive, but it is illustrative of the fact that no officer is universally condemned.
4 - That's not to say this newer approach is better than more traditional ones. It's an added piece of the puzzle. When considered in isolation, it has relative deficits of its own, regardless of what one feels about the artificiality of narrative history. |
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| Jeff Patrick - Civil War News |
Reviewer: Jeff Patrick
Jeff Patrick is an interpretive specialist with the National Park Service at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Republic, Mo. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in American history from Purdue University.
Review:
Thanks to two recent works by Gary Joiner (Through the Howling Wilderness and One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End), Civil War scholars have gained a new appreciation of the Trans-Mississippi’s largest campaign.
Dr. Joiner continues to expand our knowledge of the 1864 Union offensive with his latest work, Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink, an excellent collection of first-person narratives and, as historian Peter Carmichael believes, the first volume in a “new genre of campaign studies.”
Joiner and his fellow editors have assembled an impressive array of voices to tell the story of the ill-fated federal adventure from many different perspectives. Southern civilians, Confederate and Union enlisted men, company and regimental commanders, staff members, generals and even naval officers come to life through these well-chosen diaries, letters and memoirs.
Poignant, wonderfully detailed stories make this book a delight to read. James A. Jarratt of the Consolidated Crescent Regiment, for instance, wrote vividly of his combat experiences, recalling how he saved an unresisting Yankee from death at the hands of a Texan, then how the same “brave little Texan” met his end (likely by friendly fire). Jarratt also freely admitted a lack of confidence in his commanding officer: “There was a plenty of the privates more capable of commanding a regiment than he was,” he believed.
Confederate B.E. Ballard wrote his sister in May 1864, reporting the death of her husband at the battle of Yellow Bayou. With his eyes “full of tears,” he asked her to take the loss as easy as possible, for “Youth and vigor soon will flee, blooming beauty loose its charms, all that’s mortal soon will be Enclosed in deaths cold arms. But the Christian shall enjoy health and beauty in a home for beyond this worlds allure.”
Texan F.B. Harris described how a piece of solid shot narrowly missed him, and how he thought he was mortally wounded, “or seriously frightened, or struck with and [sic] earth quake, or Vesuvius had opened, or hell had broke loose.”
When her husband joined the Confederate Army, Louisianian Elizabeth Samford managed the family farm. When the armies collided close by, she heard the cannonading, wondered about the fate of her husband, and anxiously asked for news from each courier that galloped down her road. “I will never forget the day & its agony & suspense,” she wrote many years later.
On the Federal side, a soldier known only as “Thomas” wrote a letter on the battlefield, using his cap for a desk. He described the fighting at Pleasant Hill, “a terrible spot,” with the Union forces outnumbered and low on ammunition and bodies scattered around them, some literally blown to bits so they were unable to tell friend from foe.
“I don’t know why they call this place Pleasant Hill,” he wrote. “Seems darned unpleasant to me right now.” Despite the grim situation, he confidently ended his letter with the words, “We will whip them. You can bet on that.”
Thomas Hayden, a member of the 38th Massachusetts and a Red River survivor, perhaps summed up the pessimistic Federal point of view best of all: “Soldiering out here is no joke.”
In addition to these accounts, extensive notes help the reader understand the context of each item and add important details and clarification. Orders of battle for operations in Louisiana and Arkansas, a list of Union vessels deployed in the campaign and an extensive timeline round out this fine addition to the “Voices of the Civil War” series.
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