John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of a Confederate General

I just finished reading Stephen M. Hood's book about his distant relative General John Bell Hood.  Sam Hood feels like his famous relative has had a bad time at the hands first of former Confederate officers who wanted to deflect the blame for the Southern defeat away from them and onto Hood, and from 20th and 21st Century historians and writers who have perpetuated myths and falsehoods about the General.

If you Google this book, you will find plenty on the web about Stephen Hood's bashing of other Civil War historians, especially Wiley Sword, the author of the acclaimed book The Confederacy's Last Hurrah.  Reviews and discussions of the controversy swirling around this book can be found Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here.

I don't want to wade into all the controversy.  Suffice it to say that I greatly enjoyed reading the book and I think that Mr. Hood has proven that his famous cousin has been libeled by history.  For whatever it's worth here's my two cents about General Hood.  I think that General Hood was a brave and competent officer who was given an impossible job.  In my judgment, even if the Army of Tennessee had been commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great and George Patton, by the Summer of 1864 it probably wouldn't have made too much difference.  The North had an overwhelming superiority in men and supplies and, unless the South could have scored enough victories to cause Lincoln to lose the election of 1864, military defeat was inevitable.

As to the whole controversy surrounding the Battle of Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin, I think that Hood's plan at Spring Hill was sound but he was poorly served by his subordinates who failed to block the road out of town and allowed the Union Army to slip away during the night.  While I think that Stephen Hood has conclusively proven that General Hood was not drunk or high on laudanum during the Battle of Spring Hill, I think (and if Stephen Hood reads this, this is just my opinion and is not based on any evidence) that a more physically vigorous man without Hood's devastating injuries (General Hood had an arm mangled at Gettysburg and lost a leg at Chickamauga) might have personally gone to the front and made sure that the road from Spring Hill was blocked.

What really interests me is what this book shows about how history is written and transmitted.  Mr. Hood has proven conclusively that many myths, falsehoods, half-truths and down right lies have crept into the history books about General Hood.  If this is true of a relatively modern figure like John Bell Hood, how can we rely on anything written about an ancient figure like Hannibal, Alexander or Caesar?

One of the things that Stephen Hood criticizes Wiley Sword for is playing up Hood's engagement to the Southern Belle Sally "Buck" Preston and saying that Hood ordered the assault at Franklin, TN to impress his girlfriend.  In order to play up the prurient interests of the readers of this blog, here's a picture of Sally "Buck" Preston

I enjoyed John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General.  For anyone interested in the subject, I highly recommend it.

ANDERSONVILLE: THE LAST DEPOT

I can't say enough good things about William Marvel's 1994 monograph on the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.  The book is well researched and written in an engaging narrative style.

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially called, was established after Belle Isle and other P.O.W. camps near Richmond or other areas became overcrowded and threatened by Union attacks.  The idea was to locate the prison in a remote rural area in the Deep South far from the front.

When the first prisoners were transferred from Belle Isle to Andersonville, they actually thought that the conditions in Georgia were much better than where they had come from.  Camp Sumter consisted of a wooden stockade with guard towers, called "Pigeon Roosts" at intervals, surrounding an open field with a creek running through it.  Although the original plan was to build barracks, this never came to fruition and no shelter was provided.  Prisoners lived in make shift tents and lean-tos called "Shebangs."

The real problem came when thousands and thousands of Union P.O.W.s were poured into the enclosure.  The stockade which was comfortable for 7 or 8 thousand, became a huge sewer when 30,000 men were packed inside the enclosure.  One of the biggest problems was lack of fresh water and lack of sanitation.  The creek which ran through the stockade first ran through a guards camp where it was used as a latrine.  Then the prisoners "sinks" or latrines were located along the lower end of the creek in the stockade causing the creek to back up and become one giant cess pool.  Supplying for thousands of prisoners also became a huge problem for the Confederate Army which could barely feed itself by that time in the war.  Thousands died of disease and malnutrition.

Union soldier William Smith, a survivor of Andersonville.

Photos like this enflamed the North and led to the trial and execution of Captian Wirz.

Neither side was really prepared to deal with the thousands of prisoners which they were suddenly stuck with.  During the first half of the war, prisoners were generally quickly exchanged.  The prisoner exchange broke down over the treatment of black Union soldiers by the Confederates. Confederates refused to treat black soldiers as P.O.W.s and originally threatened to hang any blacks who took arms and to treat the white officers as the leaders of slave revolts.  In the actual event, many black P.O.W.s were treated by their captors as slave labor.  Interestingly, there were several hundred blacks at Andersonville, most having been captured at the Battle of Olustee, Florida.  The Confederates refused to treat officers commanding black troops as real officers, and a Major of a black regiment was sent to Andersonville along with his troops.  (Officers and enlisted men were segregated in separate prisons).  The black troops were essentially used by the Confederates as slave labor on various projects around the camp.  Interestingly, Marvel says that the death toll among the blacks was less than among the whites because the blacks had less exposure to disease because of being allowed out of the stockade for work.

Captain Henry Wirz

Marvel is an apologist for the prison commander, Captain Henry Wirz.  According to Marvel, Wirz could not be responsible for everything he was accused of.  The peculiar command structure at Andersonville handicapped Wirz.  Wirz only had command over the Stockade itself and the prisoners.  He did not even have direct command over the guards, who were commanded by another officer.  Supplies for the prison were the job of the Post Commissary or Quartermaster and was largely beyond Wirz' control.  Marvel paints Wirz as a man of limited abilities faced with an impossible situation.  Marvel also denounces the unfair trial based largely upon hearsay and perjured testimony at which Wirz was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to hang.

Author William Marvel

13,000 Union soldiers perished at Andersonville.  The suffering endured by these American soldiers is truly beyond our understanding.  However, Marvel's book is outstanding.  Highly recommended.