Shelby's Great Raid: a sneak peak at my next Civil War history book

Osprey Publishing just sent me an advanced author's copy of Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863. Earlier this month I blogged about the advance copy I received of my Armies of the Adowa Campaign. As usual, the artist and layout people have made me look good. It's nice writing for a company where everyone cares about their job. That's not as common as it should be in the publishing industry.

This book focuses on one of the Civil War's longest cavalry raids--Confederate cavalryman J.O. Shelby's ride up from Arkansas and through Union-held Missouri. His raiders destroyed infrastructure, skirmished with Union detachments, captured small forts, and led thousands of bluecoats on a merry chase that almost ended in disaster for Shelby at the Battle of Marshall.

This raid secured Shelby's reputation as one of the greatest raiders of the Civil War. Two earlier raids he was on, led by General Marmaduke, are also covered. The book comes out in October.

Shelby was on Price's 1864 invasion of Missouri and is mentioned briefly in my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, which also comes out in October. Shelby makes an appearance in the as-yet-unnamed sequel. One of the protagonists in that book is in Shelby's Iron Brigade, but deserts in order to fight the war within the war, the battle between Order and Chaos. The second book will be out sometime in 2012.

Guest blogging over at Osprey Publishing

I recently did a guest post over at Osprey Publishing's blog about some medieval cannon I saw at a Spanish castle. Here's a closeup of one of them. While it looks crude, it was certainly better than at least one Confederate cannon used in Missouri. At the Battle of Athens on 5 August 1861, the Confederates had a cannon made of a hollowed out log. I doubt the Union troops were surprised when it blew up the first time the rebels tried to fire it! Check out my writing blog for another image that didn't make it into the guest post. I took a lot of photos at this place!

Civil War Photo Friday: South Carolina men in blue

While this blog generally sticks to the Trans-Mississippi theater, I do occasionally pull in related material. This image from the Library of Congress shows the South Carolina Flying Artillery in 1861. It was a former state militia outfit that had been issued blue uniforms. The color coding of blue vs. gray took some time to be established, and the caption to this photo, which comes from The Photographic History of the Civil War published in 1911, indicates that these men wore blue throughout the war.

They weren't the only ones. The First Kansas Colored Volunteers, which was the first black regiment to see combat when they defeated a larger force of rebel bushwhackers at Island Mound 29 October 1863, wore gray uniforms. At the Battle of Wilson's Creek, the detachment of the Union army under Col. Franz Sigel confused the advancing 3rd Louisiana for the 3rd Iowa, a Union regiment that wore gray. They didn't realize their mistake until it was too late!

Guest Post: Bringing History to Life

Today we have a guest post by genealogist and novelist Dr. Clyde W. Payne, who with his son Jerry Payne has written the novel Beyond the Door, based on their ancestors' experience in the Civil War. You can learn more about the book and its authors at their website.

For each of us, at the heart of all the shared destinies, is our family: our fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles and aunts—all exist forever in some part of what we are and what we do. These close family connections are as inescapable as life, as inevitable as death, and even if you somehow shut them out of your waking reveries, they remain a part of everything that moves, molds, and renews you


As a genealogist for at least the past twenty years, my interest in family roots has expanded into recognizing the voices of the people who lived the Civil War as members of our family. In listening to those voices, you really get a sense of who these men are, and that they are real people. It makes history a lot less about dates and places and times and more about the human story. Let’s put words into the mouths of our ancestors—let them help us tell their stories.

And it’s in this direction I began to follow the Civil War road with the 101st Pennsylvania Volunteers. One member in particular, a distant uncle, was David Wesley Horner, a private in Company H. During the search, Horner’s life and death as a soldier piqued my interest when I found that the members of the 101st were eventually captured at Plymouth, South Carolina, with most sent to Andersonville. Our book title, Beyond the Door, of course, refers to the entrance into the hell that was Andersonville prison.

After further research which, among other things, allowed me to acquire copies of seven original letters of Private Horner, my interest in the Civil War was again sharpened, to say the least! This was the true beginning, where I chose to build a story around this regiment of captured soldiers, and follow two of them through their plan of escape from Andersonville. I’ve tried to make the characters come alive as heroic, yet, very naïve young men.

Apart from the actual battles, events, and locales that figure in my narrative, the two principal characters are a representative pair of boys whose lives mirror so many others who became caught up in the fervor, but faced massive disillusionment and the darkness of despair and desperation along the way.
With my son, freelance writer G.S. Payne, we’ve developed a story about survival and related themes—universal themes about fear, courage, and humanity.

Happy endings? Perhaps if we hang onto our lives long enough, we may be able find focus on such things that we experience in this world. If we continue to delve into the world of genealogy, we’re bound to find elements that motivate us to want to further dig into our past. But, in order to provide the sparks of life, we need to provide the footsteps, the beat of a drum, the turn of a smile, the crack of a rifle, a falling tear or two from the eyes, and a satisfaction with ourselves when we put pencil to paper (or finger to a  computer) and make history live.

I'm on Goodreads!

I just got an Author's page on Goodreads. This will give me another venue where I can interact with readers and writers and talk about my books. It also streams this blog. I'm still feeling my way around the site and meeting people. If you know me and/or like my books, drop on by and friend or fan me.

There's no such thing as an insignificant skirmish

Civil War researcher Carolyn Bartels once counted all the recorded battles and skirmishes in Missouri and came up with about 1,100. The real number was surely higher. Some affairs were so small they recieved only passing mention in a few letters or newspapers so obscure they got missed by even as tireless a researcher as Bartels. Others may not be mentioned in any surviving record at all.

In Missouri we tend to remember only a dozen or so big battles, yet these smaller skirmishes probably account for a higher death toll than Wilsons' Creek, Westport, Lexington, and all the other famous fights combined.

We've just had the 150th anniversary of two skirmishes near Kirksville. I'd never heard of them and until I read Bartels' handy The Civil War in Missouri Day by Day. According to the Official Record, Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, shown here in this Wikimedia Commons image, had sent forward 500 men of the Third Iowa to establish control in and around Kirksville. Another 500 Home Guards (Unionist militia) were also in the Kirksville area. Hurlbut was worried about a nearby rebel force he estimated to number 2,000. Hurlbut soon followed with the rest of his force to Kirksville, but in the meantime the Iowa detachment got in a few skirmishes. Hurlbut's report of August 21 reads in part,

"Before my arrival Corporal Dix, of Company C, Third Iowa, with a few Home Guards, was surrounded by a large body of rebels, and after a most desperate resistance, in which five of the enemy were killed, the corporal was killed and his detachment dispersed. The enemy laid out his body decently, and sent notice to this camp. The body was recovered, and buried with military honors.

Having learned on my arrival that his weapons were in the same neighborhood, and probably in custody of a man named Jackson, on whose ground the rebel camp on Bee Branch was situated, and well known to have furnished large supplies to them, I sent a strong body into that neighborhood, who recovered the weapons, and found at Jackson's house some fourteen rebels, guards on one of their officers, severely wounded in the skirmish with Corporal Dix. The rebels fled, and were fired upon. One, a man named Brown, From Schuyler County, was killed; Jackson wounded in the knee, and brought in, with three others, prisoners. The others escaped. The officer was too severely wounded to be moved, and was left on parole."

As far as I know, no historic plaques mark the spot of these two skirmishes, and no book has been written about them. A military historian would be tempted to shrug off these affairs as insignificant, and I suppose compared to the big picture they are. They certainly weren't insignificant to Colonel Dix, the man named Brown, and the others killed. Or their families. And did that severely wounded rebel officer survive? Did Jackson ever walk again after being shot in the knee?

By focusing on the big battles, we tend to forget the daily fights that led to misery and suffering on both sides. So let's remember just for a moment these two skirmishes, not on the 150th anniversary of when they happened, but on the 150th anniversary of the day when the families of Dix, Brown, and those five other men received the bad news.

Civil War Photo Friday: a tinclad on the Missouri River

One of the reasons Missouri was so important to both sides in the Civil War was its waterways. The eastern boundary of the state is defined by the Mississippi River, the lifeline for the region's industry and agriculture. The Missouri River, flowing from west to east, neatly cuts the state in half and was important as a commercial waterway for Missouri and Kansas.

While the Union firmly established control of the Missouri River at the first significant battle in the state and indeed the whole country, The Battle of Boonville, fighting over the Mississippi raged the entire war. The Union took Vicksburg in 1863 and the river became a waterway for naval gunboats, but the Confederacy never stopped harassing shipping.

This picture is of the USS Naiad, taken in 1863. This stern-wheel steamer was fitted with armor and eight 24-pounder guns. It patrolled the rivers and fought Confederate artillery batteries that were firing on shipping from the shore. That strange rake-like device on the front was a minesweeper. Mines were in their infancy in those days, but the infernal devices appeared on land and at sea. The Civil War Daily Gazette has an interesting post about the first river mines (called topedoes back then).

The Naiad was sold after the war, renamed the Princess, and sank at Napoleon, Missouri, in 1868.

My Civil War novel, A Fine Likeness, only indirectly touches on the naval aspect of the war. Captain Richard Addison's only surviving son, Allen, serves on board the USS Essex. While we only hear about Allen through letters, he's one of the protagonists in the sequal to A Fine Likeness. More on his historic ship in a later post!
[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]