William Marvel – författare

In Lincoln's Mercenaries, renowned Civil War historian William Marvel considers whether poor northern men bore the highest burden of military service during the American Civil War. Examining data on median family wealth from the 1860 United States Census, Marvel reveals the economic conditions of the earliest volunteers from each northern state during the seven major recruitment and conscription periods of the war. The results consistently support the conclusion that the majority of these soldiers came from the poorer half of their respective states' population, especially during the first year of fighting.Marvel further suggests that the largely forgotten economic depression of 1860 and 1861 contributed in part to the disproportionate participation in the war of men from chronically impoverished occupations. During this fiscal downturn, thousands lost their jobs, leaving them susceptible to the modest emoluments of military pay and community support for soldiers' families. From newspaper accounts and individual contemporary testimony, he concludes that these early recruits, whom historians have generally regarded as the most patriotic of Lincoln's soldiers, were motivated just as much by money as those who enlisted later for exorbitant bounties, and that those generous bounties were made necessary partly because war production and labor shortages improved economic conditions on the home front.A fascinating, comprehensive study, Lincoln's Mercenaries illustrates how an array of social and economic factors drove poor northern men to rely on military wages to support themselves and their families during the war.

William Marvel's The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 examines a dozen understudied Confederate and Union military operations carried out during the spring of 1864 that, taken cumulatively, greatly revived white southerners' hopes for independence. Among the pivotal moments during this period were the sinking of the USS Housatonic by the CSS Hunley; Nathan Bedford Forrest's defeat of William Sooy Smith's cavalry raid; and the Confederate army's victory at Olustee, Florida. The repulse of Union advances on Dalton, Georgia; botched Union raids on Richmond; and the capture of the Union garrison in Plymouth, North Carolina, likewise suggested that the tide of fighting had turned toward the Confederate cause. These events boosted the morale of southern troops and citizens, and caused grave concerns about the war effort in the North and in the mind of Abraham Lincoln.In late 1863 and early 1864, dejection and despair prevailed in the South: Union soldiers had vanquished Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, the Confederate nation had been cut in two, Tennessee was lost, and Braxton Bragg's army had been utterly routed at Chattanooga. Defeatism loomed in the South during the first weeks of 1864, and the ease with which William T. Sherman rampaged across Mississippi illustrated the dominance of Union forces, while Confederates' ineffectual assault on New Bern accentuated their weakness. Yet between February 20 and April 30, southern troops enjoyed an unbroken string of successes that included turning back a concerted Union offensive during the Red River campaign as well as Forrest's triumphant incursions into Union City, Paducah, and Fort Pillow. Aided by flawed strategy implemented by Union army officers, the achievements of Confederate forces restored hope and confidence in camp and on the southern home front. The Confederacy's battlefield successes during the early months of 1864 remained almost unnoticed by Civil War scholars until recently and have never been investigated in detail until now. The victories invigorated southern combatants, demonstrating how abruptly the most dismal military prospects could be reversed. Without that experience, Marvel argues, the Confederates who faced Sherman and Grant in the spring of that year would certainly have displayed less ferocity and likely would have succumbed more quickly to the demoralization that ultimately led to the collapse of Confederate resistance.

Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate myth-making as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. William Marvel shows that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee's troops were more numerous yet far less faithful to their cause than has been suggested: Lee himself made mistakes in this campaign, and defeat wrung from him an unusual display of fault-finding. Finally, Marvel proves accounts of the congenial intermingling of the armies at Appomattox to be shamelessly overblown and the renowned exchange of salutes to be apocryphal.

Between February 1864 and April 1865, 41,000 Union prisoners of war were taken to the stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 of them died. Most contemporary accounts placed the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the Confederates who administered the prison or on a conspiracy of higher-ranking officials. According to William Marvel, virulent disease and severe shortages of vegetables, medical supplies, and other necessities combined to create a crisis beyond the captors' control. He also argues that the tragedy was aggravated by the Union decision to suspend prisoner exchanges, which meant that many men who might have returned home were instead left to sicken and die in captivity.

On June 19, 1864, the Confederate cruiser Alabama and the USS Kearsarge faced off in the English Channel outside the French port of Cherbourg. About an hour after the Alabama fired the first shot, it began to sink, and its crew was forced to wave the white flag of surrender. Working with personal papers and diaries and contemporary reports, historian William Marvel interweaves the stories of these two celebrated Civil War warships, from their construction to their climactic encounter off Cherbourg. Just as importantly, he illuminates the day-to-day experiences of their crews, from the cabin boys to the officers.

Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate myth making as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. William Marvel offers the first history of the Appomattox campaign written primarily from contemporary source material, with a skeptical eye toward memoirs published well after the events they purport to describe. Marvel shows that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee's troops were more numerous yet far less faithful to their cause than has been suggested. He also proves accounts of the congenial intermingling of the armies at Appomattox to be shamelessly overblown and the renowned exchange of salutes to be apocryphal.

Between February 1864 and April 1865, 41,000 Union prisoners of war were taken to the stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 of them died. Most contemporary accounts placed the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the Confederates who administered the prison or on a conspiracy of higher-ranking officials. According to William Marvel, virulent disease and severe shortages of vegetables, medical supplies, and other necessities combined to create a crisis beyond the captors' control. He also argues that the tragedy was aggravated by the Union decision to suspend prisoner exchanges, which meant that many men who might have returned home were instead left to sicken and die in captivity.

Ambrose Burnside, the Union general, was a major player on the Civil War stage from the first clash at Bull Run until the final summer of the war. He led a corps or army during most of this time and played important roles in various theaters of the war. But until now, he has been remembered mostly for his distinctive side@-whiskers that gave us the term ""sideburns"" and as an incompetent leader who threw away thousands of lives in the bloody battle of Fredericksburg.In a biography focusing on the Civil War years, William Marvel reveals a more capable Burnside who managed to acquit himself creditably as a man and a soldier. Along the Carolina coast in 1862, Burnside won victories that catapulted him to fame. In that same year, he commanded a corps at Antietam and the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg. In East Tennessee in the summer and fall of 1863, he captured Knoxville, thereby fulfilling one of Lincoln's fondest dreams. Back in Virginia during the spring and summer of 1864, he once again led a corps at the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. But after the fiasco of the Crater he was denied another assignment, and he resigned from the army the day that Lincoln was assassinated.Marvel challenges the traditional evaluation of Burnside as a nice man who failed badly as a general. Marvel's extensive research indicates that Burnside was often the scapegoat of his superiors and his junior officers and that William B. Franklin deserves a large share of the blame for the Federal defeat at Fredericksburg. He suggests that Burnside's Tennessee campaign of 1863 contained much praiseworthy effort and shows during the Overland campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg, and at the battle of the Crater, Burnside consistently suffered slights from junior officers who were confident that they could get away with almost any slur against ""Old Burn."" Although Burnside's performance included an occasional lapse, Marvel argues that he deserved far better treatment than he has received from his peers and subsequently from historians.

Although Appomattox Court House is one of the most symbolically charged places in America, it was an ordinary tobacco-growing village both before and after an accident of fate brought the armies of Lee and Grant together there. It is that Appomattox-the typical small Confederate community-that William Marvel portrays in this deeply researched, compelling study. He tells the story of the Civil War from the perspective of those who inhabited one of the conflict's most famous sites.The village sprang into existence just as Texas became a state and reached its peak not long before Lee and Grant met there. The postwar decline of the village mirrored that of the rural South as a whole, and Appomattox served as the focal point for both Lost Cause myth-making and reconciliation reveries.Marvel draws on original documents, diaries, and letters composed as the war unfolded to produce a clear and credible portrait of everyday life in this town, as well as examining the galvanizing events of April 1865. He also scrutinizes Appomattox the national symbol, exposing and explaining some of the cherished myths surrounding the surrender there. In particular, he challenges the fable that enemies who had battled each other for four years suddenly laid down their arms and welcomed each other as brothers.

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Lincoln's Secretary of War during most of the Civil War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power, Stanton used his authority - and the public coffers - to pursue political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with a cavalier disregard for civil liberties. Though Lincoln's ability to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and personal preservation.

Born into a distinguished military family, Fitz John Porter (1822-1901) was educated at West Point and breveted for bravery in the war with Mexico. Already a well-respected officer at the outset of the Civil War, as a general in the Union army he became a favorite of George B. McClellan, who chose him to command the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Porter and his troops fought heroically and well at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill. His devotion to the Union cause seemed unquestionable until fellow Union generals John Pope and Irvin McDowell blamed him for their own battlefield failures at Second Bull Run. As a confidant of the Democrat and limited-war proponent McClellan, Porter found himself targeted by Radical Republicans intent on turning the conflict to the cause of emancipation. He made the perfect scapegoat, and a court-martial packed with compliant officers dismissed him for disobedience of orders and misconduct before the enemy. Porter tenaciously pursued vindication after the war, and in 1879 an army commission finally reviewed his case, completely exonerating him. Obstinately partisan resistance from old Republican enemies still denied him even nominal reinstatement for six more years. This revealing new biography by William Marvel cuts through received wisdom to show Fitz John Porter as he was: a respected commander whose distinguished career was ruined by political machinations within Lincoln's administration. Marvel lifts the cloud that shadowed Porter over the last four decades of his life, exposing the spiteful Radical Republicans who refused to restore his rank long after his exoneration and never restored his benefits. Reexamining the relevant primary evidence from the full arc of Porter's life and career, Marvel offers significant insights into the intersections of politics, war, and memory.