Silent Cavalry

July 1, 2023

Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist Raines, a former executive editor of the New York Times, introduces us to the First Alabama Cavalry, USA, 2,066 white Alabamian farmers who fought for the Union. As at least one of his forbears was among them, Raines offers family saga as well as history, plus a detective story of sorts as he reveals how he tracked down the First Alabama's story and efforts of resistant Southerners to squelch it. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2023
A fresh history of an unknown corner of the Civil War. During the war, many southerners sided with the Union and joined the bluecoat army; whole counties seceded from their parent states and declared themselves to be part of the U.S. The First Alabama Cavalry was formed with men from hilly northern Alabama, and especially the "Free State of Winston." They fought from the Battle of Shiloh to the end of the war, participating in Sherman's March to the Sea and the siege of Atlanta and taking heavy losses. According to Pulitzer Prize winner Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times, its obscurity is by design, a product of the Lost Cause myth. The champions of that myth, whose history Raines carefully traces, took great pains to erase any hint that the Civil War had anything to do with slavery and instead insisted that secession was a reaction to federal overreach. That commonly held revisionist view would have come as news in Winston County, which, not coincidentally, had the fewest enslaved residents in the entire state. "In general," writes Raines, "these upland southerners shared the attitude of President Andrew Jackson that the Union was too important to be dissolved over slavery, and that no state had a right to withdraw unilaterally." A network of Southern historians from Reconstruction onward erased such dissenters and their resistance from memory; Raines finds evidence in the very archives of the state, one of the central sites where "Alabama scholars expended thousands of hours in denial." The book is rich in information and implication, if repetitive and overlong. Still, it's a hoot to watch Raines dismantle Shelby Foote, "the wily Mississippian," and shred one Confederate--and now neo-Confederate--lie after another. A much-needed addition to the demythologizing literature of the Civil War.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 9, 2023
Former New York Times executive editor Raines (Whiskey Man) unearths in this resonant and lyrical account the long-buried history of a Southern military unit, the First Alabama Cavalry, that fought for the Union. An Alabama native, Raines explores his state’s “subterranean narrative” alongside his own family’s history as Southern Unionists. When the Civil War began in 1861, the state’s Unionists, including Raines’s own great-great-grandfather, went “lying out” in north Alabama’s hill country to avoid Confederate conscription. As Federal troops made their way into the region, Union officers recognized the potent patriotism of the Alabama Unionists. Formed in 1862, the First Alabama Cavalry went on raids to sabotage Confederate communications, marched with Gen. William T. Sherman’s forces across the South, and contributed to the fall of Vicksburg and the destruction of Atlanta. A large chunk of the book is dedicated to exposing the “scholarly cabal that disappeared the First Alabama,” and includes incisive and damning portraits of the historians and writers­—among them Confederate general Jubal Early, Thomas and Marie Owen of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and novelist Edward A. Pollard­—who originated the Lost Cause historiography that effectively silenced anti-slavery white Southerners. Throughout, Raines delivers a superlative study in what makes history “history.” This genealogical detective story is both a delight to read and an important corrective.

November 10, 2023
Journalist and memoirist Raines (The One That Got Away, 2006) assumes the role of "sporadic but persistent recreational historian" and settles more than a few scores along the way in this leisurely exploration of the role his Scots-Irish ancestors from the Appalachian hills of northern Alabama, along with others, played as Union soldiers in Sherman's March to the Sea at the end of the Civil War. Taking frequent detours and crafting colorful portraits of heroes and, more especially, villains, Raines tells the story of how the members of the First Alabama Cavalry served as spies and arsonists for Sherman. He also thoroughly trounces the "Lost Cause" historians, whom the author believes were embedded at Columbia University as well as at most major southern universities, for their role in covering up the existence of Union soldiers from the South. While the book is likely to appeal primarily to devotees of Civil War history, its revelations about the part Southerners played in the Union armed forces should prove enlightening even for more casual readers.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.