Charles Dahlgren of Natchez: The Civil War and Dynastic Decline [Hardcover]

Herschel Gower (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002

 Chronicles the eventful life of an ambitious Pennsylvanian who fought for the South in the Civil War

 Illuminates the fascinating story of three glory-seeking brothers and their families, whose personal rivalries and sectional loyalties pitted brother against brother

 Uses extensive research in diaries, memoirs, and personal papers to convey to the reader the daily life of cotton planters and slave owners in Mississippi and Louisiana

Charles G. Dahlgren came from a family that played a prominent role in the effort to preserve the Union. His older brother, John, was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy and enjoyed a measure of fame for inventing naval guns. In 1864, John's son, Col. Ulric Dahlgren, dies in a Union cavalry raid against Richmond. Charles' other brother, William, spent part of the war in England, spying on Confederate purchasing agents. In ironic contrast, Charles' compelling story evolves within the hierarchy of Southern aristocracy.

Herschel Gower eloquently traces the rise of Charles to social prominence in the South. As a young man, Charles became a protégé of Nicholas Biddle, the prominent Philadelphia financier, who dispatched him to the cotton states to look after his interests. Ambitious and in search of wealth and position, Charles established himself in Natchez, Mississippi, married an heiress, started a family, and prospered. When Mississippi seceded from the Union, he stood in defense of his cotton plantation, his ownership in slaves, and his hard-won security. In July 1861, the governor of Mississippi appointed him brigadier general of volunteers. Under criticism, he resigned the post and took an advisory position overseeing gunboat construction. Charles' fortune evaporated with the fall of the Confederacy, and his family suffered severely. After the war, he was reconciled with his brother John and returned to the North. He died a Confederate carpetbagger practicing law and accounting in New York.

Readers interested in the antebellum South, an ambitious family's struggle to attain social status, and the consequences of allegiance during the Civil War will be enthralled by Gower's provocative biography.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gower, an emeritus professor of English and American literature at Vanderbilt, adds to the marginalia of Civil War literature with this straightforward and workmanlike biography. By focusing on Dalgren, whose life was neither so insignificant as to leave no traceable record or so consequential as to interest most historians, Gower illuminates a rarely charted area, specifically the postbellum fate of once prosperous Southerners. Dahlgren was born in Philadelphia in 1811 and at 24 moved to Natchez, Miss., to monitor famed financier's Nicolas Biddle's interests. Over the next two and a half decades, Dahlgren married, was widowed, remarried, fathered 12 children and became a wealthy plantation owner, a slaveholder and a pillar of the Southern society he wholeheartedly embraced. When the Civil War erupted, Dahlgren was made a brigadier general and commander of the 3rd Mississippi Brigade, while his brother served as an admiral with the Union navy. With the South's surrender, Dahlgren lost everything; he transplanted his family to New York City, where he became an entrepreneur and a lawyer though never a financial success. Because of his connections to famous Civil War figures and his talent for self-promotion, however, he did gain some notoriety offering revisionist versions of his life to the New York press. "Perhaps no man in New York is more rich in reminiscence," mused one of his contemporaries. When Gower writes that Dahlgren's postwar difficulties "might have driven a man of less steel" to despair, readers should forgive the author his tendency toward drama; the chronicle of those later years is the book's most compelling narrative. 20 b&w photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

HERSCHEL GOWER, PH.D., is professor emeritus of English and American Literature at Vanderbilt University. His previous works include Pen and Sword: The Life and Journals of Randal W. McGavock and Jeannie Robertson, A Biography of the Scottish Folksinger. He lives in Dallas, Texas and spends summers with his family at Beersheba Springs, Tennessee.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Brassey's Inc; 1 edition (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574883941
• ISBN-13: 978-1574883947
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,233,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Immediacy of History, April 7, 2003

By 

Henry Granberry III (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charles Dahlgren of Natchez: The Civil War and Dynastic Decline (Hardcover)

Anthropologists tell us that human brains are indelibly informed by the experience of ice age survival some twenty-four thousand years ago; that adaptability and improvisation in a world of violent, cataclysmic change enabled humans to abide the destructive power of ice and satisfy the evolutionary imperative of endurance. Fast forward myriad millennia to the turbulent time of America's defining cataclysm, the Civil War, and meet Charles Dahlgren: brawler, adventurer, opportunist, patriarch, Yankee by birth and breeding, Confederate slave owner by chance and choice, and avatar of those primal qualities that exalt fortitude over fortune. Dahlgren's odyssey encompasses most of the nineteenth century and touches people representing the lavish spectrum of characters that age has to offer, from slaves to presidents, from dowagers to mercenaries, from victors to vanquished, and is masterfully rendered by Herschel Gower in "Charles Dahlgren of Natchez: The Civil War and Dynastic Decline." Using verbatim the recorded words of many, including significant passages from Dahlgren's exceptional diary, Gower combines eloquent narrative with authentic utterance to create a robust immediacy that delivers enthusiasts of history and anthropology, alike, back to the intrinsically familiar.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superbly presented work of meticulous scholarship, April 12, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charles Dahlgren of Natchez: The Civil War and Dynastic Decline (Hardcover)

Charles Dahlgren Of Natchez: The Civil War And Dynastic Decline by Herschel Gower (Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature, Vanderbilt University) is the true-life biography of Charles Dahlgren, an energetic Northerner with ambition both during and after the American Civil War. Pitted against his brother when the nation of America tore itself apart, Dahlgren sought to found a dynasty in the south but endured crushing losses in battle. His turbulent life and times make for fascinating reading in this carefully researched, up close and personal account. Charles Dahlgren Of Natchez is a superbly presented work of meticulous scholarship and is especially recommended to students of the post-Civil War era of reconstruction.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicate power with style and grace, September 14, 2002

By 

Matthew Chenoweth (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charles Dahlgren of Natchez: The Civil War and Dynastic Decline (Hardcover)

Future meet the past, and the quality of human spirit that is an integral part of modern America. Time travel is possible with Herschel Gower's beautifully written book. The story of General Dahlgren has everything necessary for a work of fiction, but this is, indeed, fact. General Dahlgren was a first generation American, a hard working self made man, a lawyer, a planter, a frontiersman, a business man who rose to greatness within his community, joined the ranks of the Confederacy in defense of his ideals, then faced bankruptcy and poverty in defeat, only to remake himself and rebuild his shattered world. Mr. Gower is not interested in hero worship, however, and the General is presented to us with intimate detail, both good and bad, both invigorating and humiliating. This intimacy is often from the General himself, who Gower allows to tell his own story at every turn. There is so much to glean from a history of this sort, from a deep and varied accounting of day to day existence to an understanding of the minds and thought patterns that shaped men's worlds in the 19th Century. Anyone who reads this work will develop an admiration for a time, place and people completely self aware, not only of surroundings, but of advantages that a lifetime can put into rare and fragile perspective. The similarities are sometimes suprising, for instance: boys playing pranks and party goers appreciating a pacificity of existence. Who today hasn't remarked that life is good? But who today could survive the daily struggle that was a 19th century life, and do so with grace, humility and humor? General Dahlgren's story is compelling and fascinating and perfectly relevant in today's world of financial boom and bust. Herschel Gower's work is impressive in scope, delicately and beautifully written and as much a page turner as any adventure novel. This book is definitely a must.