Customer Reviews

Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans (Civil War America)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Author Pierson is a scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and I guess one should not be surprised that the primary hero of this work is Benjamin Butler, a powerful Democratic politician from Lowell, Massachusetts. But the title refers to the mutiny at Fort Jackson, one of two Confederate forts guarding the approach to New Orleans on the lower Mississippi River. The author essentially finishes with discussing the mutiny on page 34, and then starts his discourse on the Union sentiment in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana.

Since the author was unable to locate any sources from the mutineers themselves, his entire discussion is built on evidence and clues from the actions and writings of others. His approach is scholarly, and for that he is to be commended, but in the end one wonders if the author's anti-southern bias that peeks through occasionally didn't have as great an effect as his evidence. For example, he repeatedly states his theme, "We will understand why the United States proved to be the nation of choice for so many of the world's people in the nineteenth century. We will see, rising out of pain and fear, the promise of America." And also, "Silent though they may be in the archives, their (the mutineers) actions will tell us a great deal about why the United States became the nation of choice for so many of the world's free people in the nineteenth century." The mutiny of over three hundred men facing eventual (but not immediate) defeat and capture evidently proves that for the author. Seems rather overblown and much like the non-historian, Ken Burns, to me.

The policies of the Confederacy and the attitude of its people come in for substantial criticism, and not only over slavery, but also for the treatment of immigrants, most notably from Germany and Catholic Ireland. The author overlooks the contributions from individuals such as Pat Cleburne, and the fact that most recent immigrants to the Confederacy were loyal to the Confederacy. However, he is correct that pockets of Unionism among the immigrants existed, most notably among the Germans in Texas (Fredericksburg, New Braunfels) where disloyalty was punished by massacres by the Texans, and among the Catholics of Southern Louisiana. They had brought with them Civil Law adherence and the class warfare politics then convulsing Europe.

As the author must surely know, conscription became the policy of both the Union and the Confederacy during the war, and conscripts almost always performed less well than volunteers, but actual mutinies or refusal to fight were extremely rare occurrences. I am only aware of one in the Army of Northern Virginia (the refusal of Jackson's men under Stuart at Chancellorsville to attack on the second day), and that was clearly in response to the loss of their leader. Perhaps other readers can come up with more examples, but the Fort Jackson incident was clearly the most egregious in that a large group of soldiers who were in no immediate danger chose to mutiny, abandon their positions, and essentially go over to the enemy, taking the oath of allegiance so as not to be considered prisoners of war.

The reason for the mutiny is concluded by the author to be the Union sympathies of the German and Irish Catholic soldiers who were either coerced into enlisting or found themselves in Fort Jackson after joining the army for the economic benefits allowing them to escape poverty and joblessness. In any case, supposedly they were more Unionist in sympathy than for the Southern society that they supposedly saw as oppressing them. One wonders why the Irish Catholics in the North when faced with similar oppression from nativists fought so well for the oppressors on their side. However, the critical question concerning how the mutiny became so well-organized and came as such a surprise to the officers in the Fort is skipped over. As the padding in the message from Nimitz to Halsey said, "The world wonders."

Lastly, the author's lauding of Butler's rule by martial law is at the very least suspect. The local Confederate politicians and their big-city machine in New Orleans is depicted as odious, inept, and injurious to immigrants and those of Unionist sentiment. Supposedly Butler corrected all that. The reader should note that this is a revisionist approach, and would be well advised to seek other, more traditional sources. Americans are well acquainted with big city political machines and their faults, so little more needs to be said. Suffice it to say that at least two Presidents have come out of big city political machines (Obama and Truman), as have a number of high ranking politicians (Nancy Pelosi, the daughter of D'Alesandro, the Baltimore boss, comes immediately to mind.)

The book is relatively short, but in many respects the author has worked hard to even achieve the length that it is (191 pages.) I thought the treatise to be more appropriate to a magazine article with the stuff left out about how the immigrants voted with their feet, hearts and minds for the United States instead of the evil Confederacy. That being said, there is much good and scholarly work here, even if the analysis rests on little or inferential evidence. It is worthy of a read, but not of much discussion or contemplation. In my opinion, there is an excellent story here, but quite possibly the passage of time and obliteration of the sources has made it impossible to unearth.

I'm surprised some fiction writer hasn't grabbed on this incident and written a best seller from it -- it is wide open for one.

In my opinion the author had a poor understanding of the battle or the times and the text is filled with inaccuracies. The obvious is restated page after page for him to make some point that few would dispute. Yes, the troops left to defend New Orleans were not first line troops those had long ago departed for the fronts in Tennessee or Virginia. New Orleans was the least Southern city in the confederacy, it was filled with recent foreign immigrants and northerners, it was also very dependent on trade which dried up with the onset of the blockade. We can agree not all people in the region supported the Confederacy and when times got tough many more loss faith in the Southern cause.

But the mutiny was strategically unimportant as once the forts were past there was no defense of the city. Contrary to his assertions the CSS Louisiana was not a threat to the northern fleet and it was never going to become one, it was at best a poorly positioned gun platform. There were no facilities at Fort Jackson to get it seaworthy and carpenters could not fix the problems it had.

Inaccuracies abound, there was no road north of Fort Livingston to surrender on as Fort Livingston was and is on an Island, no road has ever gone there; Camp Street has never been in the French Quarter, his dates and service of the few soldiers mentioned are often in conflict with the "Records of Louisiana Soldiers and Commands" which I believe are accurate.

Uninteresting, tedious and uninformative. If there was any value it was in the footnotes which provide references to materials that may be of some interest in their own right.

Mutiny at Ft. Jackson is a truly wonderful book and a welcome addition to anyone's Civil War Library. In less than 200 pages, Pierson invites the reader to think about New Orleans in a completely different way. This great new perspective helps us put the battle for New Orleans and the soldiers that fought it into better context. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the Civil War.

Pierson has taken on a task for himself, and the results are well worth the trouble. The problem: How can you find out why the majority of the 600 man garrison in the main CSA fort protecting New Orleans mutinied when they left no written record of their motives? The answer, apparently, is to read widely into the letters, diaries and newspapers of the time & place to develop the context in which the mutinying soldiers lived. This book told me a lot about what people in New Orleans went through in 1861, and why they might well dislike the CSA enough to rebel against it. It was one of the book's pleasures to see the author piece all of this together bit by bit.

There are many little details here, and each chapter starts with an anecdote or person. The story of Henry Snyder is very telling, for example! Throughout the book we meet southerners who supported the CSA, but the author has also found many from New Orleans who evaded CSA service, sabotaged the CSA Navy, mutinied (and not just in Ft Jackson), or just plain deserted the CSA when the chips were down. This seems more realistic and human than the "everyone in the city was a diehard Confederate" story that we have gotten from most historians. The city, after all, voted for Unionists like Douglas and Bell in 1860, not for the secessionist Breckinridge.

I didn't sense a bias here: all of these stories and letters added up to the wholly plausible conclusion that many whites in New Orleans thought that the USA would be a better government for them than the CSA. This helps to explain why New Orleans held such successful elections to the US Congress in 1862. It seems to me that there is no anti-southern bias--the book's heroes, if we think about it, are the mutineers, and they are certainly southerners. Nor is Butler glorified--at least I read it as saying that he was efficient & good at his job, but also a bit of a showman and sometimes quite brutal when he thought he had to be.

There is social history here of the soldiers and their families, balanced by an interest in the military campaign (the fighting at Fort Jackson gets chapters 1 and 4), and another two chapters on Butler's government of the city. There's a lot of new perspectives, all presented in a reasonably short, very readable book. And there are good pictures & drawings that I haven't seen before.

This book is well written and easy to read and understand. The author proposed that the garrison of Fort Jackson, the major southern fort guarding New Orleans, intentionally preformed poorly during the passage of the Union fleet to capture New Orleans and then mutinied, deserted, and that some even joined the Union ranks. There are many graphics scattered through the text, photographs of principles, numerous contemporary drawing and photographs of the restored fort to show the fort and its condition before and after the battle. The book is a unique look at an ignored incident. The loss of the forts guarding New Orleans, the largest city in the South, struck a heavy blow to southern hopes. This account of a mutiny by Southern troops in favor of Union occupation and victory is sure to arouse the ire of Lost Cause advocates who would prefer the view that all Southerners were brave and loyal to the cause. The author is hampered with no first-hand accounts left by the mutineers or their officers (one fearing reprisals and the other reprimand). Union records and accounts mention this Mutiny in describing the capture of the Forts. The author builds on period accounts of the conditions in New Orleans before and during the beginning of the Civil War to find the reasons behind the Mutiny. New Orleans was the most diverse southern city and after the initial enlistments of volunteers (troops that were sent to the east or north to Tennessee), new troops were literally pressed into service to defend the city. New Orleans had a large foreign-born population, with lots of work available to skilled tradesman and laborers in the busiest port in America where the commerce of the Mississippi basin was offloaded, stored and reloaded onto oceangoing ships or riverboats. There were strong nativist sentiments in the New Orleans so the foreign born troops felt no great love to the Southern cause and slavery was viewed as limiting oppertunities and keeping wages low. These troops could actually have hoped for a Union victory and a return to antebellum conditions with plentiful work in a busy port. Pierson also describes other Southern units from New Orleans that melted away as the men returned to their homes in occupied New Orleans.
This mutiny took place early in the war before the attitudes had hardened and many still hoped for an early peace. In another year few troops would have considered changing sides to fight for the enemy. I rank this book highly, it looks at this Mutiny as a sign of the many different factions struggling for power in the early days of the Civil War.

I will not waste to much time in reviewing this book, as the aforementioned negative review hit the nail on the head. I believe he was too kind to issue three stars. The book is very difficult to read, as the write repeats his point over and over again. He could have written a short article instead of 191 page of conjecture. According to this writer, with the utter lack of support of the lower classes, it is hard to believe the Civil War took place at all!

The mutineers at Fort Jackson serve as a window into Confederate and Union sentiments and the complex social mosaic of New Orleans. There is a careful depiction of the relationships between the elite, working class, and foreign-born illuminating the strikes, sabotage and recruitment problems of Confederate New Orleans. In addition, there is an excellent description of the quick success of Major General Benjamin F. Butler's governance of the captured city that counters the usual poor report on his time there.