Homegrown Yankees:
This volume tells the story of the loyal Tennessee cavalry and mounted infantry who fought throughout the Western Theater, from the prairies of Mississippi to the mountains of North Carolina. Not only Unionist Tennesseans served in these battalions and regiments; their ranks were filled out by Tory Alabamans, Carolinians, Kentuckians, and even Confederate deserters. Many of the “Homegrown Yankees” spent most of their service time close to home protecting railroads and bridges, as well as chasing down Confederate raiders and guerrilla bands. Fighting against guerrillas, often their neighbors, proved to be brutal and savage for both sides: no holds barred and no taking of prisoners. Tennessee Unionists also took part in many campaigns, battles and raids: the battles of Okolona and Fort Pillow, the Tullahoma, Atlanta and Nashville campaigns, the Saltville Raid and Gen. George Stoneman’s last raid against the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad. During the Tullahoma Campaign, Union cavalry, including loyal Tennesseans, defeated Confederate cavalryman Gen. Joseph Wheeler at Shelbyville, Tenn. During the Atlanta Campaign, Tennessee Tories defended Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s lines of communication. Stoneman’s last raid did much to deny an escape route for Gen. Robert E. Lee’s retreating Army of Northern Virginia. Of course, the Tennessee Union cavalry was not always successful. When they faced the legendary Confederate Cavalryman Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest at Okolona and Fort Pillow, they did not fare so well. I found a special interest in this book — one of the major protagonists, Capt. Joseph H. Blackburn, personally captured my great-grandfather, Pvt. John C. Durham of the 6th Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, during Wheeler’s Sequatchie Valley Raid. Homegrown Yankees is a well-researched volume that necessarily covers a lot of ground. The field of action includes the entire area between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico and between the Mississippi River and the North Carolina Piedmont. James Baggett keeps this vast story organized, never getting lost in minutiae. I highly recommend this volume to anyone interested in Union cavalry operations and the war in the Civil War’s Western Theater. Reviewer: Robert L. Durham Robert L. Durham is a computer specialist. A longtime Civil War buff, he is also interested in Old West history and has written articles and book reviews for Alamo Journal, True West, Journal of the Alamo Battlefield Association, and Alamo de Parras web site at www.flash.net/~alamo3 |
Photographs, maps, footnotes, appendix, bibliography, index, 444 pp., 2009, Louisiana State University Press,