Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union, 1863-1865
In February 1862, following the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, Confederate forces evacuated Nashville. The Tennessee city thus became the first Rebel state capital to fall to invading Union forces. The Yankees occupied the city for the rest of the war and, in reduced force, for a while thereafter. In 1985 Walter Durham published Nashville: The Occupied City covering the first 17 months of Federal control. The book under review here appeared two years later and dealt with the last two years of Nashville’s wartime experience. The present edition is a reprint of the 1987 work. The author has added a new Preface giving a brief summary of studies published over the two decades since the book’s first appearance. The text, footnotes and so on have not been altered. Even the erroneous references to General “John” (rather that James) Harrison Wilson have been left as they were in 1987. The bulk of the work covers the way in which Nashville and its people reacted to the presence of Union military and civilian officials. Much of this falls under the heading of what the modern military calls “civil affairs and military government.” Such matters include the treatment of the press, medical care and public health, relations between soldiers and civilians as the latter adjusted to the presence of the enemy, regulation of travel and trade, refugees (which included runaway slaves then called “freedmen” or “contrabands”), and support for ongoing military operations in the surrounding region. This last category involved mostly logistical work for the advancing Union armies. For the most part Durham wisely avoids any detailed coverage of battles in the area. His focus is on the city and its people. The book suffers from the lack of a map of Nashville — especially lamentable because of frequent references to specific streets. At times the lists of people involved in this or that activity — a curse of much local history — cause the eyes to glaze over. History is not simply lists of facts (or people) but rather an attempt to explain. Civil-military relations became an important part of the war as Yankee armies overran more and more of the Confederacy. Studies such as this, of individual cities and the problems that prolonged occupation presented to both the occupying forces and the civilians of the area, can help us develop an appreciation for this crucial facet of the conflict. Nashville, as the large Confederate city longest under Federal occupation, is an important part of that story. Reviewer: Richard M. McMurry's latest book (edited) is An Uncompromising Secessionist: The Civil War of George Knox Miller, 8th (Wade's) Confederate Cavalry. |
Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 368 pp., 2008 reprint. The University of Tennessee Press, 110 Conference Center, 600 Henley St., Knoxville, TN 37996-4108, $45 plus shipping.