Sea Control - Sea Control 186 - The Battle of Island Number 10 with Dr. Anne Brinton

Episode Date: June 28, 2020

On the heels of the Grant miniseries, Dr. Anne Brinton joins the program to revisit some Civil War Naval Integration(TM) in the Western Theater: the Battle for Island Number 10! Dr. Brinton discusses Time, Space and Force, to include the composition of the river fleet, Commodore Andrew Foote, Commander Henry Walke and the dramatic exploits of USS Carondelet.

Hey folks, Jared here. Thanks for joining us again. Today we're doing some old-fashioned naval integration. Dr. Ann Britton is here to talk about the battle for Island No. 10 during the Civil War. Genesis for this podcast was a USNI article from earlier this year where historians and naval officers were asked to mention their most inspirational surface warfare officers, and I can't remember who it was, but somebody suggested Commander Henry Walk, commander of USS Carondelet, and his exploits at this battle. I'd also like to thank Women also know history for connecting me with Dr. Brinton for this podcast. Finally, I wanted to discuss Project Trident. Project Trident is your opportunity to shape the future of maritime

security. Our current call for articles is for ocean governance. Submissions are due July 13th. You can find more information on our website at simsec.org. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Hello, Hashimites, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we're going back in time to talk about some old-fashioned naval integration during the U.S. Civil War at the Battle for Island No. 10. Our guest is Dr. Anne Britton. Anne, welcome, and thanks for coming on. Thank you. It's great to be here. So before we start to dissect this operation, would you mind introducing yourself to the listeners?

I'm presently a professor at Northwest Florida State College, located in Niceville, which is along the panhandle of the Gulf Coast. We have just finished our spring semester. My students did a very brave job of getting through the last five weeks or so with a pivot from face-to-face instruction to online. It's good to have that in our rearview mirror. I'm a Penn State PhD, and this is my first year back in the States after six years spent overseas in Europe and Asia. Can I ask where you were in Europe and Asia?

In Asia, I was working at China Agricultural University in their international college in Beijing for two years. And then I taught for four years with UMUC, now University of Maryland Global Campus. Mostly in Germany, spent a bit of time in Italy, a bit of time in the U.K., and one very warm summer in Kuwait. Okay, so our paths may have actually crossed over there in Germany then. Were you down in Stuttgart, I imagine? More in Kaiserslautern, a little bit of time in the Bavarian bases, Ansbach and Grafenwoehr, and some time in Spangdalen and Wiesbaden. That's excellent.

Well, thank you so much for coming on. As we've done these historical episodes, we use Professor Milan Vigas, and he's from the Naval War College, to construct a space-time and force to break down everything associated with the battle. We'll step through each of those and then focus very specifically on the actions of Commander Henry Wach and USS Carondelet. So when we discuss time, we typically talk about time pressures associated with the operations execution, as well as where we are in the war at this point. So if you don't mind starting there, we're in the Western Theater of Operation. The time is February to April, 1862.

What's happened in the war at this point, both overall and then specific to the Western Theater? So, deep background. In terms of Union strategy, there are two major things going on. One in the Eastern Theater, which is focused on taking Richmond while defending the federal capital of Washington, D.C. And then we have what's known as the Anaconda Plan, which involves the constriction of the South using the blockade and then making an incursion in the West through the river system, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Mississippi, most of all. In the East, things have not gone terribly well. The Union armies are beginning, they're recovering from the loss at Bull Run in the summer of 1861. George McClellan is now in command. In March of 62, he's going to sail his troops, his Army of the Potomac, down the Chesapeake Bay, land them on the peninsula between the James and York Rivers, and begin fighting his way very, very slowly up the peninsula to threaten Richmond. And then over the summer, his strategic gains will be reversed by the generalship of Robert E. Lee.

In the West, for the Union, things look brighter. Fort Henry has fallen to a combined Union, Army, and Navy assault. This was a very weak point of the Confederate line. The fort was built low to the river. It's along the Tennessee. It was poorly constructed and not very adequately defended. The initial plan was for, and this is deep background, the initial plan was for the infantry to assault the fort from the rear while the gunboats bombarded it from the river. This didn't work out because heavy rain turned the roads into slop and delayed the advance of the army.

The job mostly got done by the Navy. Most of the fort's defenders retreated to Fort Donaldson. They left an artillery company to fight a delaying action by time, and those men did very well under the circumstances. They put up a stern resistance for two hours or more. They lost more than half their men killed or injured. Most of their guns were disabled, and then eventually they were forced to surrender the post. The Union next turns to Fort Donelson. General Grant's proposal was to take the fort within two days after the fall of Fort Henry. This doesn't quite work out. The weather slows them down again. Their gunboats need repairing after the duel with the Fort Henry defenders. And then the fighting around Fort Donelson is harder than anticipated. The plan here grants men approach Overland, and the Navy cruises in along the Cumberland River. There's an initial probing attack, which is pushed back by Donaldson's defenders. Reinforcements arrive, more gunships arrive, and they shell the fort while the troops close in. The problem here is that the Navy overshoots its targets. They take heavy damage from the rebel guns. And this is more going to be an army fight as opposed to Navy. The Confederate defenders are left with some unsavory choices. One is to surrender, which nobody wants. One is to wait for a miracle. And the third is to fight their way out. They choose to fight their way out. Their breakout attack fails. And the next day, there's a shakeup in the Confederate command because nobody really wants to be the man to surrender the fort. And some of these officers had reasons for why they did not want to fall into Union hands. But ultimately, of course, the result is unconditional surrender and a significant strategic victory for the Union.

By early April, armies of both sides are closing in on Pittsburgh Landing. There's going to be a devastating two-day battle near a small church known as Shiloh. And there's a combined operation closing in on Island No. 10. So let me ask you this real quick. I believe Henry and Donaldson, the two forts, these are Grant's first battles as a commander. Is that correct? First battles at that level of command. He's seen combat before as a regimental commander and as a brigadier.

Okay. Thank you. So for space, our concern is how does the space, in this instance, the hydrography and geography affect the operation? But before I ask that question, why is this particular piece of terrain important? Why does the Union need to take Island No. 10? Why does the Confederacy need to hold it? Island No. 10 is the next real viable barrier for the Union sailing down the Mississippi

and taking control of the Mississippi River Valley, which will cut the Confederate heartland in two. For both sides, the necessity of taking or holding the island is fairly obvious. The Union needs it so that they can push southward and continue their mission of securing control of the Mississippi River Valley. The Confederacy needs it so they can prevent that from happening. So a clash there is basically unavoidable. I'll explain in a few minutes. I'll talk in a few minutes about some of the deficiencies of the Confederate Navy. In the West, they have very few gunboats that are capable of taking on the new Yankee ironclads, which I'll also talk about in a minute.

So they mostly rely on a static defense, forts and static installations. Earlier in the year, their most formidable citadel had been at Columbus, Kentucky. The defenses there mounted 140 guns along the heights. This was known as Gibraltar of the West. Just in case something did get past it, there were several other strong points between that point in Memphis, one of which was Island 10. But the fall of Fort Donaldson forced the Confederate defensive lines in the West to contract. The post at Columbus was abandoned, and the Union was left in control of all of Kentucky. At least on paper, Kentucky sees a fairly ferocious rebel insurgency,

and they're also in control of a significant portion of Tennessee. So General Pope, John Pope, has assembled a 5,000-man army, the Army of the Mississippi. By early March, he's approaching New Madrid and Island No. 10 in Overland. New Madrid is going to fall on the 13th of March, and then several days later, the Union flotilla will arrive and begin to bombard the island. By April, they arrive at basically a stalemate. Thank you. So why is it named Island No. 10? Because that's an unusual name. It gets its name from the, it's the 10th island south of where the Ohio and Mississippi flow together. So it was never much of a geographical feature and has now mostly been nibbled away by the flow of the river.

Okay. How did the hydrography and geography affect the choices that the commanders are going to have to make? So first a little bit about the geography of the island. It was about one mile long, about 450 yards wide. There was a bit of agriculture there, slave-driven agriculture. They cultivated some fields of corn and some stands of fruit trees. The island stood about 10 feet above low water in the middle of the river at the base of a hairpin curve. So if you can picture it in your mind, the river is flowing south and then it turns almost 100 degrees, 180 degrees north at the island, runs northward for seven miles at the top and then turns south and sort of a horseshoe bend. At the top of that horseshoe is New Madrid, Missouri.

Until the town fell into Union hands, New Madrid served as the supply link between Island 10 and the Confederacy. And then at New Madrid, the river flows southward again. On the other side of the river, on the Tennessee side, you've got high bluffs, which are formidable obstacles. And then beyond them, swampy ground. So the island has been fortified. Yeah, so now we're at force. and Civil War armies, not as complex, with fewer specialties than modern armies, what do the Confederates have in defense, and who is commanding?

So I think first a little bit about the challenges of defending the island. The Confederacy had a – they fortified the island in order to block a Union incursion, but they've got a shortage of military engineers, and there are going to be some shakeups in the chain of command. and some conflicting jurisdictions that are going to make things a little tricky. The Confederate engineers relied on traditional methods, typically shore batteries and obstructions in the channel of the river itself, chains and so forth, but they're going to find themselves confronting

new technology wielded by the Union, the new ironclads powered by steam, and those traditional methods used by the Confederacy haven't been tested against steam-powered ironclads yet. The earthworks have been built by the army and by enslaved labor. There are some challenges here. This is, well, the racial politics of the Confederacy sometimes hamper their readiness. Confederate soldiers were not willing to do, in many cases, the same kind of labor done by enslaved men.

And so getting the fortifications and the earthworks built was a challenge. And there were also engineering issues, mounting heavy guns. There's a renewed attempt to fortify the island as the Confederate defensive line collapses and reforms in February. Confederate command here, a little background. The garrison commander defending New Madrid until it surrenders or until he surrenders it. And island number 10 is Brigadier General John P. McCown. He was a Tennessee native, West Point trained, like a lot of men of his generation. He served on the Western Frontier and in the Mexican-American War.

Later again, he fought the Seminoles in Florida, and he served in the Mormon campaigns in Utah. And like a lot of Southern-born military officers, when the war broke out, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army, went home and recommissioned in the Confederate service. He makes general by the end of 1861. And as the Union forces close in on Island No. 10, he's going to be promoted to major general. He's going to be transferred to Fort Pillow and replaced by Brigadier General William Wan Meckel. This is another West Point-trained officer who had spent his career in the U.S. forces, then resigned and recommissioned with the Confederacy when the war broke out. He has a bit of a challenge. He's not happy with the situation that he's inherited, the shabby defenses

and so forth, and a garrison of men who are not in good shape. The defenders of Fort, or sorry, of the, of Island 10 are, a lot of them are out of commission due to disease, childhood diseases like measles and mumps, which spread like wildfire among, you know, soldiers who weren't much more than children in their teens or early twenties in camp environments. There's a shortage of arms and ammunition and poor morale overall. Supplies are typically slow in coming, mail and pay are slow in coming, and this leaves the men unhappy. So that's the situation from the Confederate side. So, and I think I made an incorrect assumption based on what you just described to me about the Confederate situation, because I look at thinking that the Union would

have a much more difficult proposition here. They're trying to integrate Army and Naval units, which they've somewhat done successfully with Fort Henry and Donaldson, but they're going to need to execute an amphibious assault in this case. So what Union forces are available and how did the Union organize themselves? They've got a job of work ahead of them as well. We've got two entities working together. One is the Navy, of course, Commodore Andrew Foote's River Fleet, and then we have General John Pope's Army of the Mississippi on the Missouri side of the river. Foote is in command of seven ironclads, 10 mortar boats, not motor boats, but mortar boats. These are scouts armed with a 13-inch mortar. Pope's army basically controls the

Missouri side of the river. They'll have taken New Madrid by the middle of March. They're digging a cutoff canal to bring transport ships through, and this is a combined soldier and contraband labor project. Contraband, of course, is the term for African American refugees from slavery who have now found employment with the Union forces. They've got the Confederates on island number 10 in a fairly precarious position. The Tennessee side of the river is difficult to rain, and this means that it would be hard for the Union to attack from the Tennessee side, but it's also hard for the island defenders to get supplies through to maintain their communications and their supply chain. For the Union, the organization of this force is

complicated. At this point in the war, the inland Navy operations are considered army business. So there are gunboats, and we'll talk about that, I think, in more detail in a minute. Their gunboats are commanded by naval officers, but they're overall under the control of the Army. By the end of 1862, that's going to change. They'll be placed under direct Navy control. But in the spring of 1862, we have this odd hybrid situation. Thank you. You mentioned, I think, was Pope in overall command of the U.S. forces here?

And if that's the case, can you tell us about his background? He's a West Point man. He's career Army. Honestly, I think Foote's background is more interesting. Because as the Navy guy, I have no problem with saying that the Navy guy is more interesting, so please. Okay. Foote seems to have been a bit of a character. He was deeply religious.

He was a teetotaler, an absolute opponent of alcohol, which is maybe a bit outside the Navy tradition from what I understand. And he was a deeply principled anti-slavery man. So he'd actually attended West Point for a short period before commissioning in the Navy. He served all over the world, in the Caribbean, in the Pacific, the Mediterranean, the African coast. In the early 1850s, he cruised the African coast hunting slave ships, and this radicalized him. And it made him a staunch opponent of slavery and an advocate of colonization, Liberian nationhood. Later on, he served in the Asia Squadron and took part fighting alongside the British in the Second Opium War. He was, as I mentioned, he was a committed advocate of temperance. Early on in his career, he succeeded in making the USS Cumberland the first completely dry ship in the U.S. Navy, which I cannot imagine was terribly popular among the crew of the USS Cumberland. It remains unpopular. yeah and uh some historians credit him as the sort of driving force uh the time behind the

elimination of the the rum ration as the spirit ration as a naval tradition did the army and navy units have any training in what they were about to attempt let's let's come back to the question of training. There were some issues with procuring men for river service in the West and then getting them combat ready, but I'll talk about that in a minute. Okay, so you alluded to this before. Where did the U.S. Navy's riverboat squadrons come from? Were those in existence pre-war? And if so, what were they doing? The riverboat squadrons were a new thing. They were kind of improvised. The squadrons consisted of wooden gunboats, old-style wooden gunboats, ramming vessels, and tin clads. The backbone was the iron clads. I should say that those were the new

innovation, purpose-built for Western service. Their creator was a gentleman named James Eades He had a boat building business in St. Louis, and in the summer of 1861, he contracted to build seven shallow drafts suitable for river service. What ended up being constructed were kind of odd-looking. They were shallow drafts driven by a central paddle wheel. They had the machinery, and the crew's quarters were protected by an iron armor casemate. The iron here was up to two and a half inches thick. They'd been designed by a Navy man named Samuel Pook. Pook, and they kind of looked like a turtle, so these vessels are often known as Pook's Turtles.

Each carried 13 guns, and the South had little that could really stop them. So now we get into the training issue. The major challenge here is to recruit men for river service. One of the issues is that steam power was still experimental and fairly risky, and it scared off a fair number of potential sailors. There were real dangers that you wouldn't necessarily encounter if you were on a sailing vessel in the blockading squadron, for example, along the coasts. If you were on one of the wooden ships, wooden ships could be shot to pieces by enemy artillery. Tin clads felt a little exposed. The mortar boats sometimes sank themselves, apparently, under the recoil of their own guns.

Not an ideal outcome. Problematic? Yeah. The iron clads were the most technologically advanced, but they were still relatively untested. So the Navy knew that there were design problems here. Typically, the boilers were not plated heavily enough. It left them vulnerable, and sometimes they exploded. And experienced river men would have been able to identify some of these issues, and it made them very understandably reluctant to enlist. In the War Department, there was some confusion about who should be recruited for this type of service. The initial push was to recruit sailors, but then the question was raised, do you actually need sailors? This is a fundamentally different type of service than service on a sailing ship in the Atlantic or the Gulf. Would that sort of experience with ropes and sails translate well to river duty? It wasn't clear. There was some talk of assigning soldier crews to these naval vessels, but eventually they concluded that you did need men with water experience, not necessarily sailing ship experience, but you needed men who were water men, and that they needed to be trained differently than you would train sailors for more traditional duty along the coast.

But you still have the trouble of, once you've identified your ideal recruit, you still have the trouble of finding your ideal recruit. And standards had to be lowered in order to find enough men. Andrew Foote told the assistant secretary of the Navy that he would basically take anybody. He was very clear. even with, this is a direct quote, even if they are without brains, I only ask for muscle. So men were accepted for river service who had been rejected from the Coastal Navy. And the Coastal Navy was already undermanned. They were short on personnel themselves. So the men that they're turning away are probably not the finest specimens. And they recruited men who were transferring out of the army. These men were notoriously undisciplined, whether they had a Navy or an army background. A lot of them were disciplined problems already, and this is why their officers wanted them out. Admiral David Porter described these men as rubbish, which seems

a bit unkind and maybe unfair, given what they were eventually able to accomplish. But many of the men in the river service were discipline issues, men facing court-martial for things like desertion or insubordination. One officer found out the caliber of men he was dealing with and proposed a plan to whip them into shape. It involved reading the articles of war at them a lot so that they would fully understand all the infractions that they could be executed for and bringing in a preacher on Sundays to preach at them in the hopes that that would take, allow their wives to come and visit because wives and families are typically a source of social stability and positive influence and the ideology of the 19th century. And then drill them so hard they didn't have the physical energy to cause trouble. So all of this is a learning experience, getting the men recruited, figuring out who you need, and then whipping this motley crew into shape. And best of them were often contraband once the recruitment of black men proceeds. Men who wanted to serve, who wanted to fight but were reluctant to be drafted into the army also performed well in river service. And a fair number also were galvanized POWs, captured Confederate soldiers who enlisted in the Union Navy in order to escape a prison camp. Thank you. I'm going to ask this question. It's not on our list, so if you don't have the answer offhand, don't worry about it. But do they recruit along the river? I mean, all those river towns, I grew up about 40 miles away from the river in Illinois, and those river towns, they do have their own special character to them.

But it would seem to me like the people who are in those towns using the river for trade every single day or just local transportation would be kind of your ideal candidate. So, I mean, that would be the first place I would look. I don't know if people who are familiar with the river, is that what was happening? Absolutely. They would have targeted men with river experience already and men from these river towns. Okay. So finally, we've reached Carondelet and Henry Walk. What can you tell us about Henry Wach's career up to this point?

He's a career Navy man. He was a Southerner by birth, actually. He was born in Virginia, became a midshipman in the Navy when he would have been about 18, served with the U.S. fleet in the war against Mexico, made commander in the mid-1850s. And when the war breaks out, he's in command of a store ship called Supply. When the war breaks out, this is kind of interesting. He supported the Unionist forces cruising near Pensacola, Florida, and it actually got him into some trouble. It goes on along the coasts and along the Texas border as the war breaks out and as the Deep South secedes. And the garrison of Fort Barancas has taken refuge in Fort Pickens.

And Henry Walk picks up the officers, families, and the paroled prisoners, mostly men on the sick list, from Fort Pickens and sails them north to New York and then gets himself court-martialed because he's not supposed to be in New York. He's supposed to be sailing to Veracruz. he's court-martialed for disobeying orders and he's reprimanded by the secretary of the navy but it makes him a bit of a folk hero because he you know he has saved officers families and sick u.s troops and brought them home later on he's going to command a timber clad gunboat in the early western river operations and then he'll be in he'll be involved in late 1861 in the battle

of Belmont. He's going to escort General Grant's troop transports to Belmont, take part in the attack on the Confederate force there. And he's going to, it's not, the battle doesn't end well for the Union. It's a minor Union defeat, but he will allow, the presence of his gunboat will allow Grant's men to evacuate and escape destruction. In early 1862, in January, he takes command of the Carondelet, the ironclad, one of Pooke's Turtles. He takes part in the assault on Fort Henry and then, and actually is in brief command of the fort between the Confederate surrender and the arrival of General Grant, and then takes part in the assault on Fort Donaldson as well. So you had actually answered my question about what type of vessel was Carondelet,

you said she was one of Pooke's Turtles. What was Wok being asked to do as part of the assault on island number 10 before we get to that i could say a little more about the the carondelet itself yeah absolutely yeah so it's it's one of pook's turtles um like the others it has gun ports that face in all four directions and here we get a little complicated carries a variety of weapons there are a total of 14 guns three at the front four on each side and then two at the back uh at the rear. There are a mix of different types of weapons, four eight-inch smoothbores, and then rifled guns, including a 50-pounder, a 42-pounder, six 32-pounders, and so on. Ultimately, you need six types of ammunition to keep the vessel adequately armed,

and then later on, they will require seven. The Carondelet, through its heroic usually successful service in the civil war ends up fighting in more engagements than any naval vessel uh until world war ii and then after the war uh she sold at auction and in the 1870s she's due to be salvaged for scrap and ends up washing away in a storm before that can happen so kind of a kind of a yeah ignominious ending so what walk does the army commander on shore in missouri has asked for a naval vessel to run the guns of island number 10, which will hopefully allow troops to cross the Mississippi below the island. The possibility of doing this has been raised in late March, and Foote is actually very reluctant to allow this to happen. The concern is that a

gunboat would fall into rebel hands or be destroyed, and there weren't a lot of these new iron-clad, steam-powered vessels. Losing one would have been a serious blow. But by early April, it had become clear that something needed to be done. The island garrison was not surrendering. The naval bombardment was fairly fierce. People who were there at the scene said that overnight, the exchange of gunfire was intense enough that they saw men writing letters and reading the newspaper by the light of the guns. But it was clear that the naval bombardment of the island alone was not going to get the job done.

So Foote was finally persuaded to let one of his gunboats make the attempt and walk, asks for permission, and it receives permission to make the attempt with the Carondelet. His men were confident they could do the job, and then the the vessel was prepared to to carry out the mission um its deck was uh was reinforced with salvaged wood um chains were coiled over areas that uh seemed inadequately armored um the pilot house was reinforced uh wood was stacked around the boilers which were fairly vulnerable The sailors on board were heavily armed with pistols, with grenades, with cutlasses.

Hoses were attached to the boilers, so if they were boarded by enemy troops, they could turn a hose against them and scald them with water coming out of the boilers, water and steam. And then 23 sharpshooters from an Illinois infantry regiment also made the voyage. The steam exhaust pipes were adjusted to try to muffle the sound of the vessel under steam, and provisions were made so that if the vessel was captured, they could destroy the engines rather than allow a working vessel to fall into rebel hands. One of the factors that made the mission possible was the weather. The weather plays a fairly significant role in this campaign. There was a dramatic thunderstorm, and it allowed the Carondelet to make it past the guns along the Tennessee side of the river. but as they passed the island collected soot in one of the smokestacks apparently uh sent up some sparks caught fire and set up sparks and that uh alerted the the island gunners to what was going on but the the storm the lightning and so forth made it hard for the rebel gunners to take their range and their bombardment of the vessel under steam did very little damage there was a brief

duel with a floating artillery battery below the island. But the only real mishap in this mission was that the Carondelet ran ashore about 50 yards off of where they were supposed to. They'd been fired at some 47 times, but only struck twice. And then very shortly thereafter, a second vessel joins them, the USS Pittsburgh. And the two gunboats allow for Pope's army to cross the Mississippi, as planned, surround the island and force a surrender. Escape at that point was impossible for the garrison of the island, and the troops defending it were demoralized, and the island commander offered unconditional surrender in the early hours of April 8th. So what was the after effect of that battle then, as far as the continued Union campaign?

There's some debate about exactly what the Union accomplished with the capture of Island 10. Well, General Pope's official reports claims the capture of multiple high-ranking officers and seven full regiments of Confederate troops, along with 100 heavy guns, 24 field guns, and thousands of small arms. This has been disputed. And exactly what was captured when the island garrison fell remains sort of up in the air today. So the Union claim is that 7,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered. The Confederate claim was that the actual number was at least half that or even less. This was a fairly dramatic Union victory, even with that question about the accuracy of Pope's report. Union casualties were fairly minimal, which was remarkable given the length of the artillery duels and so on. When news spread of the island's surrender, it set off a wave of celebration across the north, and it was tempered somewhat by the terrible things that happened at Shiloh, another Union victory, but hugely more destructive. In the Confederacy, the result was a bit of panic, panic so severe that in Memphis, for example, the martial law had to be declared in order to maintain order. And after the capture of Island No. 10, the strategic focus of the River War moves on to Fort Pillow, Fort Randolph. Fairly swiftly, New Orleans is going to fall. This is another Army-Navy combined effort. then later in 1862, the Union will set its sights on Vicksburg

and begin the last phase of securing control of the River Valley. Thank you very much. That's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Anne Britton. Anne, where can we find you online, and what else are you working on? I can be found online on Twitter. Hang on, let me check my actual profile here. At NYBrentonPhD, I've got a couple of projects underway. One is actually forthcoming, part of conference proceedings and deals with a bit of gender history and the problem of resistance and accommodation among elite young white women in the South before the war. And I've got another project that I'm hoping to complete this summer on rebellion and the family in late war and immediate post-war Kentucky.

We often think of the Civil War as a brother's war with, you know, men at Shiloh or Gettysburg, unfortunately, confronting each other across the battlefield. But there were other ways families could be divided by the conflict. And I'm working with some documentation about the very unpleasant things that result when a unionist husband and his Confederate-sympathizing wife come into conflict over the custody of their child. I'm hoping to finish that project this summer. We'll see. We'll see. All right. I look forward to reading both of those, particularly the second one. It sounds very interesting and maybe fitting for the times that we find ourselves in now. So that being said, thank you again for coming on. And for our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Put it on your shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm put in the alley

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