A New Book in the Works

Source: Smithsonian Magazine (1979)

A few months ago I sketched out an idea for a short book that focuses specifically on the role of Confederate slaves in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Gettysburg Campaign. Well, today I can share that I am one step closer to writing that book. Last week I agreed to an informal contract with Savas Beatie publishing.

Savas Beatie focuses on military history and their Civil War catalog is quite extensive. I appreciate that their books include titles authored by academic and non-academic historians. My book will appear in a series called “Emerging Civil War,” which is a collaboration between SB and Emerging Civil War.

I’ve written extensively about this subject over the past year.

• Interpreting Confederate Slaves on the Gettysburg Battlefield

• A New Interpretive Panel at Gettysburg

• Is Gettysburg a Battlefield or Commemorative Landscape?

• ‘The World the Slaves Made’ in the Army of Northern Virginia

• When Slavery Came to Gettysburg

The plan is to write a 40,000 word book that also includes a short guidebook that you can use to tour the battlefield. Though relatively brief in length, I believe this book is going to pack a punch.

For students of Civil War military history it will offer an entirely new perspective on the battle of Gettysburg and the Army of Northern Virginia. Overall, the book will argue that the thousands of enslaved men that were forced to accompany Lee’s Confederates north into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 played an important role in the performance of the army throughout the campaign.

Historians have long been preoccupied with ideological questions surrounding the extent to which Confederate were fighting to protect the institution of slavery. Focusing on the presence of enslaved labor in the army moves us away from this question to the more revealing one of how Confederates interacted with enslaved labor—in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield—and whether the rank and file recognized slavery’s importance to the army.

I am excited about this project. Books about Gettysburg continue to be published at a steady clip and the appetite among Civil War buffs for such books doesn’t appear to be waning at all. I am also excited about working with Chris Mackowski, who is one of the founders of Emerging Civil War. Chris is a communications professor at St. Bonaventure University and is a well respected historian, who has authored and edited numerous books about the Civil War.

We recently sat down together to talk about the history wars. Check it out if you missed it.

And Chris recently invited me to contribute a short essay to one of his books about the Civil War and popular culture, which should be out in June. You can pre-order it here.

Don’t look for the Gettysburg book any time soon. I still have a biography about Robert Gould Shaw to complete. Thankfully, the project is moving steadily along.

That said, this is a book that I can work on in small stages since a good deal of the research has been completed. I also just completed a 6,000 word essay that encapsulates the project for a collection of essays edited by historians Jennifer Murray and John Kinder titled, Civil War Memories in a Polarized America. The book will be published by the University of Nebraska Press and will likely be out in 2024.

Speaking of research. I am still on the hunt for additional source material. Please reach out if you have come across references to enslaved labor in the Army of Northern Virginia in your reading and research. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

It’s an absolutely beautiful morning here in Boston. I hope it is where you live. Have a wonderful day. Otis insists on it.