Confederate Research Compendium

[Bill]

Re: Confederate Research Compendium

I received "The Unfinished Fight Volumes 1 & 2" a few days ago. I have not yet had time to read them from cover to cover, but they are filled with useful information on Confederate Material Culture. I would strongly recommend them to anybody interested in the subject.

Great Job!

[Bmanz1085]

Re: Confederate Research Compendium

Just ordered the set, looking forward to reading them.

[Craig L Barry]

Re: Confederate Research Compendium

Someone asked to see the review from Civil War News back when it came out. Joe Bilby was overly generous back in 2012. Here it is.

From Civil War News, Dec 2012

NEWS & REVIEWS OF CIVIL WAR BOOKS

The Unfinished Fight: Essays on Confederate Material Culture

There is a popular saying among the military history crowd that “amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics.” As with most aphorisms this one is of course, not entirely true. Professionals do indeed study tactics, albeit in more depth than then a guy wandering Cemetery Ridge speculating that if Pickett had broken the Union center the Confederacy would have won the Civil War in an afternoon.

Truth be told, professional soldiers and professional historians study both tactics and logistics in the realization that the former cannot be decisive without the successful application of the latter.

Over several decades of reading and writing military history, I have steadily become more interested in logistics, and area of study conspicuously absent from popular centennial accounts of the Civil War. What I have found is that many of the assumptions of that earlier commemorative era regarding small arms, ammunition, food and clothing were based on, to be kind, folklore.

Those tales, often spun by partisans of one side or the other in the years following the war, were uncritically adopted and amplified by many old-school historians. They chose to concentrate on strategy and tactics and let folklore fill in the blanks. In the decades since, many of those fictions have been disproved, but some, most notably that the range of the rifle-musket was responsible for the war’s heavy casualties, still survive in the public and journalistic imagination.

In recent years much more attention has been paid to material culture and, hence logistics. A lot of this emphasis has been due to the growth of a serious desire in the (re)enactment community to accurately portray soldiers and civilians of the era in an “authentic” manner. This trend, to my mind, is a very positive one that is leading to a happy marriage between scholars and hobbyists, wherein each group can support and assist the other in achieving its separate goals.

The Unfinished Fight, a collection of essays on Confederate material culture by Craig L Barry, seems directed primarily at the living history practitioner determined to get things right down to, at the risk of alluding to a well-worn cliché, the “last stitch.” But it is also valuable for anyone interested in how the Confederacy clothed, armed and equipped its armies. A shining example is Barry’s informative opening essay on the complicated Southern uniform supply system, frankly a chaotic mess involving issue by central and state governments, as well as individual soldiers to themselves, in the war’s initial years.

This essay is valuable to a (re)enactor looking to perfect an impression and also to the historian considering logistics and supply as part of the overall Confederate war effort.

Several of Barry’s essays deal with firearms, an area with which I am quite familiar. His state-by-state breakdown of Confederate arms availability in 1861 is particularly useful, especially his estimates of smoothbore muskets still in their original flintlock ignition configurations. Barry’s detailed description of these weapons, while not new to the advanced firearms student, is quite informative to the non-expert, and his footnotes provide leads for further study. His essays on the Austrian Lorenz in the Confederate service and the British-style cartridge for the Enfield are valuable as well because these topics are not widely covered elsewhere.

Barry’s chapter on Confederate made bayonets and knives, both Bowie and pocket styles, is of considerable interest. Unsurprisingly, the large-bladed, cumbersome Bowies so often seen on display in early war ambrotypes were often discarded early in the war in favor of more useful pocket cutlery. Both varieties were more often used as bacon-cutters than as weapons. In perhaps the most famous self-defense stabbing incident of the war, General Nathan Bedford Forrest stuck Lieutenant Andrew Gould, who had pulled a revolver on him, with a pocket knife. Gould did not survive his wound.

Other essays cover Confederate knapsacks, canteens, rations, tobacco use, the home front and more diverse topics. Some of those, including stories about Jews and Irishmen in the Confederacy, might seem somewhat off-theme. Barry, however, does an excellent job discussing all these varied subjects. An excellent technique, which he uses throughout the book, is the insertion of illustrative primary source material in the text at relevant points.

All in all, this is a very worthwhile work for the Civil War buff, whether an authentic (re)enactor or student of the war who wants to go beyond who outflanked who at Kickapoo Crossroads.

Joe Bilby, Civil War News, December 2012

[Matt Harris]

Re: Confederate Research Compendium

Craig, I just received your books, the unfinished fight, volumes 1&2, as well as the Civil War Musket. Excellent reading! Thanks for putting these together!

Please Note: Mr. Harris, I realize that you use your real name as your screen name. But please remember that as a rule here on the AC you must sign all posts with your first and last name. To prevent this from occurring again, you can go to the upper right of the screen and click settings. From there go to the left side of the screen to edit signature and you can create an automatic signature. Thank you for your cooperation. -Tyler Underwood

[dlindow]

Re: Confederate Research Compendium

Hello All!

I have long desired to obtain an item with this type of information and was excited at learning that it actually exists! Since this has been written, is there any chance more copies will be available for sale? Thank you Mr. Barry for the time you put into this enormous project.