Book Review: In the Thickest of the Fray: Mississippians at Gettysburg in Their Own Words

In the Thickest of the Fray: Mississippians at Gettysburg in Their Own Words. By Joseph L. Owen and J. Douglas Ashton. Winston Salem, NC: Fox Run Publishing, 2024. Softcover, 242 pp. $24.95.

Reviewed by Scott Bumpus

It is often asked, do we really need another book about Gettysburg? Library shelves are lined with books from the campaign and battle, to legacy and memory, and all points in between. I believe that as long as there are new stories to tell, there is room on the shelf for more. In their new book In the Thickest of the Fray: Mississippians at Gettysburg in their Own Words, Joseph L. Owen and J. Douglas Ashton have found a way to tell a familiar story from a new perspective.

The book mainly focuses on the experiences of the three predominantly Mississippi brigades of William Barksdale, Joseph Davis, and Carnot Posey and their experiences during the Gettysburg Campaign. Davis’s and Barksdale’s participated in some of the heaviest fighting of the battle.

The book’s preface serves as an introduction to antebellum Mississippi and the men who served in her three brigades, including short biographies of Posey, Barksdale, and Davis. It also provides backgrounds on the regiments themselves. There are six chapters: one dealing with the march into Pennsylvania, three for each day of battle, one for the retreat and aftermath, and one dedicated to the casualties suffered in the campaign. An appendix of Confederate recruitment and an order of battle round out the book.

For those unfamiliar with how the fighting occurred at Gettysburg and looking for a detailed tactical study of the role of the Mississippi brigades, this is likely not the book to begin with. Look to Harry W. Pfanz’s Gettysburg: The First Day (UNC Press, 2001) for Davis’s fighting in the railroad cut. Read Jim Hessler’s and Britt Isenberg’s excellent study of Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard (Savas Beatie, 2019) to understand Barksdale’s charge, and the numerous volumes on Longstreet’s assault for Davis’s fighting during that legendary July 3, 1863, charge. Owens and Ashton begin each chapter with a quick narrative of the action (footnoting both above referenced books), but their book is more a collection of the words of the soldiers themselves and how they saw their action and most importantly, how they remembered their exploits.

While not a tactical history, the book serves as a study on Civil War memory. After Owen and Ashton’s narrative opening each chapter, they rely on the words of the participants themselves, drawing on a treasure trove of contemporary source materials made up of letters home and to newspapers, diaries, etc. Much of their witnesses’ writings come from post war sources: letters to each other, articles for Confederate Veteran magazine, columns in newspapers, etc. They document how time and age altered the way that veterans saw their service and the fighting they experienced. The book chronicles the struggles that veterans endured in trying to make sense of their service and their attempts to patch the holes in their memories. It also includes writings and memories from their adversaries. Included are well known names like Col. Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin and his letter to a member of the 2nd Mississippi seeking additional information on their fight in the railroad cut on July 1.

The authors make little attempt to correct the veterans in the obvious instances where their memories fail them. Rather, the book shows how little a veteran might have understood about the battle other than the small window that existed immediately around him. One example was a letter from a member of the 21st Mississippi in Barksdale’s brigade describing the counterattack by Col. George Willard’s New Yorkers as his assault reached its zenith. He makes no mention of Willard, but instead references the 1st Minnesota being ordered by Gen. Hancock to charge into his front. Today we know that the 1st Minnesota did not attack Barksdale, but rather was involved to the north in the repulse of Cadmus Wilcox’s Alabamians. Placed in the shoes of James O. Matthews as he wrote his 1913 letter to the Richmond Times Dispatch, we can empathize that he didn’t have access to these so many volumes of study on the battle that we have.

Causation of the war and secession only occupy a couple of paragraphs in the book. The authors did not minimize the importance of slavery to antebellum Mississippi, but little more of it is mentioned. This is not surprising given that the bulk of the memories taken from the veterans were well after the war during a time when slavery’s role was being minimized. Lee’s army was accompanied by hundreds of camp slaves and body servants, many of whom followed members of the Mississippi brigades to Gettysburg. However, these silent participants receive mention scant few times, and even then, only as evidence of the paternalistic post war “faithful slave” trope so often portrayed in postwar writing.

Therefore, this book really chronicles the experience of “White Mississippians,” the fighting soldiers of Mississippi, and as such, I can find no fault in the authors for not writing the book they didn’t set out to write. Obviously primary source material from the enslaved perspective is certainly less available, but I can’t help but feel that its inclusion would have greatly enriched this study.

In the Thickest of the Fray is so much more than a love letter to Mississippi, though the forward from Gettysburg National Military Park Ranger and noted Mississippian Matt Atkinson might bolster that notion. That said, the book provides a fascinating look into how veterans remembered their Gettysburg experiences and how they found catharsis in the years following the war by writing about their times in the ranks. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Mississippi, the battle of Gettysburg, and postwar memory.

 

Scott Bumpus is a 6th generation native of West Tennessee and an amateur “armchair” historian.  As a child, he fell in love with Civil War history on a family trip to Shiloh and from learning about his family connections to the period. Scott earned his bachelor’s degree in Radio-Television and another in Cinema-Photography from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is also a partner in the family motorcycle business. Scott enjoys spending his spare time on Civil War battlefields, playing with his grandson, reading, and attending Civil War symposiums such as the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, the Seminar in the Woods at Chickamauga, and others. He is a passionate fan of Chicago Cubs baseball, music, and my bride Angie and our 3 kids. He currently lives in Mercer Tennessee.

 



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