Book Review: The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign

The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign. By Jon M. Nese and Jeffrey J. Harding. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2025. Softcover, 238 pp. $24.99.

Reviewed by Peter Miele

It is probably safe to say that one of the top three questions asked to living historians is “isn’t it hot in that uniform?” Now, Jon M. Nese and Jeffrey J. Harding have provided us with a new work that answers that question, at least for the Gettysburg Campaign.

The duo’s recent book, The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign, is the newest addition to the seemingly recent treasure trove of scholarship exploring the environmental history of the Civil War. It joins works like Judson Browning and Timothy Silver’s An Environmental History of the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), Kenneth Noe’s The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2020), and Kathryn Shively’s Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) to show environment and weather fought as a “third combatant” in the summer of 1863.

At the core of the study is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) re-analysis maps, which utilizes weather observations from the nineteenth century to create computer forecast models. The authors acknowledge that this new methodology “is not gospel; rather, it is guidance” and support these maps through the generous use of primary source accounts. (43) The first chapter establishes the authors’ methodology and defines and explains weather terms that we all have heard (dew point, relative humidity) but likely do not fully understand. The second chapter covers the 19th-century Smithsonian Meteorological Project, a network of volunteer individuals who observed the weather from different locations throughout the United States and reported their findings back to Washington, D.C. Most students of the battle of Gettysburg know that Michael Jacobs, a professor at Pennsylvania College was one of these volunteers, but many do not know that he was joined by hundreds of others undertaking the same work.

Chapters three through nine cover the Gettysburg campaign, day by day, between June 3 and July 14, 1863. These chapters are richly detailed and well-structured. Each begins with background information of the movement of the armies or, in the case of July 1-3, the fighting. This is followed by a high-level explanation of the weather, drawn from the reanalysis maps. Primary source accounts put a human face on the situation and support the quantitative claims made through the NOAA modeling.

Finally, each chapter has a subsection titled “People, Stories, and Matters to Remember” in which the authors choose one or two individuals or groups and drill down into their experience. It is through these vignettes that we learn more about Michael Jacobs, or Nathan Mullock Hallock who, during the march to Pennsylvania, saved one of his comrades who was suffering from sunstroke. Rarely do books on the Civil War break down campaigns to such a minute level, and even rarer still do they do it so well.

The book is amply supported with maps, charts, and illustrations. Many of these black-and-white images, including temperature maps, images of original weather recording charts, and photographs of key personalities, are within the narrative of the book.

There is a section in the middle with color images. The color images are primarily of maps generated through the re-analysis modeling and strengthen the authors’ argument about how they determined the weather in summer 1863. The authors reference these maps in the narrative, forcing the reader to turn back and forth to the middle of the book. This is the only minor criticism of the book, and it was almost certainly a publisher’s choice.

The strength of Nese and Harding’s book is in its ability to effectively weave scientific, difficult-to-grasp meteorological concepts with rich primary source accounts from soldiers, leaving the reader with an engaging, easy-to-understand study.  It is unique and will be a welcome addition to any Gettysburg historian’s library. It will become the standard scholarship on the weather for anyone, professional or buff, who is curious about how it felt outside in the summer of 1863. It will be interesting to see if this study can be replicated for other campaigns of the nation’s defining conflict.

Kenneth Noe, in “Fateful Lightning: The Significance of Weather and Climate in the Civil War,” reminds us of the simple fact that “That American Civil War was largely fought outdoors.” Once again, through the efforts of Nese and Harding, we are reminded of what that truly means.

Peter Miele is Senior Project Leader at Susquehanna National Heritage Area, directing the development of the Susquehanna Discovery Center & Heritage Park in Wrightville, PA. He is also an adjunct faculty member at York College of Pennsylvania. Miele worked at Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center in Gettysburg for more than eleven years, including four years as President & Executive Director. A student in the Ph.D. program in American Studies at Penn State, Harrisburg, he is working on a dissertation that examines the Eternal Light Peace Memorial in history, memory and myth.