User:Hog Farm/Book review/Smith Bayou




 * By Hog Farm

Publishing details:

Bayou Battles for Vicksburg, published late in 2023, is the fourth volume to be published in Timothy B. Smith's five-volume work on the American's Civil War's Vicksburg campaign. The first two volumes to be published cover the end of the campaign - the Federal assaults on the Vicksburg trenches and the following siege operations. The next covers what is known as the Mississippi Central Campaign and the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, the 1862 portions of the campaign. The final one, which was published earlier this year (and is in my queue of books to read later this year) covers the operations from May 1 to May 17. Bayou Battles covers the stretch from January 1, 1863, to April 30, 1863. Events covered include the Battle of Arkansas Post, Grant's Canal, the Duckport Canal, the Lake Providence Canal (which I hope to write the article on later this year once work gets less busy), the Yazoo Pass Expedition, the Steele's Bayou Expedition, the Battle of Snyder's Bluff, Steele's Greenville expedition, the Battle of Grand Gulf, and Grant's famous crossing of the Mississippi River at Bruinsburg.

I first became interested in this stage of the Vicksburg campaign while reading Donald L. Miller's book on the campaign several years ago while visiting future in-laws in the rural Deep South; there's just something about reading about the Yazoo Pass and Steele's Bayou operations while in Louisiana bayou country. The Vicksburg work against which all others will be measured for some time in Ed Bearss's trilogy. Compared to the Bearss work, Smith's book definitely draws on a wider range of sources, both primary and secondary; Bearss very heavily relied on the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. The use of a wider range of non-official sources gives Bayou Battles a less technical feel than the volume of Bearss' trilogy that I have read (Volume II).

Content-wise, Bayou Battles treats the stages of the campaign differently than most other writers - he argues that the operations down the Louisiana shore of the river that led to Grand Gulf and the eventual crossing should be grouped together with the "experiments" stage of the campaign (the canal and bayou activities). I personally disagree with this conclusion, as there was a finality to that movement that the experiements lacked, with Porter's fleet being run past the Vicksburg guns but much less commitment to the other operations, but Smith does have a well-developed rationale for dividing the campaign in that fashion. Smith also delves into the idea of Jomini versus Clausewitz more than other works I've read about covering this campaign.

For supporting materials - the footnotes are lengthy and detailed. Many military history books have insufficient maps, but I found the maps in Bayou Battles to be adequate, although I have also admittedly read fairly heavily about this campaign so I was already familiar with the general geography. What I did find to be lacking was the order of battle provided at the end. This covered only the forces present at Arkansas Post. The primary Confederate forces in the campaign did not fight at Arkansas Post, and Grant's army gained an entire corps and several divisions between Arkansas Post and the Mississippi River crossing. I personally found it a struggle to remember which division commanders reported to which corps, or which division contained which brigades (especially with three Smiths commanding brigades or divisions in Grant's army and another Smith commanding a Confederate division).

As a final note, I thought that the book was rather overpriced, even for a hardcover with nice binding - it's 394 pages excluding the notes and index. But I guess what do you expect from a university who named their mascot after the Jayhawkers?