Silent Cavalry
How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History
1 of 1 copy available
“It is my sincere hope that this compelling and submerged history is integrated into our understanding of our nation, and allows us to embrace new heroes of the past.”—Imani Perry, professor, Harvard University, and National Book Award–winning author of South to America
We all know how the Civil War was won: Courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But is there more to the story?
As Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Howell Raines shows, it was not only soldiers from northern states who helped General William Tecumseh Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground but also an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabamian yeoman farmers—including at least one member of Raines’s own family.
Called the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., this regiment of mountain Unionists, which included sixteen formerly enslaved Black men, was the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy. The famed general hailed their skills and courage. So why don’t we know anything about them?
Silent Cavalry is part epic American history, part family saga, and part scholarly detective story. Drawing on the lore of his native Alabama and investigative skills honed by six decades in journalism, Raines brings to light a conspiracy that sought to undermine the accomplishments of these renegade southerners—a key component of the Lost Cause effort to restore glory to white southerners after the war, even at the cost of the truth.
In this important new contribution to our understanding of the Civil War and its legacy, Raines tells the thrilling tale of the formation of the First Alabama while exposing the tangled web of how its wartime accomplishments were silenced, implicating everyone from a former Confederate general to a gaggle of Lost Cause historians in the Ivy League and a sanctimonious former keeper of the Alabama state archives. By reversing the erasure of the First Alabama, Silent Cavalry is a testament to the immense power of historians to destroy as well as to redeem.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 5, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593668115
- File size: 575108 KB
- Duration: 19:58:08
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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October 9, 2023
Former New York Times executive editor Raines (Whiskey Man) unearths in this resonant and lyrical account the long-buried history of a Southern military unit, the First Alabama Cavalry, that fought for the Union. An Alabama native, Raines explores his state’s “subterranean narrative” alongside his own family’s history as Southern Unionists. When the Civil War began in 1861, the state’s Unionists, including Raines’s own great-great-grandfather, went “lying out” in north Alabama’s hill country to avoid Confederate conscription. As Federal troops made their way into the region, Union officers recognized the potent patriotism of the Alabama Unionists. Formed in 1862, the First Alabama Cavalry went on raids to sabotage Confederate communications, marched with Gen. William T. Sherman’s forces across the South, and contributed to the fall of Vicksburg and the destruction of Atlanta. A large chunk of the book is dedicated to exposing the “scholarly cabal that disappeared the First Alabama,” and includes incisive and damning portraits of the historians and writers—among them Confederate general Jubal Early, Thomas and Marie Owen of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and novelist Edward A. Pollard—who originated the Lost Cause historiography that effectively silenced anti-slavery white Southerners. Throughout, Raines delivers a superlative study in what makes history “history.” This genealogical detective story is both a delight to read and an important corrective. -
Starred review from February 1, 2024
Former executive editor of the New York Times, Raines (The One That Got Away: A Memoir) presents the little-known story of white Alabama volunteers who fought for the Union during the Civil War. The First Alabama Cavalry consisted of 2,066 white Alabamian farmers, including Raines's great-great-grandfather, who fought for the Union, assisting General William Tecumseh Sherman during the fall of Vicksburg and the burning of Atlanta. Raines's crucial contribution to Civil War scholarship focuses on how the history of the Alabama Unionists was purposefully buried by Southern "lost cause" revisionists, inspired by Columbia University historian William Archibald Dunning, who promoted white-supremacist historiography. Raines's work makes it clear that the only sure way to overcome partisan bias in written accounts is to compare sources and mine libraries of information. With superb pacing and well-modulated tones, award-winning narrator Mark Bramhall gravely emphasizes the significance of Raines's findings and keeps listeners engaged as he explores the fallacies of the lost-cause myth. VERDICT This compellingly narrated contribution to U.S. Civil War historiography, made personal by Raines's family history, is illuminating and thought-provoking. An important update to Margaret M. Storey's Loyalty and Loss: Alabama's Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction and an excellent addition to any audio history collection.--Dale Farris
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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