Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War.

Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War. Edited by Gregory J. W. Urwin. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, c. 2004. Pp. xvi, 265. $45.00, ISBN 0-8093-2546-2.)

Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War is a collection of essays that go into great detail concerning the role that race played in the Civil War. It highlights a number of battlefields where black soldiers were involved. What resulted, according to Gregory J. W. Urwin and the other authors, were massacres of black Union troops. This in turn led black troops to murder wounded Confederate troops on the battlefield at Jenkins's Ferry, Arkansas, and at Fort Blakely, Alabama, where a black infantry division took few prisoners. A white lieutenant serving in one of the black assault regiments, in a letter home, wrote: "The niggers did not take a prisoner, they killed all they took to a man" (p. 9). Recalling the killing of fellow black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864, many black troops adopted the battle cry, "No quarter! Remember Fort Pillow!" (p. 9).

Urwin reminds readers that the Civil War and its results represented a social and racial revolution that really got underway when President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation and authorized the recruitment of black soldiers. The Confederacy was understandably upset by this turn of events. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution soon followed after the end of the war, and the nation went through a period of social, racial, and political upheaval during Congressional Reconstruction.

The central focus of this volume, however, is on the war years. Urwin and the other authors have made a persuasive case for the importance of racial atrocities and reprisals to our understanding of the most horrible war this nation has ever fought in terms of the number killed, both North and South, and the amount of property destroyed. It is a book that most American historians will agree with; nevertheless, many others will not concur with its analysis.

There were battles fought--such as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg--where there was great slaughter. But those events can hardly be described as massacres or atrocities unless one defines any large loss of life in such a way. These were battles in which the men who fought had not surrendered. And, for the most part, this was true of the battles at Olustee, Florida; Fort Pillow; Poison Spring, Arkansas; and Plymouth, North Carolina, and at the Battle of the Crater outside Petersburg, Virginia. General Nathan Bedford Forrest took Fort Pillow because of superior

strength and tactics. The slaughter was terrible, but the Union force did not surrender. Had it not been for the incompetence of Major William F. Bradford, who refused to surrender the fort, the slaughter of black and white Union troops would have been avoided--as was the case at Union City, Tennessee, a short time earlier on Forrest's raid. The Confederacy also won overwhelming victories at Olustee, Poison Spring, Plymouth, and the Petersburg Crater. There probably were some Union soldiers, both black and white, who were killed while trying to surrender in all of these battles, including Fort Pillow. A few may have been killed after surrendering. But this reviewer is convinced that this involved only a very small number of combatants.

Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War is a series of well-documented, interesting, and provocative accounts. This volume is recommended reading for students of the American Civil War and its aftermath.

LONNIE E. MANESS

University of Tennessee at Martin