HurstNation.com

Interesting blog from Civil War Memory that mentions our man, Fielding Hurst.

How Did This Article Make It Into North and South Magazine?

It’s bad enough that the latest issue of North and South magazine (Vol.10, No. 5) arrived completely mangled, but then I forced myself to wade through a god-awful article on the U.S. Army’s targeting of Southern civilians by Michael R. Bradley[”In the Crosshairs: Southern Civilians Targeted by the US Army” pp. 48-61]. The article is essentially a handful of accounts that detail some pretty horrific encounters in northern Alabama, Middle and West Tennessee and central and western Kentucky. There is little distinction made between region and and time and there is almost a complete lack of analysis. Here is Bradley’s argument:

That story is one in which the United States army deliberately targeted Confederate civilians and prisoners of war in a war of vengeance; it is a story of unlawful killings on a much greater scale than Fort Pillow; it is a story which reveals a policy decision reached by the United States government to kill without mercy. Human life became exceedingly cheap during the Civil War, and the United States Army was the first to discount its value. (my emphasis, p. 48)

Now before some of you out there assume some vaguely defined anti-southern bias at work let me assure you that I am well-versed in the literature on Union military policy in the South. I recommend Mark Grimsley’s The Hard Hand of War as essential reading, which of course, Bradley fails to reference. This is a very important topic and it would be nice if more historians addressed it, but to do so involves careful analysis and the utilization of a wide range of sources. Bradley relies almost exclusively on the O.R. and Provost Marshall’s Records along with a smattering of postwar records and a few wartime accounts. In other words, the sources utilized for this piece are weak. [Note: Drew Wagenhoffer offers a similar assessment of Bradley’s book on the subject which was published by Burd Street Press. With Blood and Fire: Life Behind Union Lines in Middle Tennessee, 1863-65 by Drew Wagenhoffer]
It’s hard to make sense of most of Bradley’s examples of Union atrocities against southern civilians. His accounts raise all kinds of questions that he has no interest in exploring. The language is overly emotional and prevents Bradley from making any sense of the complex dynamics that must have been at work depending on the time and place of the incident. Let me give you one example that should make my point sufficiently clear. After discussing Major General Robert Milroy - who is characterized as a “failure as a battlefield commander” and as a result “took out his frustrations on the civilian population under his control” - Bradley examines the policies and command of Fielding Hurst in West Tennessee. Bradley correctly notes that Hurst was “a prominent farmer and one of the largest slaveholders in the counties along the Tennessee River” but makes no effort to unpack its significance. In other words, he says absolutely nothing about how the violence which he unleashed on Confederate units reflects deep-seated tensions that no doubt can be traced back to the antebellum period. Unfortunately, Bradley just lumps this story in with all the others as an expression of a policy formulated at the highest levels of government which he never even thinks of corroborating. He completely ignores the fact that Hurst as well as others discussed in his article are white southerners.

[FULL STORY HERE]

Filed under: That Demon Called Hurst, Col. Fielding Hurst