Reviews of JOHN BASIL TURCHIN AND THE FIGHT TO FREE THE SLAV
Publisher: Praeger (ABC - CLIO) 2003 Available in hard cover
Ivan Vasilyevich Turchaninov (John Basil Turchin) and Nadezhda Lvova (Nadia Lvova Turchin)
Russian intellectuals who immigrated to the United States and served in the Civil War.
“a well-researched and very well written piece of serious work”
I. Matwyshyn, Ukrainian National Museum
“an interesting account of a unique and colorful character”
The Journal of Southern History”
TURCHIN WAS A LEADER OF MEN AND A BRILLIANT TACTICIAN,
WHOSE IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE CIVIL WAR (ON THE BATTLEFIELD AND IN TERMS OF THE OVERALL CONDUCT) WAS OVERLOOKED.
What was remembered of John Basil Turchin was a result of the libel and slander of Southerners as part of the Lost Cause myth.
The more lenient we are to secessionists, the bolder they become
and if we do not prosecute this war with vigor, using all the means we possess against the enemy, including the emancipation of the slaves,
the ruin of the country is inevitable. The problem before us is grand. Universal freedom is at stake –
John Basil Turchin, July 30, 1862 (over one month before Lincoln’s Emancipation)
Review of Turchin by James R. Chumney, University of Memphis
Review of Turchin by James R. Chumney, University of Memphis
Journal of Southern History, v. 71, n. 1, February 2005
John Basil Turchin and the Fight to Free the Slaves. By Stephen Chicoine. (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 2003. Pp. xiv, 245. $67.95,
ISBN 0-275-97441-3.)
Was he the "Mad Cossack" or the "'Russian thunderbolt'"? American Civil War students have never been certain about this controversial Russian immigrant and Union general. Admirers of John Basil Turchin note his skills as a brigade-level leader. Some like his early defiance of the North's conciliatory policy in regard to the conduct of the war. His detractors, on the other hand, fault him for his vengeful excesses, especially his brigade's notorious sack of Athens, Alabama, in May 1862, resulting in his court-martial and temporary dismissal from service.
Stephen Chicoine, an Illinois-born independent writer, proposes to settle the matter in this well-written military biography. Two brief chapters sketch Turchin's Russian military background and immigration to the United States; a concluding chapter summarizes his post-Civil War years. Chicoine's purpose, however, is to demonstrate the wider significance of this underappreciated officer. Rather than a renegade condemned by his superior officers for violating orders about use of civilian property and openly denouncing conciliatory policies, Chicoine sees Turchin as a pivotal figure in the nation's shift to a policy of total war.
Making good use of available records, Chicoine skillfully documents Turchin's courage and leadership in several key battles in the West. This is by far the book's chief contribution. Unfortunately, Chicoine overstates the case for Turchin's role in changing national policy. He uncritically accepts Turchin's own rationalizations for his behavior. If the higher command neglected to provide for his volunteers, then foraging was necessary, even in Illinois. Carrying the war to southern civilians would break the spirit of the rebellion. Turchin blamed the "pro-slavery" Democratic West Point commanders for campaigning halfheartedly and for hampering the war's true purpose: ending slavery and destroying the southern aristocracy. His radical Republican viewpoint, combined with his European-derived "warrior ethos," produced a fierce fighter impatient of a more careful style of warfare.
While acknowledging different points of view about Turchin expressed in the Democratic and Republican press, Chicoine leans heavily on the radical press for his own interpretations and quotations. Other sources praising Turchin get disproportionate attention. Certainly, the midwestern newspaper correspondents made Turchin's court-martial the defining moment of his career. They downplayed his brigade's pillage and rape of slave women as incidental to the need for total war. Turchin spoke eloquently in favor of waging vigorous war. As Chicoine states, "John Basil Turchin seized the opportunity presented by press coverage of his court-martial to speak to the nation about the absurdity of the war policy of conciliation" (p. 215). Like the partisan press, Chicoine also interprets Turchin's actions as based on moral conviction: they served the war effort. Nevertheless, Turchin's peers convicted him.
Chicoine should have consulted Mark Grimsley's The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), which shows that instead of finding it absurd, most northerners supported conciliation down to midsummer 1862 simply because it worked. Only when the war bogged down alter the failed Richmond, Virginia, campaign did northern frustration make harsher measures acceptable. Rather than helping to create this change, Turchin more likely reflected what was inevitable.
Overall, however, this is an interesting account of a unique and colorful person.
JAMES R. CHUMNEY
University of Memphis
SEE BELOW FOR AUTHOR'S RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE REVIEW
RESPONSE TO THE REVIEW OF CHUMNEY
With respect, I found this review a bit annoying. But I do respect his right to his scholarly opinion. And he and i come from different experiences.
Turchin was and remains a lightning rod in the South for many. I knew that when I wrote the book. That was part of my motivation to write Turchin's story. I also wrote the book to honor Turchin. I believed then and continue to believe that he was both admirable and deserves some credit - not all the credit - for the change in the conduct of the war.
Of course, I read Mark Grimsley's book. I know this book well. However, I base my opinions and my judgments on my sense of history, which I gained from reading newspapers of the time - from the major sources, such as the New York Times, but also other New York City newspapers and, of course, the Chicago newspapers and the Cincinnati newspapers, as well as newspapers from the South, including Richmond, but also Savannah and Charleston.
I believe Turchin deserves credit. His connection and that of his wife with President Lincoln was real and genuine. Not everyone had that.
Was Turchin a man of passion? Yes, he was. He also channeled that to further the cause that Herzen and others believed in - to cease catering to Southern sensibilities, crush the rebellion and free the slaves.
And Turchin was a masterful tactician and a leader of men. That is undeniable. This controversy over Turchin (perhaps to some extent motivated by Lost Cause advocates) obfuscates his very significant contributions to the Union escape from disaster at Chickamauga - not once, but twice - and to the glorious victory at Missionary Ridge, arguably the turning point of the war.
TURCHIN ON THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR
The year 1863 was also remarkable for the radical change of policy in prosecuting the war. In 1861-2, the so-called "guarding-potato-patches" policy was prominently used, particularly in the West; the greatest military absurdity that was ever practiced in the prosecution of war. The idea sprang from that epoch of humiliating compromises which so degraded our political leaders and mainly led to the Rebellion. Their tendency to compromise with the South, and to coax the rebels to remain in the Union in the beginning of the war, culminated in the "guarding-potato-patches" policy, which consisted in gently fighting the rebels in the field, and at the same time preserving their property from the uses of the army. In other words, it compelled our armies to subsist on our own supplies, and to guard the patches of truck and grain, orchards, smokehouses, corn-cribs, and even the water-wells of the rebel citizens from the use of, or spoliation by our soldiers.
Only entire ignorance of the history of wars and the want of common-sense could create such a policy in the brains of our leaders; and not until after many courts-martial of our officers, the continued sufferings of the rank and file, and the humiliating reverses in the field, did the people of the country realize its absurdity, and through their President put an end to it. Marauding and plunder should not be allowed ; there should be always enough of our own rations on hand for an emergency; but the legitimate foraging and cantonment on the citizens of the enemy's country are the first requisites for moving armies through an invaded territory; otherwise, with the lengthening of distance from our basis of supplies, the army would be tied up to its trains, and boldness and rapidity would be impossible. Gen. Buell was one of the strongest and most persistent representatives of that famous policy
THE SECOND OF GENERAL TURCHIN'S BAYONET CHARGES
Sacramento Daily Union, November 17th, 1863
TURCHIN`S BRIGADE IN THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.
{Correspondence of the Cincinnati Commercial.}
Chattanooga (Tenn.), October 9th. - The position assigned the brigade was held by it all day, though charge after charge was made upon it. It was a line of slight breastworks thrown up during Saturday night on the right of Brannan's division, and on the right center of the line of battle. Toward two o'clock the enemy's fire slackened, or rather changed to a heavy skirmish fire. The brigade had been under fire for six hours, and now fell back from the breastworks, though not out of range of rebel bullets, and the men laid down, four companies being sent forward as skirmishers. Behind the skirmish line of the enemy could be distinctly seen a heavy force of infantry, and why they did not attack us was a wonder which was not cleared up until after four o'clock, when GENERAL REYNOLDS ORDERED THE BRIGADE TO THE REAR. Moving across the corner of a cornfield, to the left of our position, we struck the Rossville road, a few rods south of the large farm house used as a hospital on Saturday and the morning of Sunday; the mangled remains of the dead - the rebels' dead outnumbering ours two to one - and the dying showing that it was no place for a hospital during the afternoon of Sunday. A few rods further north the brigade changed direction by filing to the left, into the woods skirting the road on that side, and were halted and brought to a front, leaving the brigade in columns by companies, forming two lines of battle, the Eleventh Ohio and Eighteenth Kentucky in front, and the Ninety-second and Thirty-sixth in the rear. Hardly had this been completed, when a rebel battery in our rear opened a perfect storm of shell and grapeshot into our ranks. This was entirely unexpected to us. It seems a whole division of the enemy had passed entirely around our left, and coming up in our rear, expected to capture the entire left wing of our army, which explained the reason of our not being pressed in front.
Just at the moment the rebels opened, General Thomas rode up: "Whose brigade is this?" "General Turchin's," was promptly answered. "General, can your brigade break those lines?" "Yes, I guess so, if any brigade can." "Very well, do it at once."
General Turchin has been commanding our brigade but a short time, but long enough to gain the confidence of all his men. Rising in his stirrups he gave the command, "ABOUT FACE - FORWARD - DOUBLE-QUICK - BAYONETS - MARCH!" With a yell, the volume of which was decreased not a whit by the fact that the men fully realized that everything depended on the success of this movement, they did charge. The enemy were drawn up in three lines in an open field, and as we emerged from the woods delivered a volley that tore through our ranks, but failed to check the onward course of our men, who returned the fire, charged bayonets, and dashed into them before they could reload. The rebels broke in the wildest confusion, while cheer upon cheer from our brave boys added swiftness to their flight. A running fight now ensued which baffles description. The smoke arising from the discharge of so many guns and the thick clouds of dust completely obscured both rebel and Federal, while the hoarse commands of the officers, endeavoring to keep their men in line, the lurid flash of artillery, and the bursting of shell and the rattling of grapeshot, which the rebels continued to pour into our ranks at short range from three points, made up a picture as nearly resembling pandemonium as one need wish to see.
At this point, while Generals Reynolds and Turchin were endeavoring to bring some order out of the confusion that had unavoidably ensued, in order to further drive the enemy, General Turchin's horse was struck in the flank by a cannon ball and killed, and by the time he had procured a remount the brigade had passed over the first field, through a small wood and into a second field, where he came up and gave the order to march by the left flank, and then charged a battery on a commanding elevation to the left, that had been throwing a few shell at us. At this point the brigade was split, the larger part following General Turchin to the left, and captured the Tenth Wisconsin Battery, which had been playing on us, thinking we were rebels.
General Reynolds, who was bravely leading the advance, had not noticed the movement to the left, it being so very dusty that it was impossible to distinguish a man twenty yards from the head of the column, and followed by Colonel Lane and several other officers of the Eleventh, Thirty-sixth, Ninety-second Ohio and Eighteenth Kentucky regiments, the colors of the Thirty-sixth in the lead, with about one hundred and fifty men from all four regiments, pushed rapidly forward on the road, driving the enemy before him, who kept up a general scattering fire as they retreated. The General thought himself cut off from the army, and his only hope was to cut his way through to Rossville, but when about two miles on the road he approached a wood, spreading out on each side of the road, the ground thickly covered with underbrush, from which the rebels opened a heavy fire. With a cheer the men dashed into the woods, driving the enemy back, but the road forked here, and the General, attended by one mounted orderly, made a reconnaissance, and finding the rebels too strong for him, ordered a retreat to a hospital about half a mile back, where he thought he could hold out till night, when darkness would render pursuit dangerous. The men were very nearly exhausted, but Colonel Lane formed them in line, and, as the enemy had not followed us, gave a rest, while General Reynolds and himself consulted as to the best way of getting out of the difficulty. At this time, about five o'clock, one of our mounted men appeal in sight, coming toward us on a side road, and from him we obtained the joyful information that the road connecting with Granger's reserves was still open. We lost no time in joining the brigade, who had supposed us captured or killed. We here found out that General Thomas had kept open the road we had made, by bringing off his divisions, one after the other, covered by General Granger's reserves. It was a battery of the reserve which General Turchin had charged at the point of the bayonet, supposing it belonged to the rebels.
On this charge our brigade captured about six hundred prisoners and four pieces of cannon, but were so closely pushed that we had to abandon the cannon, and half our prisoners escaped in the confusion; but three hundred were marched along and sent safely through to Chattanooga that night.
OFFICERS OF THE RESERVE, WHO HAD A FAIR VIEW OF THE WHOLE CHARGE, DESCRIBED IT AS THE GRANDEST SPECTACLE IMAGINABLE.