The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction by William A. Blair (review)

Abstract

catastrophic damage that spring rains and summer droughts inflicted on the Confederacy, resulting in food shortages south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Howling Storm, with just shy of five hundred pages of text, is not a quick read. Nor is it a page-turner. The many descriptions of soldiers suffering through the mud, rain, heat, and cold might prove monotonous to some readers. That being said, The Howling Storm is a very useful book. Its achievement lies in gathering an enormous amount of information about Civil War weather in one volume. In the past, good military historians included information about the weather in their campaign studies, but Noe’s book provides a relatively compact resource that historians can reference to see what the weather was up to at crucial moments of the Civil War. Because of the book’s broad approach, Noe is able to see larger patterns in the weather, conclusions that would escape more focused studies. For instance, he will note when a cold snap or a torrential downpour that affected one campaign was part of a larger weather system that was also affecting operations in a different theater. One concern that I have about this book is that it could mislead those who read it to think that weather was the most important factor controlling the events of the war. I do not mean to say that Noe asserts this or intended this outcome. Rather, it is simply a danger that comes with relying on any one analytical lens to tell a story. While Noe’s work provides a nice corrective to those who might have been tempted to ignore the weather’s influence, I think it is best read in conjunction with other military histories of the war, allowing readers to weigh the merits of weather as an explanatory tool. The Howling Storm is a great resource for those wanting to add a little information about the weather to their Civil War course, especially for historians who do not specialize in military history. All in all, lay readers and historians alike owe Noe a collective “Huzzah!” for this mammoth work and important contribution to Civil War history. Adam H. Petty History Department Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints