Bohemian Brigade - Softcover

A familiar figure on the modern battlefield is the combat correspondent, that hard-bitten, cynical journalist who chews on cigars and bullets and brings the smoke and gore back home. So the stereotype goes--and with basis in fact, as historian James Perry shows in this vigorous history of reporters on the front lines of the American Civil War.

Perry begins his narrative with the Crimean War, when the remarkable William Howard Russell sent dispatches of bungling and destruction to eager readers in London. When Russell, a larger-than-life character, strapped on his pistols and set sail from England to cover the outbreak of the American Civil War, he found that his fame had preceded him--and that he'd spawned many imitators. Newspapers North and South raced to scoop each other for the big stories of the day, fielding reporters who sought to outdo Russell at his own game.

Perry centers his narrative on a comparative handful of these homegrown journalists, whose work entailed constant danger on both sides of the line--bullets from the front, suspicious generals ever ready to charge the reporters with espionage on the rear. Most of the journalists acquitted themselves well in their work, although some were inclined to florid prose and not particularly troubled with questions of accuracy. Quoting extensively from the dispatches of those battlefield writers, good and bad, Perry examines their role in shaping American journalism--after the Civil War, the reading public demanded eyewitness accounts instead of canned official releases--and public opinion throughout an era of cataclysm. With A Bohemian Brigade, Perry adds a useful, and highly readable, footnote to our understanding of the era. --Gregory McNamee

Much of our understanding of the American Civil War is based upon newspaper dispatches written under horrific battlefield conditions, and journalists’ memoirs penned under more reflective moments after the war’s end. A Bohemian Brigade is the masterful account of the true nature of combat correspondence—its probable accuracy and ultimate accountability—during the Civil War years. In this even-handed survey, James M. Perry examines a civil war, a free press, and the inevitable impact each had on the other. Focusing on the self-proclaimed "bohemian brigade"—whom General William Sherman vilified as "the buzzards of the press"—Perry assesses the performance of a ragtag band whose professional descendants remain controversial to this day. The tales Perry tells are entertaining, sometimes hard to believe, but always historically accurate. Competition led reporters to file stories prematurely as they raced to be the first to get their account on the "the lightning"—their name for the telegraph. The headline of the New York Herald on July 22, 1861, erroneously proclaimed the Union Army’s rout at the first battle of Bull Run a "Brilliant Union Victory!" Army commanders on both sides distrusted a free press they could not control. Thomas Knox’s critical accounts of Union campaigning at Vicksburg so provoked General Sherman that he ordered a court-martial to prosecute this civilian reporter as a spy! Yet the press also made invaluable contributions to each side’s cause. For instance, neither army had any procedure for publishing casualty lists. After a battle, reporters would collect the names of the dead and wounded. At times, their efforts became heroic. Bradley Osbon, an experienced seaman, covered the Union’s capture of New Orleans by signing aboard fleet officer David G. Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, as a clerk. Upon learning of Osbon’s maritime exploits in the Far East from Osbon himself, Farragut promoted the reporter to the rank of fleet signal officer. And in reporting General Ulysses S. Grant’s engagement against General Robert E. Lee at the battle of the Wilderness, reporter Henry Wing also delivered a personal message from Grant to his commander in chief, President Abraham Lincoln: "Whatever happens, there is to be no turning back." Lincoln kissed the reporter on the forehead for relaying these stirring words of hope. With a dry wit and keen eye for detail honed by his four decades of journalistic experiences, Perry provides a fresh understanding of how the reporting of a war can affect the trajectory of war itself.