Uncommon Valor: A Story Of Race, Patriotism, And Glory In The Final Battles Of The Civil War, by Melvin Claxton And Mark Puls

This book is evidence of a phenomenon that is likely not very surprising but which somewhat cuts against what the authors are trying to accomplish with this book. While the book is ostensibly (given its title) about the bravery of black soldiers towards the end of the Civil War, when fourteen of them were given Medals of Honor for their bravery in the Battle of New Market Heights, where they charged through abatis and took high casualties but were able to seize territory close to Richmond and hold onto it in the face of a fierce Confederate counter-attack, this battle is only referred to in the main text when the book is nearly done. This does not make the book a bad book by any means, only one that has a larger agenda than it admits and much less to say about the Battle of New Market than a true battle study would have to say. This book, instead is an exercise in virtue signaling, seeking to encourage the reader to feel less like a racist than the people of the time in being able to accept, without much thinking about it, that the black soldiers discussed in this book were every bit the equal and perhaps even superior to the mass of white troops, North and South, that they dealt with and were treated worse than. This ought not to be a surprising bias in our contemporary age, but so it is.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit more than 200 pages long, and it is divided into ten chapters. The book begins with a prologue that looks at a battle over civil rights for blacks after the Civil War where Benjamin Butler and others (including a couple of black Congressmen) make good speeches and a law is passed that would soon be overturned by the Supreme Court. This is followed by a discussion of the call for black troops in 1863 as the Civil War lengthened (1). After that a chapter is devoted to the enlistment of Christian Fleetwood and his colleagues (2). This is followed by a discussion of their first mission, a raid on the Richmond area, a theme that would be repeated throughout the book (3). After that there is a discussion of the enlistment of the Cincinnati brigade during a time when that city was threatened by a rebel raid (4). After that comes a discussion of the troops’ efforts against bushwhackers and guerillas in North Carolina (5). There are then tales of more raids on Richmond (6), along with the avenging of a costly ambush (7). This is followed by a discussion of the role of blacks troops in the unsuccessful and generally bungled effort to storm Petersburg in June 1864 (8). After this there is a discussion of the bungled mine assault in Petersburg (9) before in the last chapter of the book there is a discussion of the heroics at New Market Heights (10), followed by an epilogue about the end of the war, a bibliography, and an index.

One of the ironies of this book is that while it seeks to explain a little-written aspect of history that has largely escaped the attention of most Civil War historians, the history that is written here depends on the fact that Fleetwood in particular was such a prolific writer. This means that we tend to know about the goings on of the regiment largely because of his perspective. If we know that Fleetwood and a fellow NCO had a falling out over loot and food not being shared, we know it because Fleetwood wrote about it in his diary. Among the other decorated soldiers, many of them exist in a somewhat shadowy fashion because they did not leave the same degree of historical trail that Fleetwood did. Ironically enough, Fleetwood is here praised for his patriotism when he was seriously considering leaving the United States for Liberia, only staying and fighting for the Union because the Confederate commerce raiders made transportation between the United States and Liberia extremely difficult. It is all well and good for historians to want to shine a glimpse on matters that usually escape history, but in doing so they paradoxically need sources to consult that give them information that few people have looked into before. Those who fail to write and record their lives and thoughts and feelings often fail to be included in the historical record because they leave nothing that others can use to get a sense of what is going on in their heads and hearts. Fortunately, that is not the case here.