John Matteson's A Worse Place Than Hell (book review)

 

Matteson, John. A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation. W.W. Norton & Company, February 9, 2021.

For this book, English professor John Matteson, who has won a Pulitzer Prize, delves into history by examining the lives of five people who endured the misery of the Battle of Fredericksburg. Through his career is in English, Matteson is well versed in 19^th Century American literature and thus already had good historical context going into his research for this book. In fact three of his five chosen characters are familiar to literature enthusiasts. There is the great American poet Walt Whitman. There is Little Women author Louisa May Alcott. Both served as nurses at the battle, Alcott in an official capacity and Whiteman in an unofficial one. Chaplain Arthur Fuller was the brother of Margaret Fuller, journalist and women’s rights advocate as well as the subject of Matteson’s Pulitzer-winning biography. The most familiar names is Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an officer in the 20^th Massachusetts and future Supreme Court Justice. Finally, to represent the Confederate side, Matteson looks at John Pelham, the commander of Jeb Stuart’s horse artillery. Matteson delves into the intimate personal lives of these five figures, each who experienced a critical moment at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

At the start of the war Walt Whitman suffered from career stagnation, partly due to the negative reception to his poetry. His work was enthusiastically dedicated to American greatness, but also laced with, for the time, quite sexual imagery. In the wake of Fredericksburg he learned that his brother George hand been wounded and went south to look for him. Once there he volunteered as a nurse and was so moved by the suffering of Union soldiers that he experienced a creative revival.

Louisa May Alcott was the unmarried daughter of innovative educator and Transcendalist Amos Alcott. She volunteered as a nurse and was both inspired and horrified by her experience in military hospitals. Fredericksburg, her baptism of fire, inspired her to write Hospital Sketches and even influenced her work on Little Women.

Arthur Fuller was a sickly Unitarian minister. His religious and moral views made him a very enthusiastic supporter of the Union war effort and he joined up as an army chaplain. He believed the war, serving God’s purpose, could be fought within moral boundaries. At Fredericksburg he was actually discharged from service as his string of illnesses had become too much. Determined to serve his country, he grabbed a rifle and pitched in, losing his life.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. gets to open and close the book. Holmes started the war with a strong moral sense of purpose and God’s hand. The random violence of the battles he participated in, including an early and trifling wound at Fredericksburg that forced him to sit out the rest of the right, eroded his lofty views and influenced his future tenure as a Supreme Court Justice.

John Pelham provides the Confederate perspective. This youthful West Point cadet became part of Jeb Stuart’s colorful entourage of subordinate officers. Pelham’s performance at Fredericksburg, where he held up a Union advance with one well-placed cannon, solidified him as an invincible hero of the South. Matteson appears to put Pelham here as a symbol for the Confederate war effort itself, an emerging myth who is killed months later.

This is a very engrossing read. One not only gets personal details on the Battle of Fredericksburg and its aftermath, but also a wide range of cultural, religious, and political views as advocated by five famous people. The battle itself actually makes up a small part of the book, as Matteson is really conducting a five-way biographical sketch. If one is looking for a book on the Battle of Fredericksburg itself, this isn’t exactly one to check out, but general readers will be attracted to the personal lives within. For Civil War buffs it will open up new avenues of study through the literary and philosophical figures. Buy the book here.

Rating: Highly Recommend

 

Rating System

Must-Read: Definite read for history in general

Highly Recommend: Definite read within a certain subject

Adequate: Useful if looking for information or an intro on a certain topic

Pass: Not a good history book, useless, or absolutely farcical