Frazier, Donald. Fire in the Cane Field: The Federal
Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861-January 1863. State House
Press, 2009.- Thunder Across
the Swamp: The Fight for the Lower Mississippi, February 1863-May 1863. State House
Press, 2011.
Those
looking for an extensive history of Civil War Louisiana might be interested to
know that there is a highly readable four-volume series on the subject. Donald
Frazier’s Louisiana Quadrille (he actually chose to expand it to five books so
it’s really a Pendadrille) covers the Trans-Mississippi theatre in East Texas
and Louisiana from the secession crisis to right before the more widely known
and infamous Red River Campaign of spring 1864. Frazier’s work here comes out
of Blood & Treasure, the story of
the Sibley Brigade’s attempt to conquer the Far West. Looking further into this
unit’s history, he came upon a series of little known battles. As a native Texan,
Frazier was inspired to dig deeper. He has brought to light a heavily
overlooked part of the Civil War. Frazier covers a wide area of the war, but
shows a particular interest in the fields and swamps of western Louisiana.
Taken together the books look like heavy reading (Thunder in the Swamp runs well over 500 pages). However the text is not all that thick and there are plenty of illustrations and maps. The latter shows the author’s exhaustive searches for visual sources to enhance his narrative. The one main gripe has nothing to do with Frazier’s investigation and presentation of information. He displays a surprising amount of grammatical errors, moreso in his first volume. I myself am guilty of having typos and errors in my blog posts (even after reading through what I wrote). Still it’s a bit surprising for a professionally published book. Perhaps he attempted to edit the whole thing himself. This is forgivable, however, in light of the value of his research. He really digs into primary sources and many of the figures, especially the soldiers of the rank-and-file, come alive with extensive quotes and references from their letters and journals.
