2023 IPNE Winner of a Special Merit Award for Scholarly Research

New research into a little-known Civil War engagement at Donaldsonville, Louisiana. This is the Battle of Fort Butler, which saw a ragtag collection of 200 Union soldiers (mostly invalids) unaccountably repel the assault of a 1700-man Confederate force in the early morning hours of 28 June 1863. Lively Little Battle (as one newspaper described the action) includes multiple eyewitness accounts (the majority never before referenced) with every stage of the action diagramed with maps based on a previously-undiscovered 1863 plan of the fort found in the National Archives. The story told in this book and the conclusion drawn shine a new and different light on this small and long-misunderstood action.

Interview on Civil War Talk Radio, Episode 1816.

(Note: The contrast in the original 1863 plan of Fort Butler was too low to reproduce well in the book, but the very large two-sheet schematic can be found online at https://catalog.archives.gov/id/200167821.)