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From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin. By George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, c. 2006. Pp. [xii], 297. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8173-1526-9.)
This book examines the court-martial of Illinois colonel John B. Turchin in me context of the evolution during the Civil War toward, to use Mark Grimsley's term, "hard war" policies (The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 [New York, 1995]). Turchin's army commander, Major General Don Carlos Buell, court-martialed Turchin for depredations committed by the men of his brigade while occupying Athens, Alabama, in early May 1862. George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen show quite clearly that Turchin's men carried out the civilian property destruction and pillage common to Civil War armies and later institutionalized and refined by Union...