| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Struggle for the Heartland: The Campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth. By Stephen D. Engle. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. xxiv, 251 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8032-1818-4.)

The Great Campaigns of the Civil War series consists of short works that synthesize recent scholarship and place military operations within a social and political context. As such, neither new interpretations nor fine details appear in Stephen D. Engle's volume on early operations in the war's western theater. The research includes not only recent studies but also a number of primary sources from which he selects apt quotations to illustrate major points.

Works by Benjamin F. Cooling, Larry Daniel, and James L. McDonough have shaped our understanding of those events so much that it would be hard to develop a new insight at present. Engle uses them in developing his thematic concerns: military actions, relations between commanders, political pressures on the armies, and military-civilian relations. In regard to military activities, he emphasizes that the Confederate army lost a number of badly needed troops at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, a chance at a major victory at Shiloh, an important railroad junction at Corinth, and much valuable territory in the Southern "heartland." The Federals effectively took advantage of circumstances and their numbers to occupy a large area. The higher commanders in both armies often failed to cooperate. Henry Halleck and P. G. T. Beauregard showed organizational skills, yet only Ulysses S. Grant emerged as a successful battlefield commander.

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