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Review
| A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865, by Russell F. Weigley. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; paperback ed., 2004. 648 pages. $24.95, paper.
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| Nearly 140 years after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Americans continue to study, interpret, and debate their nation's Civil War. Books ranging from broad studies of general topics to considerations of the most specialized minutiae weigh down the shelves of bookstores and libraries. One unfortunate hallmark of much of this literature is a lack of familiarity on the part of the authors with the broader contours of world military history. For too many battle historians in particular, the Civil War takes place in an intellectual vacuum; they have learned nothing from any other war. This is but one reason to be thankful that the late Russell Weigley, one of the great military historians of his generation, turned to the American Civil War as the subject of his last book. Able to discuss the campaigns of Napoleon and Dwight Eisenhower with equal aplomb, Weigley provides a magisterial and prize-winning narrative that not only synthesizes several decades of scholarship, but also one that contains much-needed context and a master's distinctive interpretations. |
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Weigley considers the Civil War as the ultimate expression of Americans' penchant to confront problems with violence. The Union victory both cemented a nation together and provided a national mythology of lasting power. Moreover, with the abolition of slavery, the war served a noble end that to American minds ultimately justified the killing. Massive casualty figures were not surprising given the dangerous combination of modern weapons such as the rifled musket and the Minie bullet, misunderstood Napoleonic tactics by generals of questionable talents, a military hierarchy that grasped too late the importance of a strategy based on coordination, and decentralized governments on both sides that failed to manage the war effectively. Although rifles and poor Union generals allowed the outnumbered and outgunned Confederacy to last much longer than it should have, Weigley suggests that the Confederates might have survived even longer had they fought harder and with more dedication. That they did not, the author alleges, was due to a "psychological rift" (p. xviii) that undermined nationhood. Simply put, Southerners remained too attached to American institutions to break away successfully from their past. The preservation of slavery, the Confederacy's raison d'etre, never provided the urgency or unity a successful revolution demanded. |
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Weigley opens his narrative during the secession crisis and follows the war from beginning to end, emphasizing campaigns, politics, and social developments rather than analyses of individual battles. Indeed, his descriptions of battles become the most disappointing sections of the book. His depiction of the Battle of Perryville, for example, confuses more than it explains. On the other hand, his attention to the usually ignored Trans-Mississippi theater is most welcome. He handles emancipation creditably. Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman emerge as the book's heroes, men who understood what victory in a modern war demanded. In contrast, dissemblers and incompetents such as Confederate Commissary General (and Jefferson Davis crony) Lucius Northrop, George B. McClellan, and especially Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase figure almost as villains. Weigley also controversially dismisses Stonewall Jack-son as a poor tactician, rehabilitates James Longstreet and A. P. Hill, lets Richard Ewell off the hook for his actions on the first day at Gettysburg but not the second, and suggests that Daniel Sickles' march into Peach Orchard may have saved the Federals at the same battle. Weigley's treatment of Lee will also raise eyebrows. Although Lee in the author's view rightly understood that the survival of the Confederacy required a quick victory in Virginia, his own actions on the battlefield failed to secure it. Often prone to tactical mistakes and too attached to outmoded Napoleonic models, Weigley's Lee only won battles when facing inferior Union generals. George Meade outgeneraled him at Gettysburg, and Grant wore him out thereafter. |
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Teachers and advanced students already familiar with the history of the Civil War will find A Great Civil War useful and indeed thought-provoking, even when they disagree with one or another of the author's assertions. Those less versed in the conflict are advised to begin instead with James McPherson's more comprehensive and livelier general histories, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988) and Ordeal by Fire (1982). |
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| Auburn University |
Kenneth W. Noe |
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