I am a PhD-holding, independent historian living in the middle of Civil War country. The close proximity of battlefields and other places where important events happened fires my imagination so much that I feel compelled to write about it.
When I was a child, my grandfather introduced me to the American Heritage Illustrated History of the Civil War and got me hooked on the subject. Since then, I have visited dozens of battlefields and read hundreds of books and articles. Keeping America’s history alive and vital is extremely important to me. The books on this list provide excellent overviews of the broader strategic issues at stake.
I think this is a particularly strong book because it provides details about the Confederate decision-making process that I have not read elsewhere.
The interpretation of the historical sources is also outstanding. Glatthaar clarifies the thinking of Confederate leaders about important issues, such as the raising of armies and their provisioning.
The book helped shape my understanding of the challenges Davis and Lee faced and the solutions they undertook to solve them.
"You would be surprised to see what men we have in the ranks," Virginia cavalryman Thomas Rowland informed his mother in May 1861, just after joining the Army of Northern Virginia. His army -- General Robert E. Lee's army -- was a surprise to almost everyone: With daring early victories and an invasion into the North, they nearly managed to convince the North to give up the fight. Even in 1865, facing certain defeat after the loss of 30,000 men, a Louisiana private fighting in Lee's army still had hope. "I must not despair," he scribbled in his diary. "Lee…
Kegel ties together threads in the early history of the war that have an impact on its later course.
These include the adoption of an offensive strategy that would push the war out of Virginia and into Pennsylvania. Kegel elevates the importance of Stonewall Jackson as a strategic thinker in particular and elucidates his influence on Robert E. Lee.
In my own studies, I have found that Jackson did indeed make suggestions Lee later followed, particularly when it came to offensive operations, but Kegel leaves out a key figure in his work - Jefferson Davis.
Like Jackson, Davis shared a preference for offensive action, but Davis did not adopt this opinion from Jackson. Similarly, Davis and Lee had discussed many times taking the fight to the enemy before Jackson became involved at a strategic level.
Lee then carried out Davis’s orders in September 1862 when he led his army across the Potomac. Later, in 1863, after Jackson had been killed, Lee continued to pursue a similar policy even after Davis had cooled toward it. In this sense, Kegel is correct to note Jackson’s influence. He simply overemphasizes it.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
This is one of the only discussions of the evolution of Confederate strategy in the east, and for that reason alone it should be read.
Unfortunately, it focuses too much on Lee and does not broaden the perspective beyond Virginia and Maryland. Harsh also makes the key mistake of denying the importance of accomplishing political goals to General Lee in Maryland. In this sense, his perspective is too narrow.
In fact, Harsh misses entirely the direct relationship between the Maryland and Kentucky Campaigns, both of which Davis decided to launch after a conference at the Executive Mansion on July 13, 1862.
Despite these failings, Harsh provides a lot of ground-level details on the Confederate effort in Maryland that are useful to enthusiasts and specialists.
"Confederate Tide Rising is one of the most significant evaluations of Civil War strategy to be published in the past fifty years. It contributes critically to our understanding of the war, and it will influence the course of Civil War scholarship for decades to comes. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this book."-Richard J. Sommers, U.S. Army Military History Institute
In this reexamination of Confederate war aims, Joseph L. Harsh analyzes the military policy and grand strategy adopted by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the first two years of the Civil War.
This is another important book on the development of Confederate strategy.
Like Harsh, I think Woodworth places too much emphasis on Lee, but he at least includes Davis as a protagonist. To that end, Woodworth’s claim that Davis was convinced the South should fight a defensive war is flat out wrong. He is keen enough to point out how P.G.T. Beauregard, Gustavus Smith, Stonewall Jackson, and even Joe Johnston all clamored for an offensive that would dampen Northern will to win the war.
He simply misses the fact, however, that Davis agreed with them. Davis, however, was the only man of the group who had a national perspective and knew what could be accomplished given the men and materiel limitations of his armies.
Steven Woodworth's previous book, the critically acclaimed Jefferson Davis and His Generals, won the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Award and was a main selection of the History Book Club. In that book he showed how the failures of Davis and his military leaders in the west paved the way for Confederate defeat. In Davis and Lee at War, he concludes his study of Davis as rebel commander-in-chief and shows how the lack of a unified purpose and strategy in the east sealed the Confederacy's fate.
Woodworth argues that Davis and Robert E. Lee, the South's greatest military…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
This is the most detailed history of the Battle of Antietam available and is filled with insight.
The stories Hartwig unearthed are compelling and fascinating. Of all the books on Antietam, this one makes you feel closest to the action. It is a moving, often chilling, read.
Hartwig also offers new thoughts on the effectiveness of George McClellan as a general and even some criticism that will be new to many readers.
The book stumbles when it comes to developing a wider perspective, including the lack of an explanation of why Robert E. Lee decided to fight at Antietam. This weakens the book’s impact a bit as the reader continues to come away bewildered about why the general would have taken such a dangerous risk with his army.
The definitive account of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the Civil War.
Finalist of the American Battlefield Trust Military History Book Prize, Winner of the Richard Barksdale Harwell Award
The memory of the Battle of Antietam was so haunting that when, nine months later, Major Rufus Dawes learned another Antietam battle might be on the horizon, he wrote, "I hope not, I dread the thought of the place." In this definitive account, historian D. Scott Hartwig chronicles the single bloodiest day in American history, which resulted in 23,000 casualties.
After a string of victories in Virginia, Robert E. Lee marches his Army of Northern Virginia northward across the Potomac River in search of one final battlefield triumph as the best way to bring about Southern independence. Little goes right for Lee when the garrison at Harpers Ferry refuses to evacuate, and a lost order reveals his plans to George McClellan and his resurgent Army of the Potomac.
The result is a divided Southern army severely weakened by straggling, a failed effort to hold the gaps through South Mountain, and a final stand at Sharpsburg on September 17 (the bloodiest day in American history) with the Potomac River and a single ford at Lee’s back. Alexander Rossino weaves these momentous hours together brilliantly in Six Days in September.
