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Summary
Summary
A Great Civil War is a major new interpretation of the events which continue to dominate the American imagination and identity nearly 150 years after the war's end. In personal as well as historical terms, more even than the war for independence, the Civil War has been the defining experience of American democracy.
A lifelong student of both strategy and tactics, Weigley also brings to his account a deep understanding of the importance of individuals from generals to captains to privates. He can put the reader on the battlefield as well as anyone who has ever written about war. All of the important engagements are covered, and he does it countless times in A Great Civil War. From Fort Sumter to the early clashes in the West and border states to the naval encounters in the East and on through the great and horrible battles whose names resound in American history--Shiloh, Corinth, Bull Run, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Appomattox. A brilliant narrator of battle action and historical events, Weigley is never content merely to tell a good story. Every student of war will find new insights and interpretations at the strategic and the tactical level. There are firm judgments throughout of the leaders on both sides of the conflict.
A Great Civil War also analyzes the politics of both sides in relationship to battlefield situations. Weigley is unique in his ability to put all of the pieces on the board at once; the reader understands as never before how war and politics (and individuals) interacted to produce the infinitely complex story which is the Civil War.
As with any major work, there are themes and subtexts, explicit and implicit:
Both sides began the war with strategic and tactical concepts based on Napoleon which were already obsolete because of changes in technology--and both sides struggled throughout the war to develop new strategic and tactical procedures.
The Civil War was great not only in the massiveness of the slaughter and destruction. It was, for all its horror, a war about values--democracy and the freeing of the slaves--that was worth the effort.
The South, despite its powerful defense, was ultimately ambivalent about leaving the Union and gave up more easily than might have been expected.
Finally, there is an intimacy, a sense of personal urgency, in Weigley's grand account. He is connected by blood as well as profession. Jacob Weigley, the author's great grandfather, visited Gettysburg soon after the battle and wrote about it to his brother Francis, who was serving with the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry; Francis later died in a Confederate prison camp. Then and now the Weigleys live in Pennsylvania, and the war and its lessons remain part of the family's living memory, as it is also the nation's.
Author Notes
Russell F. Weigley (1930-2004) was Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Temple University. He is author of numerous books, including The American Way of War, Eisenhower's Lieutenants, and The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo, all available from Indiana University Press.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Weigley's history of the Civil War accepts slavery as the conflict's moral center, but describes the war as a military contest for political ends. For Weigley, professor of history emeritus at Temple, the Confederacy fought to defend a way of life that could be sustained only in an independent nation, while the Union government insisted on the unconditional surrender of that claim to sovereignty. The war's outcome thus depended on the adversaries' respective mastery of war-making. Weigley contends that the Civil War was not the modern, and modernizing, event described on so many television programs. North and South alike waged war on artisanal lines, making do with the tools available to them. Extensions of government power on both sides were limited and channeled. The major exception was at the war's sharp end, when improved firearms drove casualty lists relentlessly upward at the same time that armies had grown too large to be crushed in decisive battles on the Napoleonic model. Weigley's encyclopedic command of his sources enables him to combine narrative clarity and analytic perception in evaluating behaviors and decisions. To cite only one example, his discussion of Gettysburg makes clear in a few sentences why the Confederates were unlikely to have captured Cemetery Hill on July 1 under any circumstances. Weigley goes on to show the logistical reasons why Lee rejected Longstreet's proposal for an operational flanking maneuver. And he concludes by making a throwaway case that Dan Sickles may in fact have saved the Union army on July 2 by an often condemned advance to the Peach Orchard that created some maneuvering room for a constricted left wing. That kind of intellectual virtuosity, regularly repeated in these pages, makes this notable book the counterpoint to James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Because of the icon status of some Civil War soldiers--Grant, Lee, and Jackson, for instance--even general histories of the war occasionally are bogged down in analyses of their personalities and backgrounds. Weigley, professor emeritus of history at Temple University, has no such problem. In this fast-paced and comprehensive survey of the military struggle, he concentrates on what commanders did, not who they were. Weigley is a skilled writer with a knack for explaining complex military maneuvers in laypeople's terms, so general readers will not be overwhelmed. Weigley does examine some aspects of the political struggles, North and South, that influenced the military campaigns. But this is fundamentally a story of war, and he brilliantly captures the chaos, confusion, degradation, valor, and blind luck that determine winners and losers. --Jay Freeman
Library Journal Review
In this in-depth review of the much-discussed War Between the States, Weigley (Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945) takes an original tact. Rather than provide a singular account of the major events of the war, he offers several perspectives, then examines the military, political, and historical consequences of each event. This approach serves up several revelations. We learn, for instance, that the attack on Fort Sumter was not a complete surprise to the UnionDthere already was concern within the army that Confederate forces might strike. Weigley also discusses some of the reasons for the first military draft, such as the short enlistment terms of militia units and the casualties that were draining the winning as well as the losing army. This book could be useful in any library but would be most practical where there are informed lay readers and/or large military, history, or Civil War history collections.DTerry Wirick, Erie Cty. P.L., PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| List of Maps |
| Note on Style |
| Introduction |
| To the Gettysburg Address |
| Nineteenth-Century Americans at War |
| Why Did They Fight? |
| Chapter 1 From Secession to War |
| The Forts at Charleston |
| The Anomalous Southern Nation |
| The South Begins to Mobilize |
| Fort Sumter: The Crisis Approaches |
| Fort Sumter: The Bombardment |
| Militant America |
| Chapter 2 The Battle Lines Form |
| Napoleonic War |
| War in a New Style |
| Washington Rescued |
| Contentious Missouri: A Failure for Both Sides |
| Neutralist Kentucky |
| Western Virginia: Secession within Secession |
| Mobilizing the Union |
| First Bull Run |
| Chapter 3 Groping for Strategy and Purpose |
| The Union: War Aims at Military Frustration |
| The Confederacy: Recruitment, finance, Blockade, and War Production |
| The Invincible United States Navy |
| The Trent Affair and a Paper Tiger |
| The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War |
| Lincoln and the Purpose of the War |
| McClellan and the Purpose of the War |
| Chapter 4 Bloodshed and Indecision |
| An Unhappy New Year |
| Mill Springs |
| A Western Strategy Takes Shape |
| Pea Ridge: The Great Battle of the Trans-Mississippi |
| The Far West |
| Forts Henry and Donelson |
| Shiloh |
| Western Drumbeat: New Madrid, Island No. 10, The Locomotive General, Corinth, New Orleans |
| Conscription in the South |
| The Potomac Front |
| Battle of Ironclads |
| McClellan Launches the Peninsula Campaign |
| Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign |
| The Climax on the Peninsula: The Seven Days |
| Chapter 5 The Confederacy Takes the Initiative |
| Cedar Mountain and Second Bull Run |
| Lee's First Strategic Offensive: The Maryland Campaign |
| Confederate Riposte in the West: Iuka and Corinth |
| Confederate Offensive in the West: The Kentucky Campaign |
| Lee versus McClellan--For the Last Time |
| Chapter 6 Of Liberty and War |
| The End of Slavery: The Sea Islands |
| The End of Slavery: Congressional Action |
| The End of Slavery: The President |
| Liberty Imperiled in the Name of Liberty |
| The End of Slavery: Arming African Americans |
| Chapter 7 Armies and Societies |
| Fredericksburg, the Mississippi River Campaign, and Stones River |
| Lincoln and the Republican Party |
| Congress Refashions the Union |
| The Union Pays for Its War |
| Dissent in War: The Opposition in the North |
| Inside the Confederacy |
| Charleston Harbor and Chancellorsville |
| Chapter 8 Three Seasons of Battle |
| Paying the Toll of War: The Military Draft in the North |
| The March to Gettysburg |
| Gettysburg: The Battle |
| Gettysburg: The Assessment |
| Vicksburg: Preparations |
| Vicksburg: Grant's Great Campaign of Maneuver Warfare |
| The Trans-Mississippi |
| Chickamauga |
| Chattanooga |
| Coda |
| Chapter 9 On the Horizon, the Postwar World |
| Assuring Freedom |
| The Burden of Race |
| From Battlefield to Polling Place (I) |
| The Beginnings of Reconstruction |
| The Union: The War, the Economy, and the Society |
| The Confederacy: Accelerating Breakdown |
| Chapter 10 Traditional Politics and Modern War |
| Lincoln Renominated |
| The Union Army Retained |
| The Generalship of U.S. Grant |
| The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor |
| The Race to Petersburg |
| The Siege of Petersburg: The First Phase |
| C.S.S. Alabama |
| A Catalog of Union Frustration: Red River, Bermuda Hundred, and Washington |
| The Politics of Military Deadlock |
| Chapter 11 Suspense and Resolution |
| Chattanooga to Atlanta |
| Battling for Atlanta |
| Mobile Bay |
| Sheridan's Valley Campaign |
| From Battlefield to Polling Place (II) |
| Chapter 12 The Relentless War |
| Sheridan's War against the Enemy's Economy |
| Sheridan's War against the Enemy's Economy and Morale |
| The Death Throes of the Confederacy |
| The End of Slavery: The Constitutional Assurance |
| Chapter 13 The Fires Die |
| Franklin and Nashville |
| The Campaign of the Carolinas |
| The Petersburg Campaign: Summer 1865 - Spring 1865 |
| To Appomattox |
| Richmond and Reunion |
| Durham Station |
| The Terrible Assassination, and the Terrible War |
| The Sudden Death of the Confederacy |
| Notes |
| Bibliography |