“Stand To It and Give Them Hell”: Gettysburg As The Soldiers Experienced It From Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top, July 2, 1863

John Michael Priest

Savas Beatie, 2014, 518 pp., $32.95

ISBN: 978-1-61121-176-4

Image courtesy of amazon.com

                When I first heard about the premise of Stand To It and Give Them Hell I was intrigued.  Throughout all of the works about the Battle of Gettysburg I have read, there are only a select few which rely heavily on the primary sources to tell the story.  What John Michael Priest has done in this work has given us the story of the Second Day of Gettysburg from the Round Tops to Cemetery Ridge with over ninety percent of primary sources.  Even before I go into the analysis on the book, I can only say good things about this book.  Priest has given us something which I hope will become a classic in the years to come.

                John Michael Priest is a retired high school history teacher and has always been interested in the American Civil War.  He is a graduate from the Loyola College in Baltimore and Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.  He has written many works on the Civil War including Into the Fight: Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, and  Nowhere to Run: The Wilderness, May 4th & 5th, 1864.  He has also been considered the “Ernie Pyle” of the Civil War soldier by the legendary Ed Bearrs.  Priest is also one of the historical consultants for the upcoming television miniseries To Appomattox.

                Stand To It and Give Them Hell lives up to the hype of a narrative of the second day of Gettysburg as seen through the eyes of the soldier.  The main characters in the book are the soldiers themselves, but there are some accounts of the commanders as well in order to set up the action which takes place later on the day.  The greatest thing which I think Priest does in his work is set up the action by hours instead of by location.   There have been many other works in the second day at Gettysburg which have been chronicled by location, but Priest does this by hour.  Not only does this help the reader understand the action of the battle and the waves in which Longstreet attacked, but even the set up, which takes the first hundred pages of the text, are well read.  Without that background, the reader could be lost in the text without any aid as to the reasons for the attacks.  Also, there are a few sources which Priest mentions which may give the reader a different look on the stressed Robert E. Lee.  Some of the stories throughout the action are heartbreaking as to the sacrifice which these soldiers made on the fields of Gettysburg.  Some of these stories even make the reader proud to be American given the sacrifices made for the freedom of the country. 

                I cannot recommend this book enough, highly highly recommended.  There was a lot of hype behind this work in the realm of Civil War academia, and it is well deserved.  This is a work which delivers time and time again only making the reader want more and more.  When the end of the book comes, the stories of the soldier are inspiring.  Thank you, John Michael Priests, for bringing us this work on the Battle of Gettysburg.  Highly Recommended.  

Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War

Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen

St. Martin’s Press,  2003, 463 pp., $24.95

ISBN: 0-312-30935-X

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                Civil War fiction has gone through many different interpretations and most of them have been well received.  This work on Gettysburg seemed a bit misplaced upon first reading it, however.  I will admit that if I had no interest in the Civil War and wanted to simply read a quick book on the war, I would have enjoyed this one.  It was action packed and fast moving and filled with deaths of people who did not truly die at Gettysburg which begs the question: why is this book subtitled a Novel of the Civil War?  While Gettysburg may be an enjoyable read on the same level of The Da Vinci Code, it stands in the far reaches of respectable Civil War fiction and should not be considered anything but an alternate history novel gone terribly wrong.

                Newt Gingrich is the former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and has authored many books both fiction and non fiction.  He holds a Ph.D. in history from Tulane University and is a professor at the National Defense University.  He is also the longest serving teacher of the Joint War Fighting course for Major Generals.  Dr. William R. Forstchen has authored more than thirty works of historical fiction, science fiction, young-adult works and traditional historical research.  He gained his Ph.D. with a specialization in military history from Purdue University and is an Associate Professor of history at Montreat College, North Carolina.

                In all honesty, the book begins fine with a general premise of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia heading towards the small borough of Gettysburg.  But the book takes a turn when the fighting breaks out on July 1st and both authors begin taking turns killing people who did not truly die.  The most disturbing death in all of the book to me was Brigadier General Adelbert Ames since he was the longest living officer from the North.  The idea to take the Battle of Gettysburg and create an alternate history novel is something which has been done before but Gingrich and Forstchen takes things in an extreme direction.  It seems as though both authors have lined up the major Union generals and begins picking them off one by one leading the Confederate army to victory.  To clear the record, I do not have a problem with alternate history; in fact I think it creates another sense of historical thinking.  However, to call this work a novel of the Civil War is false advertising.  There are two other works in this series but I do not think I will be able to stomach such a work if they are on the same caliber as this one.  On a technicality, alternate history belongs on the shelf with Science Fiction, which Forstchen has written in the past.  Harry Turtledove has written Civil War alternate history before and has handled it with better grace than Gingrich and Forstchen. 

                I do not recommend this book at all if you want Civil War fiction.  I also do not recommend any books in this series due to the careless nature of the writing style in the alternate history genre.  This book stands as a testament to the Lost Cause historiography .

Counter-Thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam

Benjamin Franklin Cooling

University of Nebraska Press, 2007, 355 pp., $24.95

ISBN: 978-0-8032-7172-2

Image courtesy of americancivilwar.com

                Counter-Thrust, a work on the Peninsula Campaign through the Antietam Campaign, was part of the Great Campaigns of the Civil War series published by the University of Nebraska Press.  Due to the nature of the series, this work is quite in depth and not only pays attention to the military details of the campaign, but looks into the realm of the political spectrum especially when it comes to the relationship between President Lincoln and General McClellan.  What Cooling has presented is a great source into the deciding campaigns in the east and does so in a flowing narrative which rarely goes stale. 

                Benjamin Franklin Cooling is a professor of national security studies at Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security.  He is also a Resource Strategist at the National Defense University in Washington.  He has authored many works on the American Civil War including The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot: The Fort Stevens Story.  His most recent work is To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond.  The majority of his works have dealt with the American Civil War.

                Cooling understands something about the eastern campaigns in 1862 that many other historians seem to ignore in their studies on these battles: politics.  There have been many studies into the militaristic nature of the Peninsula Campaign and the Antietam Campaign but there are only a handful of studies which look into the political aspect of the fighting.  In the more recent years, these studies have come about which makes Cooling one of the main proponents of this area of study.  While there are those writings which have always looked into the politics of the campaigns, Cooling does so by combining both the politics and the military without having any trouble in the narrative.  It is common knowledge that Lincoln and McClellan had a difficult relationship, but this account gives us a more in depth look into the inner workings of the Washington politics when “interfering” with the army.  While the military analysis was interesting, the work shines through all the other aspects, the firsts being the political, the second being the intelligence gathering.  One of the statements made in the work is that the Pinkertons sent to aid in the efforts during the Maryland Campaign would be for naught since many of the messages they attempted to get through the lines had failed.  The ideals of military intelligence are often overlooked in Civil War academia and Cooling gives us that realm of study.  Overall, the work never stifles due to the many different things which the author is giving us in the work and the research is quite good and formatted greatly.

                This book, though stated to be a bit of an introduction to the campaigns, is an in depth look into what was going on during the late summer to the early fall of 1862 in the east.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants and all-encompassing look into the field of not only the military, but in the political and intelligence gathering world of the Civil War.  Benjamin Franklin Cooling has done a great work in this book with impeccable citations and bibliography along with his flowing narrative.  Highly recommended.  

Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg

Warren C. Robinson

University of Nebraska Press, 2007, 205 pp., $17.95

ISBN: 978-0-8032-4856-4

Image Courtesy of amazon

                There are some people who state that there is nothing new which can be written about the Battle of Gettysburg.  In his work on the role of Jeb Stuart during the Gettysburg Campaign, Warren C. Robinson proves that there may be something new to talk about in the realm of Stuart’s participation in the battle.  The debate has fueled for years ever since the battle had ceased whether or not the fault of the loss was on the shoulders of General Stuart or not.  This work hopes to analyze all of the arguments surrounding the controversy and puts to rest any question over whether or not Stuart was at fault for the loss at Gettysburg. 

                Warren C. Robinson is a professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and is the editor of numerous works in the field of economics.  He is also the author of many articles on military history and the policies set about therein.  Currently, he is a freelance writer and consultant in Washington D.C.  Though he has written other works about demographics and the economy, his main work on the Civil War is Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg.

                Robinson does something quite different in this work compared to the many other studies on Jeb Stuart; he assumes the reader knows something about the main controversy surrounding the man and the campaign which happened.  The first chapter deals with the beginnings of the campaign and writes in a fashion that only the subject at hand is mentioned.  Next, he uses great passion to analyze the different sources of the orders and the memoirs of the primary sources to look into what really happened with General Stuart and the reasoning behind his late appearance to the battle.  One thing which Robinson looks into, and proves with great detail, is the laid back attitude which Lee gave orders to Stuart during the beginning of the campaign.  Robinson looks farther back into the official records to see what kind of attitude Lee writes toward Stuart and they are the same tone of voice as they are in the Gettysburg orders.  The argument which has fueled many historian’s arguments about Stuart’s lateness to the laid back nature of the orders have been proven wrong due to Robinson’s research.  The author also does well to talk about the memoirs and the major studies which have been brought about after the battle including those who were closest to General Lee and of course the controversial memoirs of General Longstreet.  One of the other things which the author does is split up the narrative in an easy to read fashion that allows the reader to fully follow what the author is researching.  After reading this study, I had to think about what I felt about Stuart throughout all of my reading of the Gettysburg Campaign.  One interesting analysis of his character which Robinson points out was that there were two Jeb Stuarts: the first was cavalry commander who acted with the greatest professionalism and the other was the cavalier which many people think of immediately when they think of Stuart.  These small details mad the read great and fantastic. 

                I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the study of the Gettysburg Campaign.  The views which are shown here can greatly change the way you look at the cavalry commander and his actions leading up to the fight at East Cavalry Battlefield.  Stuart has always been a controversial figure in the Gettysburg Campaign and Robinson has set out to analyze what his role was in the Confederate defeat.  The narrative was quite flowing and the research was impeccable.  This book should be on the shelf of every Gettysburg historian and should not be missed.  Highly recommended!

Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee

Michael Korda

Harper Collins Books, 2014, 788 pp., $40.00

ISBN: 978-0-06-211629-1

                During the time of the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, there have been many biographies of commanders and participants of the conflict and it was only a matter of time when the people would gain a work about Robert E. Lee.  However, there are many large shadows any biography of Lee would stand in this time of scholarship.  Ranging from the monumental four volume work by Douglas Southall Freeman to the one volume biography by Clifford Dowdey, there seems to be little which could be added into the pantheon of the works on Lee.  Here, Michael Korda attempts to bring new scholarship to the study of Lee in his Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee and some may say that he comes up short. 

                Michael Korda is a recognized biographer who has written works on Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight G. Eisenhower, T. E. Lawrence and many others.  He was educated at Le Rosey in Switzerland and graduated from Magdalen College in Oxford.  He also served in the Royal Air Force and took part in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.  On the fiftieth anniversary of the event, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the People’s Republic of Hungary.

                There is a certain art which goes into the writing of a biography and from the distinguished career of Korda, the life of Lee should have been no problem.  What Clouds of Glory offers the reader is a comprehensive one volume biography on Lee which seems promising.  While the purpose of a biography is to chronicle the life of a person and those around them, many authors tend to have a point which they want to make throughout the text.  This is usually stated in the introduction or the preface of the work, but in this tome it is not present.  The preface of the work is an biographical work on the raid on Harper’s Ferry, not a statement on the premise of the book.  I had a lot of hope for this book since it was a modern one volume work on the life of Lee, but within the first hundred pages, there was just a feeling of a historical narrative instead of something which is redundant on the field of Civil War academia.  While Korda deals with the life of Lee up until the war with an interesting narrative, once the Civil War begins, the narrative takes a dive and is quite dry for the reader.  Even if you are interested in the life of Lee and know nothing about the war, you will leave the work more confused instead of enlightened since Korda fails to understand and write about the events of the war in a comprehensive nature.  One of the major problems I found in the work was in the bibliography.  The citations of a work in French were mentioned and then the same works were mentioned in English causing the same source  to be cited twice.  This was greatly disappointing since I was hoping to see the new sources and evidence which he was to bring to the realm of Lee. 

                I was surprised to see the lack of interesting narrative when it came to Lee on the battlefields of the Civil War.  He had handled the Mexican American War in the beginning of the book with great vigor but when it came to the Civil War, the work fell flat.  There was nothing new about Lee which was presented in this work which was already said in other works.  The hope which I had for this book had fallen within the first two hundred pages in the redundant nature of the work compared to other biographies of Lee.  While Korda may have written other great biographies, this one about Robert E. Lee was not what I expected to be and was a lost premise in a standard narrative.    

Union-Occupied Maryland: A Civil War Chronicle of Civilians and Soldiers

Claudia Floyd

The History Press, 2014, 172 pp., $19.99

ISBN: 978-1-62619-611-7

Image courtesy of barnesandnoble.com

                Too often, the ideals of the Civil War and the study of the conflict range from a series of battles between North and South.  Recently, however, there have been studies into the number of “border states” which were part of an inner conflict.  Maryland was one of those states who had quite a few sympathizers for the Confederacy but was forced to remain in the Union.  Thus the work Union-Occupied Maryland comes about by Claudia Floyd who does an excellent job at chronicling the heart break and difficulties of living in the state during the American Civil War. 

                Claudia Floyd is a retired professor of history at Stevenson University which is in the Baltimore area.  She has numerous degrees from Carlow University, Duquesne University, John Hopkins University and the University of Maryland – Baltimore County.  Her main focus while she was teaching at Stevenson University was Women’s History in the Civil War.  In her retirement, she volunteers at Monocacy National Battlefield and the Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area.  She is greatly active in the Society of Women and the Civil War and is also the author of Maryland Women in the Civil War: Unionists, Rebels, Slaves and Spies which is also published by The History Press.

                The subject of Maryland in the American Civil War is one of great interest and of heart break.  The reason I say heart break is due to the forceful nature of this Union Occupied Maryland as Floyd states.  What I truly enjoyed about the book was that it was not a chronicle of the men from Maryland and where they fought, but it was a story about Maryland as a whole.  Beginning of the arrival of the military in Baltimore and other major cities in Maryland, there were things going on which could easily have been frowned upon by today’s standards.  Floyd talks about the many incidents during the occupation which affected the lives of the children with once instance of a boy shooting another in the leg with a gun they had found.  She even mentions that some of the men entered the city of Baltimore with loaded rifles due to their distrust of the people and the rumors of secessionist activity going on.  Because of the ideals of the border state, there are many historians who automatically assume that Maryland was mainly a Confederate state.  Thanks to Floyd, that is greatly proven wrong.  There were many soldiers who upon returning home were shocked to see the division among the people and it seemed more that the area closer to the shoreline was leaning more towards the Confederacy and greater division amongst themselves.

                There are a handful of books on the American Civil War which have moved me.  I am happy to say that this book is one of them.  The amount of research in this book has brought about stories of incredible division among a people and it seemed as though the state of Maryland was fighting its own Civil War.  Much like the state of Missouri, there were many divisions and they would last all throughout the conflict.  I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Civil War and or the history of Maryland.  What Floyd has done is given us a sweeping narrative of what history has long covered and it is well received.  Highly Recommended!   

Trench Warfare Under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign

Earl J. Hess

The University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 313 pp., $26.00

ISBN: 978-1-4696-0994-2

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                Earl J. Hess has sought out to perform a duty which is not quite researched in the American Civil War: he has written great academic works on field fortifications in the conflict.  The reason this work should be hailed is due to the painstaking detail he places in the work and the amount of research he has performed.  Trench Warfare Under Grant and Lee is the second book in the series he has written about field fortifications and while it is incredibly different from the first work, it shines even greater.  Many works have been written about the Overland Campaign, but none have ever devoted themselves to the development of the warfare around the use of the trenches.  In all honesty, these studies of trench warfare are usually written about when analyzing World War One, but Hess proves that the use of the trench was more prevalent during this campaign than any other.

                Earl J. Hess is an associate professor of history at Lincoln Memorial University and has authored other works such as The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi and Pickett’s Charge – The Last Attack at Gettysburg.  His book on Pickett’s Charge was the winner of the 2001 James I. Robertson Jr. Prize from the Civil War Library and Research Center.  The first in the series on fortifications was Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaign and the final work in the series is In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and the Confederate Defeat. 

                Much like his first work, he separates the book into the many different battles which occurred during the Overland Campaign.  Instead of spanning years as he did in his first work, he has matter of months to write about.  In each chapter, he analyzes the types of trenches and or field fortifications used by the armies along with the evolution of the tactics being used in order to combat the types of fortifications or trenches.  When talking about battles specifically, there are moments when he breaks up the narrative into the days of attacks which, in many cases, have changes in the tactics used against them.  In his account on the Battle of the Wilderness, he breaks up the action into certain days and it is quite amazing how the tactics change.  His work is also aided by the use of maps which are drawn with such simplicity as to understand how the trenches are working in this regard.  There are many works where the maps attempt to show the rises and falls in the terrain, but here, the map is laid out for complete understanding.  That is not to say that the maps are not detailed, but they are not over-detailed as in other works.  Also as part of the work, there are pictures on the types of fortifications and trenches used.  As with his first work in the series, this was a great aid into understanding what was being described.  Throughout the text, there are plenty of examples as to the types of trenches and fortifications and are usually always aided by a photograph or drawing.  This type of detail and expertise is greatly appreciated in this work. 

                Earl J. Hess has proven that he is a master at writing about field armies and fortifications from his first book and now has proven himself even more by writing about the trenches.  I highly recommend this book to any Civil War historian.  There is a general study that most of the great fighting is done by the infantrymen while there is quite a lot the corps of engineers does for bringing about the victories on the battlefield.  The narrative is flowing and easy to follow which is always a positive advantage in a work such as this.  The terms being used can often confuse the Civil War novice, but in this work, Hess does a fantastic job ensuring the reader’s understanding of what is going on.  In conclusion, I am greatly looking forward to reading the last work in the series and I applaud Earl J. Hess in the study which he has brought to light here.  Highly Recommended!

Stonewall’s Prussian Mapmaker: The Journals of Captain Oscar Hinrichs

Edited by Richard Brady Williams with a Foreword by Robert K. Krick

The University of North Carolina Press, 2014, 359 pp., $45.00

ISBN: 978-1-4696-1434-2

Image courtesy of amazon.com

                In the study of the American Civil War, nothing is more valuable than the primary source.  During the time of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, there has been many works written about the great conflict, but the influx of primary sources has waned just a bit.  Thankfully, there is this book about one of the least looked at type of people in the entire war: the cartographers.  The lack of study into mapmaking is one of the great issues with Civil War academia and I’m proud to say that Richard Brady Williams has brought something to light which is needed for study and is greatly appreciated.  To go into the mind of the mapmaker was quite a different experience in Civil War reading and there was another great aspect to what this work provided: a Prussian who fought for the Confederacy.

                Richard Brady Williams is an independent historian who bases himself in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  His previous work is Chicago’s Battery Boys: The Chicago Mercantile Battery in the Civil War’s Western Theater.  In that work, he covered a great amount of the Western Theater and now with this work finds himself in the Eastern Theater of the war. 

                I would be remiss, however, if I did not tell you a little about Captain Oscar Hinrichs before going into detail of the work.  However, before the publication of this work, little has been written or known about Captain Hinrichs.  There was the general knowledge that he was one of the cartographers for General Jackson but beyond that, there is not much on his early life.  In his introduction to the work, Williams states that Hinrichs was well educated, articulate and observant, all qualities which a cartographer needed, along with being involved in the major events of the war; these were what he considered to be a good primary source which should be preserved and he was correct.  The book is split into the events of his life ranging from leaving the country which was politically tumultuous up until his appointment in the engineer corps.  In his attempts to leave the country, he was one of the men who had shown that he wanted to join the Confederacy and was almost arrested because of it.  Part of his account reads almost like a novel.  As the journal goes on, the major engagements are split up into portions of the war.  The chapters are not just separated into battles like many other works, but into areas of his life which are of importance.  Instead of just a chapter on the Battle of Chancellorsville, he gives us a chapter ranging from January to the end of June which encompasses some large events.  While the work is called Stonewall’s Prussian Mapmaker, the story does not end with the death of Stonewall Jackson.  Hinrich’s career goes on and so does his diary.  I praise Williams for not ending the work at the death of the commander shortly after Chancellorsville.  The entirety of the war is given here all the way from early talks of secession to the last fight of the army.  One thing which I found interesting in this work was that Hinrichs was Prussian fighting for the south.  While little is known about his early life, many Germans and Prussians who were in the country eventually fought for the Union, but here, Hinrichs fights for the South.  The introduction states that due to his ties to the South, he could not turn against them.  It is quite something when we still see the question being battled over which side to take during the beginning of the war.  There is always the scene of Lee giving up the command of the Union army due to his loyalty to Virginia, but here, it seemed on more of a personal level.

                This work is highly recommended to any Civil War historian or buff.  The editing done by Williams is second to none and should be praised for bringing someone as interesting as Oscar Hinrichs to the light of academia.  I have no doubt in my mind that this work will be hailed as one of the greatest primary sources to come out of this decade.  The tireless work of the editor has paid off and now the public has one of the greatest stories of the war at their disposal.  Highly Recommended.  

Seneca County and the Civil War

Walter Gable

The History Press, 2014, 192 pp., $19.99

ISBN: 978-1-62619-633-9

Image Courtesy of fltimes.com

                During this celebration of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, one thing has come into the realm of the studies of the conflict more than any other.  The study of the home front and the specific areas and counties of the states which sent soldiers and sailors off to war has been the cause of a recent boom in the study of the conflict and it is well appreciated.  In Seneca County and the Civil War, Walter Gable adds to that study and gives the reader an in depth view of the aggregate numbers and some of the stories which the county faced during the war.  Gable has provided us not only with the details of the regiments from the war, but the home front and the period of reconstruction for this area of New York state.

                Walter Gable is a major historian for Seneca County and has been since August of 2003.  He has always been a resident of Seneca County and has taught high school social studies at Mynderse Academy in the Seneca Falls Central School District.  He is a graduate of the Romulus Central School District and has obtained his Bachelors and Masters Degree from Syracuse University.  In 2000, he was recognized as the Distinguished Social Studies Educator in New York State and received the Seneca Falls Community Service Award in 2013. 

                The book opens with an analysis on the soldiers of the war.  Each chapter is divided into the different regiments which Seneca County took a part of and where they had fought.  Each analysis of this regiment also takes a look at the different ranks which the soldiers held from the county and the towns they hailed from along with the losses they sustained at the battlefield.  Not only does he analyze the regiments and the towns which bore many of the soldiers, he has a chapter dedicated to those who won the Medal of Honor during the entirety of the war.  While not all men won the Medal of Honor, there were those Gable mentions that also fought from the county which are notable mentions.  During his analysis on the home front, he makes a statement which is quite true for the people of the country: there is nothing which can aid a local economy like a war.  The area of Seneca County boomed with the war efforts to both the farms and the mills of the area.  The most touching part of the work, however, was the treatment of the Reconstruction period.  These men were almost revered when they came home and the process of setting up the monuments and the Grand Army of the Republic posts is what I felt was special to Gable.  His passion in the writing comes out greatly in these passages.

                I highly recommend this book to the Civil War scholar who is looking for more information concerning the certain counties or towns which bore great Civil War soldiers from New York.  The narrative is flowing and easy to follow and the research which was put into this work is quite good and well founded.  The stories of these men and those who remained on the home front should be the pride of Seneca County.  I also hope that this is not Walter Gable’s last writing on the American Civil War.  Highly Recommended!

Calamity at Chancellorsville: The Wounding and Death of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson

Mathew W. Lively

Savas Beatie, 2013, 191 pp., $27.50

ISBN: 978-1-61121-138-2

Image courtesy of goodreads.com

                The life of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson has often been fascinating to  Civil War historians and his abilities on the battlefield have created many “what if” moments in the realm of alternate history.  During studies of the Battle of Chancellorsville, historians tend to focus on the wounding of the commander and then moving on to the other aspects of the battle.  Little has been done on the minute by minute and day by day analysis of the death of Jackson once he had contracted pneumonia after the amputation of his arm.  In Calamity at Chancellorsville, Mathew W. Lively gives readers the definitive account of the last days of Jackson.

                Matthew W. Lively is a practicing physician along with being a Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at West Virginia University School of Medicine.  He has two masters’ degrees along with a medical degree.  He has been active in teaching of medical students and residents for the past fifteen years.  Along with being active in the medical realm, he has been a lifelong student of the Civil War especially in the case of the medical history.  He has authored many other scientific works in scholarly journals and periodicals.  Calamity at Chancellorsville is his first major work and his medical prowess shines in his historical narrative.

                When a work emerges about the Battle of Chancellorsville, there is usually a quick reference to the action which took place upon the wounding of Jackson then he is carted off to Guinea Station.  From there, the usual narrative focuses on the rest of the battle including General Stuart taking over for Jackson along with the Fredericksburg front involving General Sedgwick.  After the battle narrative is over, the authors generally focus on the death of Jackson, but Lively is different.  Lively gives us a step by step narrative about the battle which Jackson took a part in, then his wounding and his slow decline in health unto his death.  This is the first major day by day, hour by hour account of Jackson’s death which I have come across.  One thing which I found to be incredibly helpful was the introduction labeled Dramatic Personae giving the readers who are unfamiliar with some of the major players a showcase to those who they would read about greatly in the pages to come.  Lively does not go into detail about the battle tactics which took place after the wounding and focuses solely on Jackson.  In his narrative about the slow decline in health, Lively’s expertise with the medical world, especially medical history, is second to none.  What can be said about this book is that it should be hailed as the best narrative of the last days of Jackson.

                This book is highly recommended to the Civil War reader, both new to the study and the trained experts on the conflict.  Those who are looking for a more detailed narrative of what happened to Jackson as the rest of the Battle of Chancellorsville occurred will find what they need in this book.  The narrative is flowing and the presentation of the work is aesthetically pleasing.  Any Stonewall Jackson aficionado should have this work on their bookshelf.  Highly Recommended!