The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote - V1 Ch 5-8

Joshism

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I'm wrapping up the latter half of this book into one post. Partly because I have less to say per chapter than previous chapters, but also because this reading project is lurching across the finish line late. I took a break to read an unrelated short book early in February, I took a short trip, and I was sick for a bit.

Overview of Chapter Contents - Part: Main Topics (Page Numbers)
5.1.1: Peninsula Campaign (312-418)
5.1.2: Valley Campaign Prelude (418-422)
5.2.1: Valley Campaign, Part 1 (422-439)
5.2.2: Seven Pines (439-451)
5.2.3: Valley Campaign, Part 2 (451-465)
5.3: Seven Days Prelude (465-479)
5.4: Seven Days (479-519)

6.1: Lincoln promotes Pope & Halleck, deals with McClellan and Slavery (523-541)
6.2: Western Theater - Farragut, Grant, and Buell (541-567)
6.3: Western Theater - Bragg's Plans & Baton Rouge (567-585)
6.4: Lee vs Pope - Cedar Mountain to Second Manassas (585-649)

7.1: Kentucky Campaign - Richmond & Munfordville (650-661)
7.2: Maryland Campaign & Antietam (661-704)
7.3: Emancipation Proclamation (704-710)
7.4.1: Kentucky Campaign - figuring out the next move (710-716)
7.4.2: Iuka & Corinth (716-726)
7.4.3: Kentucky Campaign - Perryville & Withdrawal (726-745)

8.1: Lincoln, command changes, and late fall operations (745-771)
8.2: Davis and his generals (771-799)
8.3: Northern opinions and Lincoln's December Message (799-810)


General Thoughts

This book is long, and it feels long. A big reason I took a short break from what it was I had been reading it for a month but was only halfway through it. The arrangement of the chapters doesn't help, such as the 64-pages covering the entire Lee-Pope campaign in a single section which is longer than the other three sections of the same chapter combined.

What also became a growing problem as this book got almost entirely into active military operations is I have read books about almost every one of this campaigns/battles, but none recently and I am an expert on none of them (my ACW interests are broad rather than deep). The result is much of these chapters have a feeling of "I know this well enough for this to feel redundant, but not well enough to really analyze most of it in depth."

It's interesting how Lincoln and Davis were both decried as tyrants by their own people.

1862 is when some of Foote's numbers for Confederate forces start seeming a bit too low. They were probably commonly accepted numbers when Foote was writing, but nevertheless it does give some mistaken impressions about the numberical odds Lee faced in some engagements.

Foote seems quite fascinated with Stonewall Jackson's eccentricities, but I don't think he considered Stonewall a military genius as many of his era did.

I think Foote uses the term "Jacobins" more than any other Civil War historian.

Foote is critical (or about as much as he gets on anything) of McClellan on two things: implied by his repeatedly vastly overstating Lee's numbers, and his slow and ineffective performance in Maryland. I get the impression Foote considers Seven Days' to be Lee's brilliance more than anything while Antietam would be McClellan's bungling more than Lee's brilliance. I think he's somewhat sympathetic to the difficulties McClellan operated under while also finding him a bit exasperating - or at least that's the impression Foote's writing gives to me, the reader.

The book stops at what feels like a really sensible place.

At some point I'd like to make better sense of 1862 army strengths: the changing strength of the Army of the Potomac before and after Antietam, and Lee's fluctuating strength from Richmond to Northern Virginia to Maryland to Fredericksburg. I don't know that this has ever been studied in detail.

I also really wish someone like Jeffrey William Hunt would write a book just about McClellan's last campaign: the move from Maryland to Warrenton that Lee was able to frustrate by moving Longstreet to Culpepper while keeping Jackson in the Shenandoah as a threat through the passes. It's a subject even more overlooked than Hunt's quadrilogy and for the same reason: it didn't result in a battle.

Specific Comments (with page numbers) - Questions, Observations, and Criticisms

395: Conscription decried in 1862 as "a blow at constitutional liberty"

396: I did some searching about the Butcher Hats vs Hill Cats anecdote and in apparently came from a memoir by Varina Davis.

404: "McClellan's [fretfulness] was the produce of a variety of pressures: downright back luck, Lincoln, and - as always - his own ripe imagination."

405: I wonder why McClellan was denied control over Fort Monroe's 12,000 men. As long as Mac was operating between the York & James the fort would seem to need far less of a garrison than that.

408: Foote refers to James Wadsworth as "elderly". He was one of the oldest generals in the Army of the Potomac, but he was in his mid-50s which isn't quite elderly even back then.

469: "He knew how to get along with Davis." Foote spends a paragraph addressing why Lee had Davis' loyalty while Joe Johnston did not.

562-563: Foote says that Buell's men slowly moving from Corinth to Chattanooga were dismayed their commander was "denying them the fun and profit enjoyed by comrades who had come this way before them." Foote then immediately gives an example of what he means by "fun and profit" - Turchin's infamous sack of Athens, AL in which three Union regiments "took it apart completely, Cossack-style, raping Negro servant girls" and looting $50,000 in "watches, plate, and jewelry."

This was I probably the only part of the book where I thought Foote doing a really bad job presenting the history. The event obviously occurred, but Foote gives zero context as to how or why, and further implies other Union troops were jealous that this isolated incident wasn't turned into a policy of open rape, pillage, and plunder. Buell did have a kid gloves policy, but I think his troops wanted to take food and needed supplies far more than anything else. Also, as best I can tell from a short search, the implied mass rape was actually just one rape. This wasn't equivalent to the Eastern Front of World War II, not even for an hour; perhaps comparable to Sherman's bummers ("bummers" as in the malicious stragglers, not Sherman's main body operating under orders).

A little further down, Foote describes Sherman's policy at the time in West Tennessee, without quoting anything. Foote's words: "In Sherman's command the punishment for molesting civilians or stealing was confinement on bread and water, and he sent out patrols with instructions to shoot if foragers tried to escape arrest." Foraging usually refers to an act done under orders, and specifically involves taking food and provisions (sometimes in exchange for credit, albeit still involuntary). It is not the same as "stealing" or "molesting". There is a big difference between soldiers taking your cow or your fence rails vs. your jewelry or your daughter.

587: Foote says that Lee organized the ANV into two wings he initially put 28 brigades under Longstreet and only 7 under Jackson. I wonder if this is a misleading statement? It depends on the timing of the creation of the wings. If it occurred when Jackson was sent to Gordonsville then it says nothing about Lee's confidence in Longstreet vs Jackson and everything to do with managing strategic risk - how much strength was needed to delay Pope vs keep watch on McClellan.

595: Burnside was at Fredericksburg when he was ordered to take the IX Corps to join Pope.

663: Foote relates an Marylander's account of seeing the ANV crossing the Potomac and remarking on how they were "starving" which seems like an exaggeration.

705: Foote recounts a story about a Quaker woman who spoke to Lincoln about the slavery question, and declared that God had told her to tell Lincoln that he (Lincoln) was chosen to end slavery. Lincoln responds to the appeal: "I have neither the time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that that Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her?"

A little searching indicates this exchange is supposed to have occurred in June 1862. The source seems to be a 19th century compilation Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time in a chapter by William D. Kelley. He was a Pennsylvania abolitionist and one of the founders of the Republicans. Elected a Representative in 1861, he had apparently become friends with Lincoln.

The quote feels a little 'off' to me, perhaps since it was at best related second-hand from Lincoln to Kelley, and then perhaps not recorded until two decades later. Or maybe Lincoln was just having a bad day.

715: Foote states that Buell had 75,000 men at Louisville went he set out to drive Bragg and EKS out of Kentucky yet he goes into Stones River with less than 44,000. More than a third of his army was left behind for guarding supply lines? Had Buell abandoned Nashville entirely when he went to Kentucky? Did the 75K include the Lousville garrison?

720: Foote says Rosecrans and Van Dorn were both part of the West Point Class of 1856 and Rosecrans graduated 4th. Rosencrans actually graduated 5th but more importantly both men graduated back in 1842!

757: Shelby Foote quotes Lee claiming McClellan was his "ablest opponent." I think we had a thread about this on CWT.

780: Lee's controversial suggestions -

791: incorrectly refers to Raphael Semmes as prewar "head of the Lighthouse Board". He was the Naval Secretary, but never Chairman.

799: The Lost Cause before the cause was even lost!
"I pray for success, but I do not expect it. The enemy in due time will penetrate the heart of the Confederacy...the hearts of our people will quake and their spirits will yield to the force of overpowering numbers. . . . The enemy is superior to us in everything but courage and therefore it is quite certain, if the war is to go on until exhaustion overtake the one side or the other side, that we shall be the first to be exhausted."
-Sen. Herschel Johnson (GA), Oct 1862

801: "We can make war so terrible that [the people of the South] will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country, still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war." -Sherman to Grant

Conclusions (for the entire book)

I think this book holds up as an okay introduction to the American Civil War. Shelby Foote's bias seems negligible to me. In terms of the quality of the content I think the issues are primarily those of its age (better information and analysis since he wrote). There are some weaknesses that I think stem from Foote being a novelist not a professional historian: being a little too accepting of some sources and not providing a lot of analysis (which is also probably a byproduct of the "narrative" format). Foote is better than Winston Groom in this field though!

I was surprised to find I did not like Foote's style as much as I would expect from his reputation. (I'm not a big fan of Catton either.) He's got some great lines, but also repeats a little too much and I'm not real keen on the narrative style he employs in contrast to how a more traditional history book might be arranged. Obviously, YMMV.

I no longer plan to read Volumes 2 and 3. Reasons:
  1. My hopes for a group read-along failed. Story of my life is draw admiration and approval, but fail to inspire.
  2. I found that rereading this book 25 years after first reading it was not as fresh as I expected and thus not very enjoyable. See my second General Comment.
  3. Two months of reading one book exhausted me. At 800 pages of main text it's just too damn long, and I'm pretty sure both of the other volumes are even longer. This trilogy was a really long read in high school too - probably over six months, and I didn't quite finish the last volume before the school year ended. I'm ready to read something else.
Maybe later this year I will get the other two volumes and just spot read parts of particular interest. Shelby's and Price's Missouri Raids in 1863 and 1864, Morgan's Raid, and Early and Sheridan in the Valley are topics I have not yet read any books about. I'm curious to see what Foote says about Gettysburg and the following months in Virginia, Cold Harbor, some of Forrest's later actions, the March to the Sea, and the post-Bennett Place events.
 

5fish

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I did not know it had a name no one ever uses it...


Bennett Place is a former farm and homestead in Durham, North Carolina, which was the site of the last surrender of a major Confederate army in the American Civil War, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to William T. Sherman. The first meeting (April 17, 1865) saw Sherman agreeing to certain political demands by the Confederates, which were promptly rejected by the Union cabinet in Washington. Another meeting had to be held (April 26) to agree on military terms only, in line with Robert E. Lee’s recent surrender to Ulysses S. Grant. This effectively ended the war.

Here is this site...

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2010/12/bennett-place.html


General Joseph E. Johnston
General Order No. 22:

COMRADES: I earnestly exhort you to observe faithfully the terms of pacification agreed upon; and to discharge the obligations of good and peaceful citizens, as well as you have performed the duties of thorough soldiers in the field. By such a course, you will best secure the comfort of your families and kindred, and restore tranquillity to our country.
 

5fish

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Two months of reading one book exhausted me. At 800 pages of main text it's just too damn long, and I'm pretty sure both of the other volumes are even longer. This trilogy was a really long read in high school too - probably over six months, and I didn't quite finish the last volume before the school year ended. I'm ready to read something else.
I read a 600 plus page Medieval History of the Crusades' book and I was ready for something else as well... It was a good book...
 

Joshism

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I did not know it had a name no one ever uses it.
This Astounding Close: The Road to Bennett Place by Mark Bradley

We Ride a Whirlwind: Sherman and Johnston at Bennett Place by Eric Wittenberg
 

O' Be Joyful

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Two months of reading one book exhausted me. At 800 pages of main text it's just too damn long, and I'm pretty sure both of the other volumes are even longer. This trilogy was a really long read in high school too - probably over six months, and I didn't quite finish the last volume before the school year ended. I'm ready to read something else.

As you say Josh, it's/they are a long, long slog, somewhat akin to Burnside's Mud March. ;) I read them all 28-30 years ago, which is how long it took to get thru them all, and still have them on my book shelves but I have no eagerness to dust them off.

I'm pretty sure both of the other volumes are even longer.

In paperback: Vol. II-976 pgs. Vol. III-1120 pgs :eek:
 
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5fish

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by Eric Wittenberg
Eric and me did not get along... I challenge a few times... He throw insults at me... You know? He ask the forum about looking into one of his gr, gr, gr, grandfathers and I looked and learn he was a lawyer in Charleston, S. C. and he went to a well know law school in CT. in his day. I found a few other things and Eric nave thanked me...
 
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