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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A great disappointment, September 9, 2006
This review is from: 1862: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
In 1862, the Union was not winning the Civil War. In 1862, the incompetent John Pope lost the 2nd Battle of Bull Run, which forced Lincoln to reappoint the timid George McClellan to command of the Army of the Potomac. Later the same year, the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg was fought. So why does Conroy think that the Union could defeat both the Confederacy and the world's largest industrial and naval power?
As a previous reviewer has pointed out, in 1862 Britain was the preeminent industrial power. Just as the Union was industrially dominant over the Confederacy, Britain was industrially dominant over the Union. True, the British Army was small and not well led. That's because the Royal Navy was the major British military force. Just as the Union blockade of the South was effective, a British blockade of the North would have brought the Union to a standstill. And if anyone claims that the Union's ironclads would have defeated the Royal Navy, the first British ironclad ship was HMS Warrior, built in 1860. The British were quite aware of the value of ironclads, which is why they stopped building wooden battleships and frigates in 1860. Also, with the exception of USS New Ironsides, American ironclads were not ocean going ships. The British ironclads could safely cross the Atlantic.
I have other complaints about this book. I found the love/sex story to be quite unnecessary (although I did get a chuckle from the mental picture of Allan Pinkerton being found naked, painted red, and chained to a post in a Washington street). To say that the characters are wooden is to give them more subtlety than Conroy portrays. At one point early in the book, HMS Gorgon defeats USS St. Lawrence in a battle. Gorgon is described as a "steam frigate" mounting 74 guns. Sorry, Conroy, but a 74 gun ship was a battleship, not a frigate.
Other than the historical inaccuracies, the gratuitous sex, and the lack of three dimensional characters, "1862" is not a bad book.
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68 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
VASTLY disappointing., July 22, 2006
This review is from: 1862: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
(1) Winfield Scott was in eclipse not merely because of McClellan or Cameron. He was extremely old and infirm; he was a stuffy, formal, and arrogant person; and he was a former Presidential candidate.
(2) There is no evidence that Patrick Cleburne was a Fenian; considering he came from middle-class stock (his father was a physician), it's highly unlikely. It's DOUBLY unlikely that anyone in the North would have paid him any attention, since he had fought in not a single battle as of the first mention of him in the book.
(3) Lesbianism was just -not- spoken about- and any American woman of the period would have been scandalized at the very mention of it.
(4) As mentioned, British land forces were nothing like as weak as depicted. The vast inferiority of British leadership is believable; its numerical and material inferiority is NOT.
Finally, the factor that more than anything else spoils the book for me:
(5) Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, is depicted in this book as eager for a war and blithely ignorant or dismissive of American power. This is absolutely the opposite of the historical Lord Pam, who was determined to avoid war with the United States if at all possible. In this book, Palmerston calls for war despite Lincoln backing down, apologizing, even groveling and releasing the Confederate diplomats Mason and Slidell. It just stretches belief too far, for a student of the Civil War, to accept this uncharacteristic action.
I questioned 1901's quick war; I utterly reject virtually every aspect of 1862's war, and the characters and historical figures portrayed in it. I strongly regret buying this book, and I hope other people will read this review and AVOID, AVOID, AVOID.
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96 of 121 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Alas, not very good, March 11, 2006
This review is from: 1862: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
"1862" was a disappointment. In actual fact, America would be fighting way, way out of its weight against Britain in 1862.
The UK had a larger population, a much larger GDP, and the advantage in the crucial areas (heavy industry, marine steam engines, heavy engineering) was even greater -- somewhere between six to one and eight to one.
In 1862 Britain was at its height as the dominant manufacturing power, producing half or more of the entire _world's_ output.
The Union had to extert every effort to defeat the Confederacy. Its prospects of defeating the UK and the CSA at the same time would be somewhere between zero and zip.
The US might make gains in Canada, but that would be irrelevant and they'd have to cough up at the peace conference; the war would be fought and won and lost at sea, and on the southern front.
Real results? A close blockade of the northern coasts, collapse of Federal government revenues, hyperinflation, defeats at the hands of the Confederate army, British-built gunboats dominating the Mississippi.
Almost certainly a collapse of the Unionist will to fight and humiliating defeat, with harsh peace terms set by the victors - probably massive losses of territory to the Confederacy in the West (probably as far as California) and punitive war indemnities and reparations.
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