Customer Reviews

Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a fine book. Dr. Harsh proceeds clearly and logically through Lee's early war service, using the general's letters and statements to reveal the development of his strategic thinking. Well written and intelligent, this really is scholarship at at its best. A welcome antidote to the slew of shallowly researched recent titles attacking Lee as overrated. Superb.

I had the pleasure of taking Dr. Harsh's Civil War History course at George Mason University. Much of his basis for lectures for that course was the same material used to write this book and its sequel - Taken at the Flood. Dr. Harsh is nothing if not a thorough researcher - with the help of his industrious graduate students of course, serving their terms of indenture in the tombs of the National Archives and the Center of Military History and other suitable manuscript repositories. He has truly wiped the slate clean and started from the point of "What did they know and when did they know it?" He often refers to Lincoln's standard wire to his generals in the field "How does it look now?" He applies that method to analyzing Civil War principals - how did the situation present itself, what information was known or guessed at and when and how did they react to it? You may not agree with all of his conclusions - I certainly do not agree with all of the high praise that he heaps on Jefferson Davis and George McClellan. However, you will have to take his statements under serious consideration, since they are based on solid, academic application of the historical method. He succeeds in stimulating the student to think. He has a special interest in historiography and he makes every effort to avoid preconceptions which are not supported by available facts. This book is certainly a key contribution to understanding the first year of the war from the Confederate strategic perspective. His Taken at the Flood will rapidly become the standard for future studies of the Maryland Campaign of '62. The goods news is that Dr. Harsh will next turn his attention to the Federal side and we will be offered his insight on Lincoln, McClellan et al.

Joseph Harsh, the author, analyzes Confederate war strategy from Fort Sumter through the Battle of Second Manassas stating that it was not true that the all the South wanted was "to be left alone." Declaring independence did not guarantee independence, and the author states the South thus "pursued three closely related but distinct war aims: independence, territorial integrity and the union of all the slave states."

The text notes that statistically the South could not win. To overcome the odds, the Confederacy needed to conserve its resources while inflicting unacceptable casualties on the North. The text explains the doctrines of the Swiss military theorist Jomini, the probable basis for Jefferson Davis's doctrine of the "offensive-defense." Davis's doctrine provided a firm strategic framework within which Confederate generals in the field could work. By October 1861, pursuing the offensive-defense considerable progress toward achieving Confederate war aims was made; followed next by reversals of Southern fortunes resulting in part from the failure to continue the policies/strategies that yielded early successes.

On June 1, 1862 Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia, when Joseph Johnson was wounded. The offensive-defensive policy was already in practice and was not initiated by Lee as some contend. By "late May 1862, the South had nearly lost the war. Lee knew that Jefferson Davis expected him to go on the offensive to save Richmond and to reclaim Virginia. Harsh also notes "Lee chose the offensive because he wanted to win the war, and he thought it offered the only chance. He believed the defensive was the sure path to defeat." His first response was the Seven Days Battle, whose strategy/execution contained errors, but nevertheless relieved the pressure on Richmond.

The author gives an excellent account of the strategic/tactical problems during the Seven Days Campaign and the events leading to the Battle of Second Manassas. Richmond was a major railroad center, banking center, manufacturing center, milling center and its lost would have been serious. It was important that the city is not captured and that Virginia is reclaimed. After the Seven Days Campaign Lee lost the initiative and was in a strategic stalemate that didn't end until Union General McClellan's Army of the Potomac was ordered back to Washington thereby ending the threat to Richmond.

The text gives an excellent account of the development of Lee's field strategies before and throughout the Battle of Second Manassas. The author notes as the battle neared its climax "Lee desperately wanted to finish the task at hand by destroying the army of.... Pope." However a frontal assault was the only option; and Lee couldn't afford the losses a frontal assault would incur. Nonetheless the author notes following the Second Manassas "Through chance, risk and much bloodshed, he and the Army of Northern Virginia were cobbling together the series of rapid victories that might lead to Northern demoralization and Confederate independence." The text ends with the Battle of Second Manassas and closes with six appendixes that discuss strategy questions.

While this an excellent work, my major criticism is an almost total lack of suitable maps. I read the chapters on the Battle of Second Manassas with a copy of Hennessy's book on Second Manassas at hand for its maps. While much can be gained from this book without prior study of the first eighteen months of the Civil War, prior reading of history about the period covered by this book will greatly aid the reader in comprehending Harsh's text.

I've had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Harsh for several years after taking a class on the Civil War with him at George Mason University.

This book came out of the seperation into three books of a manuscript he wrote on Gen. Lee and the campaign just prior to the Maryland campaign and then the Maryland campaign itself. This book is immensely readable and quite detailed. Dr. Harsh is quite blunt when there is a lack of clear evidence on a subject and the reasons for his judgment are well reasoned and sound. My opinion of Confederate strategy and the role of Jefferson Davis in the formation of that strategy changed a great deal after reading Confederate Tide Rising. While he is not the subject of this book, my view of Gen. Jackson also changed as the result of reading this book. Due to his performance in many of the battles and lead up to the battles discussed in this book, it's obvious to me that Jackson has been overrated by historians and could have been much more criticized by Gen. Lee than he was. That he did not do so postwar and only midly criticized Jackson in the action discussed in this book says a lot about Gen. Lee the man.

There are only a few drawbacks to this book. The first is that Dr. Harsh sometimes I think assumes knowledge of minor engagements and also political developments which were important but not directly germaine to his discussion that the reader may not possess. He would have been better served to not just mention these engagements and political developments and leave the reader wondering but to further discuss these developments and their importance, such as the Trent affair which he mentions twice before discussing what it was.
My second gripe with this book has been noted by a previous reviewer. There is a woeful lack of maps, which I think is simply unforgivable in any military history book. As Dr. Harsh clearly demonstrates, terrain and locations are particularly important in civil war battles and helped determine the tactics and strategy employed by Gen. Lee, Gen. McClellan and Gen. Pope. I have a working knowledge of some of the places discussed in the book because I live near many of them, however many readers in other parts of the country who do not have an extensive knowledge of the Civil War yet, may not. The lack of maps would really hamper their understanding of Dr. Harsh's points.

However, one thing that helps this book despite all that is Dr. Harsh's discussion of several terms and their uses in books on the the Civil War as well as how the Civil War generals themselves would have understood those terms such as strategy and tactics. This sort of a discussion is absent in most works on the war and I believe really hampers the understanding of many who look to gain knowledge on the war.

Overall, this book is essential for any Civil War bookshelf and should be accompanied by Dr. Harsh's other two books, Taken at the Flood and Sounding the Shallows.

An overview of the war to the summer of 62. The ideas presented are well grounded and provoke real thought. Not a book that will sit well with many readers but a worthwhile addition to any Civil War Library. Read this and than read "Taken at the Flood".

This is the second book Joseph Harsh wrote on the Antietam Campaign and Southern strategy in 1861 -1862. Again, the reader's knowledge of the Civil War is challenged by series logical well-supported ideas. This book sets the stage for "Taken at the Flood" by establishing the strategy and events that resulted in the Antietam Campaign. This book can be read as a stand-alone history or with "Taken at the Flood". If read together, this is best read first even considering the review of Southern strategy at the start of the second book.

Beginning with an overview of CSA war aims, we are walked through the first months of the war learning how events shape strategy. When Lee assumes command of the Army of Northern Virginia, the author details how the victories in the summer of 1862 change strategy and lead to the invasion of Maryland in September. This is the heart of the book, showing Lee simultaneously both directing and being trapped by events. Once again, we are placed in real-time seeing events not as history but as happening now. This allows us to understand what they knew and why the acted as they did. Often, they had the wrong, incomplete or misleading information but something had to be done.

Dr.Harsh has clearly researched and analyzed Robert E. Lee's offensive/defensive strategy and its relationship to the Confederate war aims. And one factor emerges as paramount: the importance of Jefferson Davis and his role as both Confederate president and military adviser.Together, he and Lee charted a course which logically extended northward, resulting in the arduous Maryland campaign and aspirations of winning the war.

Absent any hardcore evidence evinced by a Confederate JCS or NSC numbered document Harsh proposes that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee both understood that the Confederacy had three major war aims; independence, territorial integrity and the union of all slave states. He gives the "Lost Cause" advocates a respectful if necessarily brief hearing before noting that it was the Confederacy who first invaded Maryland, Kentucky and the New Mexico/Arizona territories before a single federal soldier crossed the Potomac and then goes to some length, particularly for 208 pages, to rationalize the South's essentially offensive, in as much as it could be, strategy.
Longstreet devotees will recognize Baron Henri Jomini's appearance again and the recapitulation of his "defensive-offensive" strategy, although Harsh prefers to label the South's version as "offensive-defensive", for as apparently Jomini was fond of saying, "he who stands on the defense is everywhere anticipated". The linchpin of Harsh's argument is Lee's decision, following Second Manassas, to invade the North. He asserts, with some evidence, that Lee particularly understood that the terrible mathematics of Union superiority in "numbers, resources, and all the means and appliances for carrying on the war" made the hope of a strictly Southern military victory unlikely indeed. But Lee also apparently understood (surprisingly for me) the political difficulties facing the Southern cause; the North would "be shrewd enough to make the war appear to be merely a struggle on our part for the maintenance of slavery; and we shall thus be without sympathy, and most certainly without material aid from other powers." Most significantly from Harsh's standpoint, not only did Lee have an excellent grasp of the political situation, but his strategy was always keyed with this very much in mind.
Harsh's argument, if true, lends greater depth to one of this country's most revered, and ultimately tragic heroes who, on the eve of Appomattox was heard to say, "A few more Sailor's Creeks and it will be all over - ended - just as I have expected it would end from the first."

An excellent book which rare in this era when everyone that finds a few civil war letters thinks he must publish a book.