5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
ritcal essays by the Foremost Experts on Lee's Best Battle, July 14, 2001
This review is from: The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock (Military Campaigns of the Civil War) (Hardcover)
A great collection of essays by those historians most familiar with the Battle of Fredericksburg. Burnsides excellent biographer, Wiliam Marvel, writes a very balanced essay on Burnside and his high command that was still full of McClellan political generals and some that were inept. Burnside shares blame for failed opportunities but was primarily let down by Franklin who proved to be incapable or neglectful in providing a strong attack on the Confederate right that was necessary to attack the heights of the town on the confederate left. The objective critic of Lee, Alan Nolan, writes an essay substantiating why this battle was Lee's greatest and how Longstreet was so capable that his great critic Douglas Freeman had to praise him. A. William Greene who spent many years with the park service at Fredericksburg (he's now at the new Pamplin Civil War Museum in Petersburg) writes of Burnside's last and lost attempt at continuing the campaign, the mud march. Difficult in bad weather but made worse by the political generals who contributed willingly to his failure. The other essays contribute to the realities of war, the carnage and the effect on Civilians and how the virtually destroyed Pennyslvania Division were later to shout "Remember Fredericksburg" at Gettysburg.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fresh Examination, December 14, 2007
In collaboration with the University of North Carolina Press, Gary Gallagher has produced an amazingly insightful series of anthologies on various aspects of the American Civil War. This collection is one of the best. Its value is nicely summed up by a comment in the Introduction (p. xi): "Far from exhausted topics open only to increasingly minute dissection of tactical movements, the activities of Union and Confederate armies invite serious scrutiny by historians interested in a range of issues." Thank goodness that this new and refreshing way of examining the Civil War is moving us beyond an earlier romanticized guns-'n-glory focus.
All of the essays in The Fredericksburg Campaign are quite good. But for my money, the three best ones--and the ones that dramatically represent the new approach championed by Gallagher--are written by George Rable, William Blair, and Gallagher himself. All three might be seen as trying to make sense of that odd cry of exultation attributed to Lee after the massacre at Marye's Heights: "It is well that war is so terrible! We should grow too fond of it!"
Rable reminds us that the carnage from the vantage point of the soldier on the ground was nothing to crow about, and that even a momentary battlefield thrill is far outshadowed by the terrible reality of slaughtered men, wounds, amputations, sepsis, psychological trauma, and shattered morale.
Blair's essay, which deals with the effects of the shelling and routing of their town on Fredericksburg civilians, brings home the lesson that neither is there nothing in war to grow fond of from the noncombatant's perspective. Too often, military historians tend to overlook what today is fashionably referred to as "collateral damage." But in the Civil War, and especially in Virginia, civilians suffered horribly during and for years after the war.
Finally, Gallagher's essay points out that the famous Lee quote needs to be taken in context. Lee himself seems to have been extremely depressed by the Fredericksburg battle. The slaughter of Federal troops stopped the drive to Richmond, but it really gained the Confederacy (in Lee's estimation) no strategic advantage, and it hazarded artificially elevating Confederate self-confidence. Interestingly, Gallagher points out that Lee felt similarly about Chancellorsville: a "victory" that ultimately brought no advantage to the South.
All in all, an excellent collection of essays. Highly recommended.
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2 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A correction for your on-line review., February 23, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock (Military Campaigns of the Civil War) (Hardcover)
Your review of Gallagher's book on the Battle of Fredericksburg has the date wrong. It was fought on Dec. 13, 1862, not 1863.
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