Customer Reviews

Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

George C. Rable explains in his prologue that he sought a blending of what he characterizes the "old" military history (dealing largely with leaders and dissecting strategy and tactics) and the "new" (focused on soldier life and its connections to larger social themes). And, I think it is fair to say, he well achieved that blending in "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" Combat operations are competently described, albeit not in deep detail. Where Rable excels is in providing what might be called the "context" of the campaign, including discussions of the impact of McClellan's replacement by Burnside, the continuing controversy over the planned formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the repercussions of recently conducted state and congressional elections, and the realities of army life in the field. And Rable delves deeply into the experiences of the wounded after the fighting ended and into how the battle was reported, both North and South. For the most part, there is little assessment regarding the performances of the generals on the battlefield; Rable's interests quite evidently focus more upon the lot of the common soldier. Despite the relative lack of emphasis on the tactical operations, the maps are entirely adequate to support the narrative.

Only a few months after Rable's book appeared, Frank Augustin O'Reilly published "The Fredericksburg Campaign". Inevitably, a comparison between the two must be made. O'Reilly has written a detailed military history, down to the regiment and battery level, laying out precisely the what, where, and when of combat operations. Fully 60 percent of his 500-plus page text is devoted to the action of December 13, 1862. This is not, however, a merely dry recounting of maneuver and sequence; O'Reilly takes care to maintain the vitality of his narrative by addressing the experiences and fates of individual officers and soldiers caught up in the fighting. All in all, however, O'Reilly's book is focused much more narrowly than Rable's, paying less heed to the general background of politics and the state of Northern and Southern morale at this stage of the war.

Of the two volumes, Rable's "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" is probably the more accessible by the general reader not deeply into the study of American Civil War military operations, while O'Reilly's book is clearly the definitive traditional military history of the Fredericksburg battle in the traditional sense. Paired with Rable's work, the two together provide a uniquely comprehensive study of the campaign in all its multitude of aspects. I recommend reading both.

On Dec. 13, 1862, the South won perhaps the most lopsided major battle of the Civil War, in back of the Virginia city of Fredericksburg. Robert E. Lee's rebel army dug in behind a stone wall at the top of a long, steep ridge. His northern counterpart sent blue brigade after blue brigade right up that hill in the cold winter sunlight, in the face of the kind of gunfire that men lean into, as they do a wind-driven hail. By the time sunset stopped the carnage, the North had lost nearly 13,000 men.

The battle became a watchword, not just for Yankee defeat but for the folly of sending troops on long charges against dug-in enemies. Six months later, when Union troops along Cemetery Ridge poured a deadly fire into Pickett's Charge, they shouted to one another, "Give them Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!"

Thus the title of George Rable's new look at the battle. In this book, he's written an excellent and gripping description of the bravery and folly and just plain cussedness of one battle, and all war. But more than that, he's tried to bridge a schism that's often as rancorous as the North-South political divorce of 1860.

Look at any bookstore's shelf of Civil War titles and you'll likely notice they come in two varieties: the "battles and leaders" books, and the "social history" books. This bedevils our understanding of the times. The academics write slim volumes on social theory, and look on enviously as tacticians and retired military men rack up sales for vast books on every battlefield detail. To a professor, it's positively baffling.

James McPherson, the dean of Civil War history, in his provocative essay "What's the Matter With History?" (1995) described these cinder block-sized books as "more and more about less and less" and marveled that there are "two volumes by a single author on the second day (of the Battle of Gettysburg) totaling 725 pages. Only the most dedicated buff can wade through all of this prose."

But if Harry Pfanz's books seem to stop at the edge of the battlefield, as though the battle were a planet unto itself, the books of McPherson's colleagues often stop on the other side of it. They can write as though the least important thing about the war was -- the war. Most Civil War buffs seem to prefer the Pfanz version. It's hard to blame them. Arid socialistic moralizing and preachy rhetoric on the one hand, on the other, timeless tales of the bravery of average men wrapped in sumptuous prose. Yet the Douglas Southall Freemans are dead. And the present retreat from social history tends toward military minutiae and has become arid in its own way. Without a context, nothing is comprehensible. I remember watching a Civil War roundtable meeting let out, after an hour-long presentation about the Battle of Antietam, and one wife turned to another and muttered, "All that over a cornfield."

Rable, writing from the academic side, sets this all right with his Fredericksburg book, and he lays out a map for other scholars to follow. He is a history professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa whose previous books include "The Confederate Republic," which was an interesting political look at the Southern government. He also wrote "A Revolution against Politics and Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism," which is the kind of title professors love and Civil War buffs avoid.

The Fredericksburg book shows he can walk with the best of the military historians. He clearly explains the battle's troop movements, with the aid of many diagrams. Rable has an eye for the best anecdotes from a raft of first-hand sources, and they spice up his narrative in the best Bruce Catton style. He delves into the strategy and tactics, for fans of that. But he also explores army morale and the conditions of camp life, which can have as much effect on a battle's outcome as a commander's decisions.

And he sets this terrible battle in the context of two peoples at war in the same land. Civilians, soldiers' wives, politicians, blacks slave and free -- he's got them all in here.

Rable's new book will be the darling of academic historians because it is a model of "New Military History" (at least this is one accepted term for it), the relatively recent school of thought that places military conflicts in the context of broad cultural issues such as politics, society, race, and gender. What is downplayed is the importance of strategic and tactical detail of the battle itself. A book about the battle of Fredericksburg can in no way be definitive if the details of the battle itself cover only 92 some odd pages out of a total of 450+ text (non- endnotes, index, etc) pages. It was a BATTLE after all!. The problem with NMH is it requires everything about the CW to be placed in such broad context that a book on a large CW battle would easily run over 1500 pages if you give proper treatment to all of its tenets. I don't see what is wrong with one book on a CW battle being an ultra-detailed tactical battle study with little addressing of social issues while other books cover the other issues such as hospitals, civilians, race, causes, politics, etc etc etc. There is simply no reason was all this must be examined in detail in a single volume. It simply cannot be done in the size of a book that most editors will accept. Invariably, it is the battle details that lose out when something must be cut.

Anyway, this does not detract from the fine book that Mr. Rable has written. I give it only 3 stars (which is a positive rating--I would like to give it 3 1/2) because the author failed in my opinion to render an adequate modern tactical treatment of the battle equal in importance to the other issues tackled in the book. My rating may appear at first glance to be doing to Rable's book what I accuse academic historians of doing to tactical studies, but it is grounded in Rable's failure in his own goal of providing a comprehensive treatment of the battle. The military issue is too thin.

Another book on Fredericksburg will available soon that is a lengthy tome covering the fighting in fine detail. Undoubtedly, it will be roundly criticized for doing so but all I have to say to that is why must it compete with Rable??? Their focuses perfectly complement each other and together we come to a higher understanding that we do not get from reading each in absence of the other. This is how it should be.

In his splendid, prize-winning book "Race and Reunion," David Blight maintains that Civil War writing has changed little since the veterans themselves began putting pen to paper. Despite the recent advent of the so-called "new Civil War history," with its greater attention to common soldiers and non-combatants, battle narrative largely retains the earmarks--some would say the formula--of those earlier works. But is there really only one right way to describe a battle? George Rable's hefty new work, the culmination of a decade's work on the Battle of Fredericksburg, announces that the answer is "no." While Rable hardly ignores tactics and strategy--I found his tactical descriptions models of exposition and clarity--his broader purposes are to place the battle within the political and social context of late 1862 America, and to examine the lot of the common soldier during a critical campaign. In other words, who were these men, what were they fighting for, and why did their sacrifices matter? This is an important book, one that every scholar of the war should read and digest. I recommend it strongly.

Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! by George Rable is an excellent overview of an often overlooked campaign. Mr Rable's book, while not a military history, is a wonderfully writeen and easy to read book on the Fredericksburg Campaign. It starts off with Burnside replacing McClellan and ends with Burnside's dismissal after the infamous Mud March. If you want a great overall read on the entire campaign this book is for you. If you want a miltary history of the campaign then I would suggest Francis O'Reilly's Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock. O'Reilly's book is almost a minute by minute, blow by blow of the battle, while Rable's is a remarkable overview of the entire campaign from beginning to bitter end. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the campaign and I would suggest O'Reilly's with this one by Mr Rable.

Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! is an excellent overall view of the post Antietam actions of both the Federal and Confederate armies as they maneuvered to and ultimately confronted each other at the important but little publicized Civil War battle of Fredericksburg. George Rable has combined a fairly detailed battle summary along with an enormous amount of "everyday soldier" feeling to give an accurate as well as highly readable account of this predecessor to the bloody battle at Chancellorsville. The story starts with the Union troops stalled at Warrenton Va. following the delayed pursuit of the Rebel army after the monolithic battle at Antietam. Abraham Lincoln, finally resigned to the fact that George McClellan will not agressively fight Robert E. Lee, appoints the ambivalent Ambrose Burnside to command the Federal forces. After Burnside reluctantly agrees to the post (he's refused command twice before) he marches his troops with lightening quickness to Falmouth with the idea of crossing the Rappahannock River to Fredericksburg and ultimately to Richmond to capture the Rebel capital. Upon arrival at Falmouth, however, he discovers that the War Department has forgotten to provide bridge material for the river crossing and he's forced to wait...giving Lee valuable time to countermarch and entrench his troops outside Fredericksburg. Rable then takes an opportunity to really describe Union and Confederate camp life...the reader gets many first hand accounts of the incredibly horrible conditions there (this camp has been called the Valley Forge of the Civil War) and how the troops ultimately prepared for the coming battle. Rable's battle and tactics descriptions of the engagements at Prospect Hill (south of town) and the incredible encounters at the stone wall at the base of Marye's Heights are concise and expository...clearly, this confrontation was a major mistake for the Union. Rable then carries that thought further by explaining Burnside's stubborness and reluctance to change his plans in the face of defeat. The result is one of the Civil War's most sensless slaughters and the final downfall for Burnside. The book ends with the demoralized Union forces again encamped at Falmouth (following the ridiculous "Mud March"...Burnside's last ditch attempt at redemption for his army) and a new leader (Joe Hooker) ready to assume command. In the final analysis, Rable's book is well balanced with enough battle detail to satisfy the military historian while at the same time, a lot of "everyday" soldier context to make this an excellent addition to any Civil War library. I would recommend this book highly.

I began reading George Rable's "Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg" with a sense of hopeful optimism. I expected to read a well balanced thorough history of the Fredericksburg campaign. Let me commence this review in that vein by focusing on the aspects of the book that I found rewarding.

First, I liked the fact that the scope of the work was complete and logical. Too often accounts of military campaigns do not start at a logical beginning or conclude at a logical ending. But "Fredericksburg Fredericksburg" does accomplish this purpose by introducing the reader at the moment when McClellan was relieved after Antietam and replaced by Burnside, and proceeding through the infamous "mud march" and Burnside's relief from command. Other accounts of the battle I have read start much later or end much sooner thereby omitting critical aspects that are logically associated with the Fredericksburg campaign; the tardy pontoons; the aurora borealis; the hospitals and camps around Falmouth; fraternizing; the infamous mud march.

I also appreciated Rable's approach of including more of a cultural and social context for the battle. I think the historian's proper role is first and foremost to tell a story that is relevant and interesting, and the contextual elements Rable provides ameliorate what might otherwise be a dry recitation of strategy and tactics and maneuvers.

However, overall I was disappointed in "Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg" for two reasons. To use a military metaphor, both of these reasons represent the alternative side of the sword to my preference to the social and cultural context feature mentioned above. I am concerned that in his enthusiasm to describe the hopes, feelings, emotions, and sentiments of the work-a-day soldier in Burnside's host, Rable loses focus on the fact that this book is foremost a history of the battle. His treatment of the events of December 13th and events of combat are not sufficiently detailed to satisfy the legitimate interests of a military history. Surely a story about a battle that is over 400 pages in length could afford to devote a little more time to describing the strategy, tactics and geography of the battle. I think the cursory treatment of this piece of the history was especially true regarding the military aspects of the Confederate side of the story.

A corollary concern is that Rable devotes so much of the cultural/social context to religion that he loses clarity in his role as historian. There are pages upon pages in chapter after chapter discussing the religious sentiments of 19th century society in general, and the soldier in particular to the point where it becomes clear that religion is a preoccupation for Rable. In fact, Rable's later work includes a separate tome on the religious interests of the Civil War soldier. Indeed, some passages of this work were drafted in such a way as to create the impression in my own mind that Rable was not so much reporting the sentiments of the 19th century soldier but rather was projecting his own views on theology into the text. I think that when a historian creates such an impression in his reader, it reflects pejoratively upon his objectivity and credibility. While I think religion is a valid line of inquiry for an academic historian, I think fair treatment dictates that such a study should be segregated into its own work, and not commingled into a book that represents itself as a campaign study.

Overall, this work was a disappointment. Having personally visited Fredericksburg myself in recent years, I had hoped to read more about the campaign and its military and geographic context in greater detail that would augment the information I had already learned. Instead, Rable's book comes across as a somewhat elaborately sentimental and overdone sermon. He would have done better to reserve some of the religious cultural material for his work devoted to that topic, and provided more substance on the battle of Fredericksburg itself.

I have waited a long time for an adequate, contemporary treatment of the Fredericksburg campaign. Alas, I am still waiting. In fairness to Professor Rable, he does state in the prologue that, unlike other campaign books, he intends to put Fredericksburg in the proper political and social context. Civil War campaign reading is my area of specialty and having read over 20 such accounts I would have to say that not only is his thesis statement unfair, but incorrect.
He also states the need to look at both sides, then virtually ignores Confederate planning, preparation, and battle conduct (except as reaction to certain Union activity). Perhaps his comments about literacy shortcomings among southern ranks is a good example of less than balanced treatment. He talks about poor grammar and phonetically misspelled words by Rebel soldiers then fills the book with examples written by Union soldiers.
After looking at the massive bibliography that pays tribute to his painstaking research and wonderful primary source material uncovered, my expectations were high. However, Rable's material becomes redundant and instead of enjoying fascinating tidbits about the famous and their historical context, I felt like a victim of historical name-dropping. Who cares what Karl Marx thought about the war?
Perhaps this work should be two or three different books, or even a series of essays. One thing that it isn't is a campaign treatment of the Battle of Fredericksburg. It is amazing that a 400+ page... book can lack focus - but it does! The classic example of this is when he suggests that a ..."postmortem discussion over tactical fine points is...irrelevant." Why then write a 435 page book? Indeed, why write history at all?

I have been waiting for some time for a decent book to be published on the Civil War battle at Fredericksburg, now within a matter of months two very good accounts have appeared on the market. I must admit that it took me awhile to decide which book to purchase out of the two releases but in the end the weight of the reviews at Amazon guided me towards `Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!' by George Rable. I am thankful for those reviewers who posted their opinions on this book at Amazon; it made my decision a little easier.

I quite enjoyed this account which as many of the previous reviewers have indicated is not just a campaign history of Fredericksburg but more of a micro social and military history of the men who fought this terrible battle. I found the details of the soldier's life very interesting and I enjoyed the author's description of the battle a great deal. It must be stated as it has in the reviews below, that the battle is not covered in great depth. However out of the 435 pages of narrative we get a full account of how this terrible battle affected not only the soldiers who fought it but also their political masters and the civilians at home.

The book offers more than just a military history of this battle; it provides the reader with a real insight into the life of a Civil War soldier. I was amazed with many of the first-hand accounts offered in the narrative and I really enjoyed reading about these men, both from the Federal and Confederate perspective. In the end I didn't notice that the actual account of the battle only took up a quarter of the book. The narrative is lively and full of interesting antidotes, both from soldiers and civilians alike.

A number of maps and black & white illustrations were provided and all were of a decent standard (a nice change!). For those who are interested the author has also provided an Order-of-Battle at the end of the book and over 130 pages of references and notes. Overall this is a very decent Civil War history and I think that most readers will enjoy this account of Fredericksburg.

Finally there is a comprehensive and entertaining history of the Fredricksburg campaign. The book opens with a wonderful description of the internal fighting in the Army of the Potomac, which leads to Ambrose Burnside's appointment as commander and leads to his march on Fredricksburg. The battle is portrayed vividly and completely, with much wanted detail into the bloody street fighting that occurred in Fredricksburg itself.
However, the book does run long after the battle. There is much more political maneuvering, and then it goes on to describing the Mud March, which is entertaining but unneeded. Perhaps the book would have been better described as a history of Burnside's command of the Army of the Potomac. Also, the book does little to describe the Southern point of view during many lengthy parts, most notably on the march to Fredricksburg.
All in all, this is a excellent, long-awaited history of one of the oft-forgot battles in Virginia.