I am not what you would call a Civil War buff or expert of that war, yet I do have many volumes on that conflict in my home library, with several of my ancestors fighting for and perishing in the conflict for the Union. A few years ago I felt a volume on Lee's retreat from Gettysburg was needed, and a book from the University of North Carolina soon appeared that did deal with that very subject. Many times I've thought a book was also needed on the mainstay of the Confederacy, the Army of Northern Virginia. and now this volume appears. This new book is both well overdue and well done.
Sometimes when doing a review it seems I have read a different book than many other reviewers doing reviews on that book. Sadly, I get that same feeling here. In the author's own words he has been crafting this book since the late 1980s, and much of the book is based on the participant's own words from their own letters. How anyone can quibble with what these men wrote is beyond my understanding. And in reading these letters, many of the writers did not live beyond the war, so one just must accept what they wrote, felt, saw, and how they prioritized their last months. Many saw state's rights as #1, others saw northern invasion as #1, while others mention slavery as #1. Doesn't really matter, does it, all of these items forged them into what became the Army of Northern Virginia. And early on, one fact the author mentions, is the affect of the home on the battlefront and conversely how the battlefront affected the home. As a newly formed nation, they knew their future depended on supporting one another if there was to be any chance of a successful outcome.
Don't be mislead by the fact of my living in Virginia: I was born and raised in Ohio, and except for my own years of military service, I never really left the state of Ohio for 50+ years. Yet in retirement for various reasons, I have chosen to reside permanently in Virginia.
These letters, facts, and expressed opinions as laid out in this book are not only interesting in many ways to me but they also confound me in some ways. My views, since I remain a northerner or a "Yankee" down here, would certainly not entirely match the views of many Virginia friends, but a book such as this is needed if for no other reason than to show exactly what those Virginians of the war period thought and felt. What drove them to defy a country many of their grandparents had helped to fashion and build. They were very much aware they were in process of destroying what earlier Virginians felt worth building.
Also the Virginia of 2008 in many ways is not the Virginia of the 1861-1865 period, so in a wonderful way the book also puts the contemporary reader in touch with what it meant to be a Virginian back then. Back then Virginia was a commonwealth as it is yet today, and back then Virginians also felt themselves equally blessed and special, as most of that holds true even today.
This book makes interesting reading while offering many facts previously unknown to me, also offering facts I must digest and ponder whether I willingly want to believe in them or not. Though I live in Virginia as an ex-Ohioian I cannot express how many wonderful people I have met here and the feeling too that I myself am now blessed by living in this great state of Virginia. It is almost as if there is something in the land and air, and as I write, this is yet a wonderfully patriotic and faith based state.
Praise this book or curse it, but unless you read it without bias, you will never truly know what it was like to be and feel as a Virginian was and felt in the war years of 1861-1865. And once General Lee's army was through and done with, so too was not only Virginia, but the entire Confederacy as well. When one talks about the Army of Northern Virginia one is speaking, whether realized or not, of the heart of the Confederacy as well. And that heart stopped beating when the Army of Northern Virginia died.
Semper Fi.
