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Lost Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson

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This book is another revisionist attack on the reputation of General Robert E Lee. It suggests that Lee missed opportunities to defeat Northern armies most significantly at the battle of Chancellorsville. It further suggests that Stonewall Jackson had developed a greater tactical skill than Lee and had developed a "plan" which would have allowed the South to defeat the North.

That plan was a recognition that due to the invention of the rifled musket frontal attacks on defended positions would lead to defeat. For the south to win it was necessary for them to invade the north, but not to seek a military victory by attacking a northern army. Rather it would be necessary to move north and to force a defensive battle on terms that favor the confederacy.

The central argument has some interest. It would seem clear that Lee's career was aided by facing in the main not just timorous but incompetent opponents. One wonders in his various successful battles such as the Seven Days and Antiem what sort of disaster would have befallen him if his opponent had not run away at the point when they could have achieved victory.

The suggestion that another general could have done better is harder to believe. The Federal government had large numbers of troops that were generally dispersed. The dispersal of the armies assisted the confederates in fighting battles in which they were not overwhelmed. A move to Washington however would have seen a concentration of such force it is hard to believe the southern armies could have been victorious.

The book however is well written and in approaching the topic from the way it does it forces the reader to think and learn more about the American Civil War than most straight chronological narratives.

The key to understanding the Civil War is the technology. The Civil War was the first to make universal use of the rifle (compared to the age old musket). This increased the effective range from about 50 yards to 400 yards, thus eliminating the key defensive weapon--the cannon--which had a range of about 100 yards. The result was that virtually every offensive action in the Civil War, by either side, lost.

The much maligned Union generals (McClellan, Meade, Burnside, and Hooker) all reacted to one degree or another by hesitating to make any movement whatsoever.

The underlying hypothesis of "Lost Victories" is that Jackson is the one general in the war who figured out that the only way to win is to use the South's vast advantage in manueverability to gain positions which required the Union onto the attack.\

The detailed descriptions of the many battles leading up to Chancelorsville (recounted elsewhere endlessly) are here used to demonstrate the truth of the hypothesis that frontal attacks were always suicidal.

Less successful is the author's attempt to demonstrate that Jackson had figured out the answer. the only time he was permitted to try (Chancelorsville), he was killed (by friendly fire) before the battle was over. While there is an argument (well made here) that the battle would have been won by the South had Lee only continued with Jackson's battle plan. Nonetheless, the fact is it was not.

The epilogue consists of a lengthy speculation as to whether Jackson could have repeated his early success at Chancelorsville, and ultimately avoided Gettysburg and won the war.

A good argument, but the author completely ignores the western (Mississippi) front, the overwhelming Union advantage in manpower, and the ultimately decisive imbalance of material resources (wouldn't Jackson have run out of food, clothing and bullets, just like Lee, regardless of his strategic brilliance).

In sum, this is the best book I have read on the interplay between technology and strategy in the Civil War. Otherwise it is an interesting, but ultimately unconvincing, speculation on whether the South could have won had Jackson been in charge.

Alexander's conclusion about the strategic value of Stonewall Jackson is notable, and worthy of study. It also fits with the portrait of Jackson painted by Burke Davis in his biography "They Called Him Stonewall." Jackson, had he been allowed to, and properly equipped, could very well have won the war before 1863. Had he taken the war to the North, and had Lee's disastrous and bloody Seven Days been averted, there might be two American nations on the continent.

This book clearly and accurately details the genius of Stonewall Jackson. Alexander's conclusions are not really all that mind-bending, and quite resonable when further examination is done. He is hard on Lee, but only as pertaining to Jackson. All-in-all, a book that is anything but conventional, but remarkable in it's logic.

In "Lost Victories" author Bevin Alexander advances the proposition that Stonewall Jackson was the only military genius who could have brought victory to the Confederacy, had his initiatives not been thwarted by the limited visions of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The main idea is that Jackson saw that the only way the South could win was through a bold invasion of the North. He begins his story with descriptions as to how advances in arms, primarily in rifles and cannon, switched the advantage from the attack to the defense. The narrative then leads the reader through many of the major battles of Virginia and Maryland as it explains the troop movements for which the various generals were responsible. During the descriptions of the battles, Alexander points out the many mistakes made by leaders on both sides. Toward the end he argues that, had Jackson been at Gettysburg, it is likely that he would have prevented that battle from being fought and would have guided the fighting to land favorable more to the Southern cause.

This book makes a good effort in establishing its point. It is well written, although, at times, it drifts into minutiae over which units were where it the line, etc. The reader is left with an appreciation for Jackson's admirable talents in the military arts. I tend to be suspicious of second guessers who tell us how much better things could have been done. Lee's actions are open to critical analysis while Jackson's dreams have not undergone the test of battle. Maybe Lee and Davis did blow it by not following Jackson's advice, but I remain unconvinced. I am glad, however, that I read Alexander's brief.

As in all things, who can predict the future or even provide a better solution to previous events--even with the benefit of hindsight? In the case of the providing the South with victory against the North in the American Civil War, this would seem to be a very daunting prospect. But Bevan Alexander's scenario in which the strategies that Stonewall Jackson proposed to Confederate President Jefferson Davis are put into action is, at the very least, thought provoking and an enjoyable read.

Alexander considers Jackson's proposed invasion of the North against a background of Stonewall's strategies employed in actual battles. Jackson is seen to have understood the danger posed by the recent innovation in military technology that replaced the short range of the musket with the much longer range of the rifle. As a result, frontal attack is seen to be a much riskier strategy. Jackson's solution, was to fight defensively--and using the rifle's superior range and accuracy to make that defense all the stronger.

After reading this book I visited the Bull Run battlefield and viewed the slope of the land where Jackson arrayed his men awaiting the advancing Federal troops. It was Jackson's plan to have his men prone and ready to fire on the Federals as they emerged over a gentle rise. Before reading this book, I had been unaware of the true aspect of Jackson's defense in this instance, in which he earned the nom de guerre "Stonewall." I had erroneously imagined that Jackson's troops had done little more than hold their ground under Jackson's moral example and leadership.

Jackson is also seen to have employed deception on a grand scale in order to deceive the enemy. In the Shenandoah Valley he loaded his troops on trains and transported them over a circuitous route in order to appear before the Federals where his enemy would never have anticipated. He also understood the importance of security--and as a result never gave even his most trusted lieutenants any notion of his intentions.

Jackson held to the fatalistic Calvinism suggested by his Presbyterian faith. He worried not at all for his own safety--which, ironically, might had led to him being fired upon by his own troops and sustaining the wound that proved to be fatal. From Jackson's untimely death we might conclude that God wanted the North to win the war all along--but found Jackson's victories too much of an interesting diversion to dispatch the great general earlier. Or perhaps God felt that an easier Northern victory would not prove to be edifying for our nation. It could be said that after the Civil War neither North or South could really imagine the other to be an easy mark--with a resulting respect that served our country well in future wars.

No doubt there was in General T.J. Jackson a strange admixture of genius, eccentricity, marvelous military ability and true religious zeal. However, to say that the war would have been won had he been able to serve until the end is an overstatement of fact. He had great victories in the Valley Campaign in '62 but he also had a lapse that is inexplicable and did not come through for Lee in his offense against Union forces east of Richmond. He was not there for the kill but rather was in a malaise and did not engage the enemy. As far as I know this is the only blot against him. Now, as to his being superior to Lee in the craft of generalship, this I cannot concede. After Jackson's death May 10, 1863, it was the genius of Lee that held the Confederacy together for another two years as the ever increasing Union forces through attrition ground down his army and materiel. Lee had it right when he said upon hearing of Jackson's death, "I have lost my right arm". Ah, but Lee was the Whole man!

I am one of those unfortunates who believes General Robert E. Lee was not beatific.

I believe he was an exceptional soldier, a man who did the best he could with what he had, and performed as well as possibly could have been hoped for. But I do not think he was an infallible God-like creature who was failed by lesser beings that he was forced by circumstance to associate with. Think I go too far? As early as 1868 a Southern publication described him as "bathed in the white light that falls directly on him from the smile of an approving and sustaining God." Wow. Similarly, Stonewall Jackson is always presented as much more than an exceptional soldier. Most writers present him as a deeply religious, mystical eccentric, a military genius of Olympian proportions. Both of these long standing Zeus and Thor trends are part of the Lost Cause Apologia, a serious effort on the part of Southern writers to explain away not just a war's loss but a crushing and humiliating defeat, again, at the hands of much lesser, money grubbing, unprincipled Yankees.

So it was with quite a bit of surprise that I read this book that seeks to dethrone one God of Southern boosterism, Lee, and replace him with the ascension of another, Jackson. For the Lost Cause faithful, it's like God the Son taking over from God the Father, horrid in concept and a mortal sin of the first order. Bevin Alexander's Lost Victories purports that Jackson, not Lee, was the South's preeminent tactician, and that if Jackson, as opposed to Lee, had been in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Southern Cause would have triumphed. Maybe so, who knows? More importantly, who cares? One thing is for sure, we will never know, because events did not transpire that way.

So just what is this book all about? It seems more than a mere family fight, an argument amongst the Lost Cause men's club about whose is biggest. And that is a shame. There simply is no reason to tarnish one good soldier's memory with "what if" fabrication about another good soldier's memory 150+ years after the fact. It smacks of simple mercantilism. Sadly, it seems never to have occurred to the author that for two years these two officers, the cream of the Southern High Command, combined to form the most remarkably efficient military team those early years of the Civil War produced. To put it mildly they were very good for each other. Together they inflicted total chaos on the Army of the Potomac on battlefield after battlefield. After such incredible military success then, why a destructive, revisionist "what if" within the long established, 150 plus year, officially approved Lost Cause legend. Setting aside truly silly and totally irrelevant discussions about who understood the technology of the minie ball better, possibly this is nothing more than a very cleverly devised format to reissue a book covering Jackson's singular victories in his Valley campaign. If so, it fails. Burke Davis has already written a much better, and more honest, book.

This novel encorperates the battles and history os the men and weapons that were used to fight then. He lists the strengths and weaknesses of both the Confederates and the Federals. He points out the mistakes and opportunities of both sides as well as makes it dramatic. It may be alittle confusing with all the charactes being brought in and out and skipping from side to side and brigade to brigade. I loved this book and just couldn't put it down ! ! !

For those who love to argue about who was the greatest Southern general, this book will upset worshipers of Robert E. Lee. Bevin Alexander does ask "what if" Stonewall Jackson had lived after the great victory of Chancellorsville and fought at Gettysburg? What if Lee or Jefferson Davis had listened to Jackson's ideas about strategy?

In addition to the thought provoking and controversial questions above, this is a good read on the early battles of the Civil War. I found the review of military strategy and tactics used by both sides to be interesing, informative and accurate. The development of the rifle and mini-ball, their impact on tactics (and those generals who failed to see that) is discussed along with strategic issues facing the South.

Yes, the author clearly states that it was Jackson who had the right approach to winning the war, but in the end, he states that the team of Jackson and Lee would have been the perfect balance of temperments and strategies...as long as Lee listened to Jackson, of course. Interesting book, you need an open mind and be a fan of Stonewall to really enjoy it.