Customer Reviews

Season of Fire: The Confederate Strike on Washington

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

 

 

Season of Fire proves to be a well written and well researched book on Confederacy's last effort to do something meaningful by trying to attacked Washington DC. Led by General Jubal Early, the Confederate forces came pretty close to success and the authors were correct in saying that even if the occupation of Union capitol would only be momentary, the political and morale cost would be devastating for the north. While hindsight make this campaign almost a sideshow, the book revealed how close it really was to being a main event.

This book is must reading for anyone interested in Civil War history or who lives in the areas between Monocacy Junction and Washington, D. C. where this action occurred. The book provides a detailed synopsis of the action and is loaded with details of the local history, much of which remains intact for anyone interested in retracing the course of Early's raid.

Mr. Judge does history a great justice by writing the history of the Invasion of Washington from its inception. He covers the early phase from a confederate defeat at Cloyds Mountain in Pulaski County just south of Blacksburg (VA. Tech), takes you to Lynchburg and Early's arrival and the subsequent journey to Washington D.C. Gives the reader the complete field of study of the campaign. Wonderful description of future Baltimore Police Chief Harry Gilmore who was a colorful confederate calavary leader as well as a vivid description of the hidden valley of the Shennodoah, Fort Valley.

Season of Fire has some interesting behind-the-scenes political/military details, but you have to sift through quite a bit of uneven writing to find it.

The writing style changes from pedantic to historical-colloquial to chatty to straightforward so frequently it was disorienting.

There's a lot of good information there, but it's hard work to get to it.

good chronological account of Early's 1864 campaign many interesting side notes to a little studied Confederate actio

I've really enjoyed this book. It was a little hard to get into at first, because it is written a a diary-entry type of format. Each entry gives the date, place and time; so it reads a little different than a regular history book. But I've come to really appreciate the intimate details and stories the book tells. It would be great to see this story made into a movie.

I've read a lot of Civil War books but this one is very unique for me. It's not just about the war. It's about the place where I grew up. I lived in a house about a city block away from Fort Stevens. I've known about the battle for years but for some reason, I confined the battle in my mind to only taking place at Fort Stevens. The truth is, the fort was only a small part of the battle line. The opposing forces were stretched out over a wide area. And now I know the house I grew up in (built in the 20th century) was built on the battlefield. The area was farmland in 1864. Today it is typically urban and crowded. Only a portion of historic Fort Stevens remains, as well as Battleground National Cemetery, a field that was part of the battle, chosen as soon as the shooting stopped to be the final resting place for 40 of the soldiers killed those two days, July 11th and 12, 1864. In fact, the Battleground Cemetery is the only thing left in the area that looks basically the way it did after the war (Fort Stevens was partially rebuilt in the 1930s. Now, it is a grassy hill). In the early 1870s, the 7th Street Pike (now Georgia Avenue) was lowered to its present height. All of the farms around it are long gone, residentialy developed or commercialized. A Safeway supermarket is just a few steps away from this hallowed site. Indeed, with all of the modern development, it's very hard to look at this area and see a Civil War battle where 10-15,000 Confederate soldiers were in The District of Columbia.

I've spent my entire life reading and learning about American history. It's just amazing to me to learn that virtually every place I went to on a regular basis as a kid is in this book.