6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well Worth Reading, July 13, 2007
This review is from: Sherman's Mississippi Campaign (Hardcover)
The Civil War was more than Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Atlanta and the Overland Campaign. The war was a number of smaller campaigns, none of which should be dismissed as unimportant. Each of these campaigns contributed something to the development of the war and can tell us something about the history of the war. This campaign is an important step in the evolution of Sherman's thinking on how to fight the war and how to support his army in the field.
The idea that became the March to the Sea was not an overnight development but started in 1861 and progressed with the war. Buck Foster spends considerable time on the development of the "hard war", the reasons for the change and how each step logically caused the next step in the process. The second major development was the understanding that an army could "live off the land". By dropping lines of supply and communication, an army becomes all teeth with no tail to attack. The enemy would look for these lines trying to slow or stop the advancing army. Again, the author gives us a good review of this critical development, starting with Grant's 1862 Vicksburg Campaign.
In early 1863, Sherman was determined to advance from Vicksburg into Mississippi and attack the CSA infrastructure. Meridan, with a complex of factories, railroad intersections and supply depots became his objective. Sherman would carry only what could not be secured from the farms and towns on his line of march, the army would destroy the infrastructure as they moved. This is not a campaign to secure territory but to prove how powerless the CSA is.
Polk in charge of the defense of Mississippi and Alabama, is unable to determine Sherman's objective, gives contradictory orders and causes a number of other problems. S.D. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest have a much better idea of the situation but are hampered by Polk's indecision and lack of resources. Sherman is hampered with leadership problems too. These problems result in preventing him from achieving his secondary objectives.
Most of all, this book highlights the importance of leadership and the cost of not having good leaders in critical positions. Additionally, this book shows how resource poor the South was by 1863. Men and materials are not available to meet the challenges. Lack of resources and poor Southern leadership teach Sherman that what becomes the March to the Sea is possible. This is an easy to read book with enough maps to keep up with the campaign. It covers a little known area of the war while providing a good history of the development of Hard War.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Points, Easy to Follow, Very Repetitive, October 10, 2009
This review is from: Sherman's Mississippi Campaign (Hardcover)
This is a interesting little book on an often overlooked campaign by General William T. Sherman in Mississippi during February of 1864 between the Battle of Chattanooga and Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. The author's main theme is the development by Sherman of his "hard war" strategy and the destruction of the enemy's capacity to make war by destroying his economic base and his support among the population.
Taking a page out of Grant's book when he crossed the Mississippi and ordered his army to live off the land, Sherman drove east from Vicksburg to Meridian, Mississippi. In effect this was a large scale raid to destroy Confederate supplies and railroads, and defeating defending Confederate forces was strictly secondary. Sherman was deficient in cavalry, but expected to be joined at Meridian by Sooy Smith's Federal cavalry coming down from Memphis, but Smith delayed unnecessarily, and then was defeated by Forrest and driven back to Memphis. Sherman had expected to continue to Dermopolis, Alabama, but further advances without Smith's cavalry were risky. After a successfully defeating the Confederate forces in a number of skirmishes and driving Polk from Mississippi, Sherman marched back to Vicksburg.
There are four points made in this work:
(1) That Sherman fully developed on this campaign his concept of hard war that he later used to perfection in Georgia and the Carolinas.
(2) That the Confederacy was essentially impotent to defend its territory in 1864 outside of Virginia.
(3) That good leadership won battles and campaigns. Sherman and his subordinates (less Sooy Smith) showed good leadership, Polk did not.
(4) It was possible for a major army to cut itself off from its base of supplies and campaign carrying only the necessities with it by wagon train.
Unfortunately, the author makes the first point over and over to the point of inducing ennui. The second point could have been made in a conclusion, the third had been already established beyond all doubt, and the fourth had also been proven before. So the true value of the book lay in describing the campaign, but here it fell short by not presenting the competing order of battles and identifying all the players. On the other hand, the detail maps were quite good, and the campaign was fairly easy to follow. Sooy Smith's campaign is given the back of his hand by the author, and without a fuller treatment should have been contained in a few paragraphs. The scholarship is excellent, and the notes and references are extremely good.
All in all, there is something to learn here, but not a lot. The repetitive references to Sherman and "hard war" were irritating, and I found myself developing a bad attitude to even the book's good features.
I recommend this book for all Civil War historians to put on their shelf, but a single reading will probably suffice.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sherman's March through Mississippi, March 19, 2008
This review is from: Sherman's Mississippi Campaign (Hardcover)
The book presents a little known campaign and shows the importance of western campaign experience in developing the "Hard War" doctrine that destroyed the Southern will to fight. The book captured my interest but was not the easiest book to read consisting of a long narrative of a campaign that had little action other than the destruction of Southern property. Units were mentioned and their movements described but it would have been nice to have an order of battle to know who served in which unit. Fortunately the there were a lot of maps. The narrative would have been very hard to follow or understand without them. The maps served to show the roads and towns mentioned, but little information on troop movements were shown, only the location of Sherman's main force. A good account of an under appreciated campaign that was overshadowed by events before and after to the east and west. I would recommend this book to serious students of the western campaign or Sherman's generalship. The average reader would probably find it too boring to hold their interest.
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