Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865 (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The Union's military effort in the first half of the Civil War remains essentially defined by the Army of the Potomac: earnest and willing, but consistently outfought and outgeneraled. A similar image accompanies the Army of the Cumberland, the second most familiar Union field army. But in the Mississippi Valley, the North developed an army that defeated all comers from Shiloh to Savannah, participated in the war's decisive battles from Fort Donelson through Vicksburg to Atlanta, and raised some of the war's finest generals. Until now, the Army of the Tennessee has been relatively neglected—perhaps because it fails to fit the Union stereotype of triumphing by force rather than finesse. Woodworth, a historian at Texas Christian University who has written several books on the Civil War (Beneath a Northern Sky; A Scythe of Fire; etc.), corrects this oversight in what is arguably the best one-volume history written to date of a Civil War field army. Combining impeccable scholarship and comfortable style, Woodworth describes a force whose tone was set by volunteer regiments from the farms and small towns of the Mississippi Valley: Iowa, Illinois, Missouri. Already accustomed to hard work and rough living, these men readily learned how to march and fight. Though Woodworth credits the army's unique combination of steadiness and aggressiveness to its first commander, Ulysses S. Grant, he details how the Army of the Tennessee learned war from other masters as well: West Point graduates, like William Sherman and James McPherson; civilian corps commanders, like "Black Jack" Logan and Frank Blair; and hundreds of field and company officers who learned their craft on the job and who led by example rather than by order. They made the Army of the Tennessee the Union's whiplash in the West and one of the three or four most formidable large formations in America's military history. (Oct. 28)
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From Booklist

A veteran Civil War military historian, Woodworth specializes in the western campaigns, in which the Union's premier force was the Army of the Tennessee. Raised from Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, its commanders over time were Grant, Halleck, Sherman, and McPherson, and Woodworth's narrative duly oscillates between the headquarters tent and the soldiers' campfire. Typical of Civil War armies, this one was affected at the top by political machinations, whose negative effects on field operations Woodworth astutely analyzes; Grant's eventual surmounting of these obstacles earns the author's unqualified respect. For to the extent any military unit possesses a personality, this army had Grant's. Woodworth concludes that, besides strategic acumen exhibited in the Vicksburg campaign, Grant imparted to his officers the principle of relentless advance, which kept morale high and Confederate forces off balance. As to the soldiers' thoughts, which were of home and victory, Woodworth ably crafts them into his account of the army's battles, from Shiloh to Chattanooga to Georgia. Balanced and readable, Woodworth's work is an exemplary army-level unit history. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 784 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition ~1st Printing edition (October 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375412182
• ISBN-13: 978-0375412189
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #723,249 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Homily not Organizational History, November 6, 2005

By	David Kelly (Petersburg, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reading the publication hype one gets the impression that you are getting a formal organizational history of the Army of the Tennessee. It's pretty apparent that's not the thrust of the book once you start reading. This is a memorial narrative of campaigning as seen through the eyes of the participants. Most of the book is a litany of battles. The larger perspective of Grand Operational affairs is scarcely bridged.

My first impulse is to disagree with this approach. It oversimplifies the reality of the period. For example. I get annoyed with the statement that western armies were smaller than the Army of the Potomac. Do all readers know that the Army of the Potomac was the only free standing field army built by the Union? Typically Military Departments were created to manage theaters of war and troops were allocated to the Departments. It was up to the Department Commander to determine the size of his field force consonant with risks and means he had on hand.
The Army of the Tennessee was an adjunct of the Department of the Tennessee and often contained less than half the troops that were in the Department, which extended over parts of five states.

There are some rather serious constraints imposed on this book as to its scope. Whether that was the authors choice or driven by the publisher I can't say. If you are willing to take what is offered at face value there is some very good writing and intersting perspectives to be had here. Regards graphics. The scope of the book makes such impracticable for a single volume work. And Steven Woodworth should be given credit for a woodcraft that overcomes the absence of such.

I rate this a three because its marketing misrepresents its scope and character as a work, and because the authors has to my mind also oversimplified the history surrounding the campaigning.

I've read it cover to cover twice and actually found I enjoyed the second reading better than the first. That says something in favor of this work. It's not a toss off.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A functional Union army. Can you believe it?, April 25, 2007

By	Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Any reading of U.S. Civil war history, especially if approached from the Union perspective, usually casts the casual student of the conflict by default into the ranks of the Army of the Potomac, which had a roster of army and corps commanders that, until Grant took overall command in 1863, ensured dysfunctionality. (See the enlightening volume by Stephen Taaffe, Commanding the Army of the Potomac (Modern War Studies), and my review of it dated 3/2/07.) Thus, it was somewhat refreshing to read NOTHING BUT VICTORY: THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE, 1861-1865.

This book is a weighty tome at 641 pages. It begins in April 1861 by sampling the experience of several units as they formed up in the then northwestern states (today's Midwest), including the very first company to rally round the flag, the Springfield Grays, which was to be incorporated into the 7th Illinois. These regiments from Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Minnesota were to ultimately evolve into the Army of the Tennessee (AoT).

The history of the AoT is inseparable from that of Ulysses Grant, who made it the consistently successful fighting machine it became. Indeed, the AoT had the best combat record of any Union army in the war. Brigadier General Grant took control of the military District of Cairo and its embryonic fighting force - not yet designated an "Army" - in December 1861, and soon thereafter achieved his first victories at Forts Henry and Donelson. Promoted to Major General in February 1862, he won the gritty two-day slugfest at Shiloh with an upgraded command, the Army of West Tennessee. Then, as commander of the newly inaugurated Army of Tennessee, Grant won the battles associated with the Vicksburg campaign (Port Gibson, Jackson, and Champion's Hill), as well as taking the surrender of Vicksburg itself, in July 1863.

After Vicksburg, Grant was promoted two rungs, eventually to become the commander of all Federal armies and the first U.S. Lieutenant General since George Washington. In the meantime, Major General William Sherman took over the AoT to assault Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga, TN, and raid Meridian, MS. Then, when Sherman led an army group through Georgia to the Atlantic and north through the Carolinas, the AoT was commanded by Major General James McPherson during its approach to Atlanta, Major General Oliver Howard during the burning of Atlanta and the March to the Sea and northward, and, finally, Major General John Logan from the end of the war to the army's disbandment on August 1, 1865.

The Army of the Tennessee, for all intents and purposes, knew nothing but victory. If the AoT can be considered the hammer to the Army of the Potomac's anvil, President Lincoln was failed by the latter, at least until Grant became head blacksmith. The AoT, however, sustained Union morale with victories in its darkest hours. It can, perhaps, be argued that the AoT won the war.

Steven Woodworth's NOTHING BUT VICTORY is an eminently readable and prodigiously researched summation of the AoT's campaigns that, for the casual student, could rate as many as five stars. It includes two adequate but somewhat haphazard photo sections, primarily of the AoT's general officers. However, there's only one map in the book - that of the AoT's theater of operations (Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina). There are no battlefield maps. Not even the most rudimentary. None. Nada. Zip. In a work of this scope, into which the author apparently put a lot of time and effort, this is an egregious deficiency that almost compelled me to award but three stars instead of four before my sense of fair play prevailed over petulant annoyance. The missing maps aside, NOTHING BUT VICTORY is an engaging and instructive read. (If you want the perfect Civil War, non-fiction battle narrative, obtain Timothy Smith's Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg, and read my review of it dated 6/27/06.)

Why was the AoT so successful compared to its Eastern counterpart, the Army of the Potomac (AoP)? Some might argue that the former never faced General Robert Lee. However, I tend to think that it was the latter's proximity to Washington, D.C. that proved its albatross. Not only were the national government's leaders close enough to easily meddle, but the jockeying for prominence so close to the seat of Federal power encouraged incessant back-biting among the AoP's corps commanders. Moreover, the War Office constantly demanded that the AoP remain positioned between Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the U.S. capital for the protection of the latter. The importance given to the city as a perceived military objective for the rebel army perhaps conversely made Richmond a greater objective than it should have been to Major General George McClellan when he commanded the AoP and embarked on the Peninsula Campaign. As Grant insisted when arrived on scene to set things aright, Lee's army was the objective, not the Confederate capital. And so it proved to be in 1865. Meanwhile, the Army of the Tennessee remained relatively unfettered by such concerns and got on with the business at hand.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well done, although not perfect; buy it, April 19, 2006

By	James F. Epperson (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent and needed book in Civil War literature. Too
many folks seem to think the war was entirely in Virginia, between
the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. In
fact, much of importance took place in the Western Theatre, where
one of the principal Union armies was the Army of the Tennessee.
It is almost shocking to consider that, until this book, no one
had written a history of the Army of the Tennessee. The army is
mostly associated with U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman;
it was formed from the force that Grant used to seize Paducah,
Kentucky, in the early days of the war and grew to the force
that took Forts Henry and Donelson, fought the savage action of
Shiloh, took Vicksburg, fought the Battle of Atlanta, and then
marched to the sea. The men came from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,
Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kentucky.
(There was even a regiment from Nebraska!)

The book starts out very well. Woodworth describes the war
fever in the Midwest which led so many men into the ranks and
provided the army with many of its leaders. He then progresses
into the narrative of campaigns, first under Grant, then under
Sherman. As a summary story of the western theatre of the war,
the book is outstanding.

Alas, the book is not perfect. Many have commented on the lack
of maps, a criticism I share. Woodworth's focus is also uneven.
At the beginning, the reader is treated to biographical sketches
of many of the men who would lead divisions in the army, but this
ceases after awhile, and the book is poorer for it. One could
also launch into a small list of omissions and errors, something
almost any book has. But the bottom line is that this is a
very well-written book which tells a story that needs to be
told. Buy it, read it, enjoy it. You'll be glad you did.