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Battle Books! Reviews of new books on the Civil War battles of Fredericksburg and Shiloh

By MIKE WALKER

"The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock"
Francis Augustín O'Reilly
Baton Rogue: The Lousisana State University Press, 2006

The Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December of 1862 was one of the most awesome victories for the Confederates in the war and thus one that thrust the war forward in their favor.

With Confederate dead and wounded numbering far fewer than their Union counterparts, Fredericksburg inspired the Confederate cause, proved General Robert E. Lee to be one of the greatest military minds of his generation, and forced the Union to reconsider its commanders of choice and the structure of its armies. With Lee's Army of Northern Virginia inflicting serious damage to the Federal Army of the Potomac, the ability of the Rebels to defend Richmond was proven and Union plans were scattered to the wind, forcing Lincoln to regroup his entire approach to defeating the Confederates and reuniting the nation.

Francis Augustín O'Reilly, an experienced Civil War writer and historian, has contributed an expansive study of one of the least-understood and most complex of battles in the entire Civil War in his book "The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock". Like many authors on specific Civil War battles, O'Reilly is an expert on the historic battlefield itself and has conducted tours of the same; the landscape of Civil War battlefields even in contemporary scholarship still can often offer a lot of information that is useful in studying the military aspects of battles. O'Reilly also is dynamic and detailed in his introduction to the political and military situation leading up to the battle of Fredricksburg and how President Lincoln's push to invade Confederate Richmond brought Union generals to the difficult situation of moving a mass of troops in the middle of the winter and trying to find a railroad route to bring their army and associated supplies into Richmond (surprisingly, and fortunate for the Confederates, westward-leading rail routes to Richmond were fewer than one would imagine). The comprehensive approach O'Rielly takes in this book allows the reader a good overview of not only the battle concerned itself but the situations that caused this battle.

That said, this is a tactical battlefield history and not a social one as many are these days when new books appear about the Civil War: while other authors have recently focused on themes and trends in the Civil War, O'Reilly is much more the classic battle historian who spends the majority of his pages on detailing actual battle conditions and actions. Where O'Reilly shows himself to be more adept than many "old-school" battle historians is that he has the writing skills and desire to cover in living detail some non-battlefield aspects and inform the reader who may have just been introduced to detailed Civil War studies how events came about. As my main purpose in reviewing Civil War-related books for this newspaper is to introduce readers new to Civil War studies to recent, quality, works on the topic, I look for the ability of non-specialist readers to enjoy and benefit from such volumes. O'Reilly not only has produced a high-quality (possibly the very best yet) study of the Battle of Fredericksburg but also he has written his book in a way that is clear, forthcoming, and interesting, I believe to most readers and not only those who already are huge Civil War buffs.

The one soundbite point about Fredricksburg that makes it into every standard history book and overview of the war is that it was a bloody, confusing, battle where Federal forces sustained much higher losses than their Confederate counterparts. O'Reilly places some emphasis also on this point but moreover explains, through his nuanced examination of diverse aspects from logistical problems to the fighting at Marye's Heights to differences in commanders' personal views on leadership, just how the Union made some serious mistakes and in fact how close they were to winning the battle had their reserve forces made it up to the front lines faster and had General Ambrose Burnside-the Union commanding general-planned better how to move his units around a complex geographical area. General Lee, trained as a military engineer at a time when land engineering was at its apex for armies and a bright cadet who finished second in his West Point class, was in constrast a man who knew better than anyone how to read battlefield topography and who also was a Virginia native. These details are not small aspects when it is considered that Fredricksburg was a turning point in the Civil War insofar as it provided the Confederates with a much-needed victory and hope for winning the war; also, had Fredricksburg not repulsed the Union troops, they would have marched on Richmond and perhaps brought an earlier end to the war. Either way, this battle opened up the floodgates for further fighting.

Many books on Civil War battles and military history (as apart from social history of the period) are written by independent scholars rather than academics at universities and O'Reilly fits the mold of that type of Civil War historian: a man who is very informed and engaged in Civil War history and has expertise specific to one battle above all else. The danger with some authors in this model though is that they miss the forest for the trees and only are capable of writing on a specific battle, general, or army but O'Reilly proves himself to be diverse in his scope of Civil War history but willing nonetheless to focus on the topic at hand. Small stories rich in detail come to life such as the efforts of Federal engineering Captain Ira Spaulding to set up the transport and logistics forces needed for a Union advance on Richmond: in contrast to many books which focus mainly on senior leaders it is a joy to read about some of the everyday officers and troops who made specific aspects of a campaign unfold.

The result of O'Reilly's talents is a broad yet detailed study which provides nearly every military aspect of the Battle of Fredricksburg in a manner the reader can approach. Like David C. Hinze and Karen Farnham's "The Battle Of Carthage: Border War In Southwest Missouri" (Da Capo Press, 1999) which is another great "battle book", O'Reilly's offering is complete and places his reader in the midst of the fighting with writing that keeps pages turning.

"Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862"
O. Edward Cunningham,
edited by Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith

El Dorodo Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2007
hardback, $34.95

The Confederate victory at Fredricksburg was, in part, unexpected by the Federal forces due to strong gains on the western front by the Union in previous months. One battle won in the west by the Union which had a lasting military and political effect was the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. Like Fredricksburg, Shiloh was a complex and bloody battle where seasoned troops and commanders both performed with courage though, in some cases, displayed a surprising lack of experience and original thought. Despite the dashing figures that General Lee and some other leaders on both sides have been turned into via the long gaze of history and popular culture, we must remember that for their best intentions and brave plans, many Civil War leaders (especially of the Confederates) were very young by today's standards with colonels and generals aged only into their thirties in numerous cases. The rapid advance of the war in many ways encouraged situations where armies made do with what they had in terms of expertise, men, and supplies alike.

A little over one hundred years after the Battle of Shiloh, a young doctoral student in American history was working on his dissertation on the battle and came to some original, innovative, conclusions due to his detailed research. His name was O. Edward Cunningham and he went on to become a respected historian and academic before an early death in 1997, however, his dissertation was never published in his lifetime nor did he publish but one other book (also, though, on the Civil War). The quality of Dr. Cunningham's research was so high and his authority on the battle so great that his dissertation, though only availible in microform, was still consulted by generations of scholars and the park rangers who now maintain the historic battlefield.

Civil War historians Gary Joiner and Timothy Smith - both highly-regarded scholars and writers in their own right - have taken it upon themselves to edit and present as a published volume the orginal Shiloh dissertation by Dr. Cunningham and the respected military history publishers Savas Beatie have stood behind this unique project to give us the present book at hand. For those interested in Shiloh, this effort has been worth the long wait: the editors have corrected some minor but annoying errors in the original manuscript and added references to more current scholarship on the battle which, of course, was not availible to Dr. Cunningham. Savas Beatie for their part, as they are known to do, have presented the hardback copy with a beautiful cover and the highest production values in paper, layout, and typography that one could ask for in such a volume. I feel bad for the many historians who have blinked through this dissertation on microform to only find now that it is availible in a masterful hardcover volume!

What makes Cunningham's "Shiloh" noteworthy beyond his grand writing style and careful research is that, in the middle of the 1960s as someone just embarking on his professional career as a historian, Cunningham came to conclusions that other academics would not reach for years to come; in fact, many of the recent books and articles that the editors of "Shiloh" cite in support of Cunningham's various points seem totally in keeping with his views though they came about decades later in the game. Cunningham's opinions on many crucial details of the fighting at Shiloh were simply not the majority view of his time, but have been proven to have merit via later scholarship. In example, the fighting at the location of Honets' Nest most Civil War experts long believed to be key to the outcomes at Shiloh while Cunningham greatly disputed this; more recent studies have proven Cunningham to have been right.

Moreover, little of the more contemporary writing on Shiloh is as clear and readable as Cunningham despite his work having been a dissertation to earn his Ph.D. and not a book for a large market. Most non-specialist readers who desire to know more of the specific battles of the Civil War could not be asked to wade through some of the dry prose that composes current Civil War tactical studies but they could certainly enjoy a work as flowing as Cunningham's and the

astute editing of Joiner and Smith has only made Cunningham more open and engrossing.

MIKE WALKER is a writer and journalist based out of Gainesville, Florida. He writes for this and other news media about ecology, natural history, social history, and travel. He is currently reviewing new and important books on the Civil War and the American South for this newspaper. He may be reached at: cloudrace@prontomail.com