The American Civil War: A Military History
by John Keegan
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Book Summary Information
Author: John KeeganEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2009-10-20
ISBN: 0307263436
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of The American Civil War: A Military History
Book Review: 5 stars, in spite of numerous defects ...
Summary: 5 Stars
I will begin with the defects of this book, well-noted by other reviewers: It is disorganized, repetitive, and the narrative is confusing and not very chronological. A person with no previous knowledge of the Civil War would easily get lost in this book. It appears to be a compilation of individual articles which have not been unified. He makes a factual blooper, stating that Eisenhower ended segregation in the US military, when every American knows it was Harry Truman. He thinks Tennessee is much closer to Indiana and Ohio than it actually is. The Great Kanawha River, with all due respect, is NOT a "major waterway". And he has a lapse in his usually impeccable language usage when on page 361 he uses "nauseous" when he means "nauseating".
These major and minor defects aside, this book is well worth reading by any serious student of the Civil War. First, anything Keegan writes is worth reading. In addition, he has spent many years studying American wars and the American military and its methods, and has personally visited numerous American battlefields. He is well-versed in the history of European warfare and therefore is in an excellent position to make illuminating comparisons between the American and European experience of war. Although this is a "military" history, he defines "military" broadly, and has much to say about the political and social background of the war.
For example, he illustrates the bitterness with which the war was fought by noting the lack of respect given to Confederate war dead on Northern battlefields. His chapters on Walt Whitman, the role of African-American soldiers, the role of women, and the role of religion are quite interesting and to the point.
His military analysis is of course the heart of the book. His first and most important point is the role geography played in the course and outcome of the war. The great problem of the Union forces was how to get at the heartland of the South, and here geography was as great an obstacle as the Confederate Army. The rivers of the Piedmont Plateau were severe obstacles to any 19th century army, as were the rivers, mountains, and forests of Tennessee. The general question was how to subdue an enemy whose country has no concentrated economic targets and few concentrations of population?
In essence, there were only two useful military targets for the Northern forces to attack: the Southern mind and the South's stock of fighting men. This is what Grant and Sherman realized and accepted and put into effect, and what previous Union generals and even Abraham Lincoln himself did not: The South would fight until it ran out of soldiers. And that's what happened.
In his excellent chapter on Civil War Generalship (the most important chapter in the book) Keegan notes that the Civil War was fought by amateurs. Although by the end of the war the Union Army would have been a match for any European army of the time, including the Prussians, Keegan is not impressed with the quality of Civil War generals. In my opinion, he gives Lee too much credit and Jackson not enough (see Lost Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson and Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship for more on this point.) He calls McClellan "one of the most interesting psychological cases in military history". Keegan does not say this in his discussions of Grant and Sherman, but in my opinion, their strength as military leaders was in their absolute realism about what had to be accomplished in order to defeat the South. Grant destroyed the military manpower of the South in the Overland Campaign, knowing that he had virtually unlimited re-enforcements to call on, while Sherman attacked the South's spirit, by breaking into the heartland of Georgia and South Carolina and ruining it. Morality aside, this strategy did not require brilliance to execute. Keegan's summation of most Civil War generals, North and South: "... too much personality in play, and far too little talent."
As to the causes of the Civil War, they seem to be somewhat of a mystery to Keegan. He mentions the popularity of the amateur "militias" of the day as an inciting factor, lighting a fire that quickly roared out of control. But Keegan compares and contrasts the American Civil War with World War One, calling World War One an "unnecessary" war, but stating that the American Civil War was NOT unnecessary, that the divisions over slavery were too deep to be resolved by peaceful means. So, mysterious though the causes of the Civil War may be, Keegan seems to think that war was unavoidable. Whether he is correct or not continues to be one of the key questions of American history.
epops
Summary of The American Civil War: A Military History
For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America?s most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name. Now Keegan examines these and other puzzles with a peerless understanding of warfare, uncovering dimensions of the conflict that have eluded earlier historiography.While offering original and perceptive insights into psychology, ideology, demographics, and economics, Keegan reveals the war?s hidden shape?a consequence of leadership, the evolution of strategic logic, and, above all, geography, the Rosetta Stone of his legendary decipherments of all great battles. The American topography, Keegan argues, presented a battle space of complexity and challenges virtually unmatched before or since. Out of a succession of mythic but chaotic engagements, he weaves an irresistible narrative illuminated with comparisons to the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and other conflicts.
The American Civil War is sure to be hailed as a definitive account of its eternally fascinating subject.
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