An award-winning Civil War historian sheds new light on the Union commanders' central role in the North's victory. He reevaluates the generalship of the victors and lays bare the sometimes vicious rivalries among the Union generals and theffect those clashes had on the war.
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An award-winning Civil War historian sheds new light on the Union commanders' central role in the North's victory. He reevaluates the generalship of the victors and lays bare the sometimes vicious rivalries among the Union generals and theffect those clashes had on the war.
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Albert Castel begins his recent Civil War history, "Victors in Blue: How Union generals Fought the Confederates, Battled Each Other, and Won the Civil War" (2011) by observing that the campaigns of the Civil War have been the subject of many, "perhaps too many" studies. He also states that his book has little new to offer in the way of facts. Instead, Castel endeavors to work through and assess sometimes conflicting versions of the facts to offer an assessment of Union leadership during the war. He studies the performance of the various Union generals to ascertain which leaders deserve to be considered the "Victors in Blue" and why they deserve this accolade. Castel is best-known for his study, "Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864". In the final five chapters of "Victors in Blue" Castel consulted and exchanged ideas with Civil War historian Brooks Simpson, the author of a biography of Grant. The conclusions of the book are Castel's own.
At the beginning of the book, I took Castel's modest disclaimers to heart. The book seemed to me in some ways a rehash of many other Civil War military histories. The author covers many campaigns and battles, relying in the process on some of the leading secondary sources for each battle and not contributing much in the way of new facts or analysis. Gradually, the book won me over by its writing style, in turn eloquent, thoughtful, and succinct, and by its judgments on Union leadership. Some of Castel's judgments are standard, including his high estimation of Grant, while others are controversial. The portrayal and interpretation of the battles and the Union military leadership becomes engrossing.
For Castel, the key question in assessing the effectiveness of a general is "If victorious in a battle and/or campaign, did he contribute decisively to the victory and how so?" A short series of questions on the nature of the general's leadership provide the criteria for making the judgment. Castel also offers the following good summary of successful military leadership. "To achieve victory against a potent enemy under difficult circumstances a Civil War commander required, like all successful military leaders past, present and future, a strong but not necessarily brilliant intellect, self-confidence, and the ability to inspire confidence in others, enormous energy and endurance, moral courage, coolness and presence of mind in times of crisis, and, above all, a knack for war and good luck in waging it -- an attribute Napoleon considered more important in a general than skill." With one exception (Halleck), Castel finds that successful Union military leaders shared these qualities.
In the course of the book, Castel shows that the Union generals quarelled and fought among themselves almost as much as they fought the enemy. (As the book suggests, this situation pertained even more so for the Confederacy.)The leading Union commanders all "possessed superior personal qualities, albeit of different kinds and degrees, and all were West Pointers who found in the Civil War a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to ascend the ladder of military rank, power, and glory, thereby realizing ambitions far transcending their prewar professional expectations -- supposing they still retained any". The generals each understood that room at the top of the command structure was limited. Each of them fought to rise to the top, with the ultimate prize of attaining the presidency. Their conflicting ambitions and personalities led them to form both alliances with their colleagues who could help them and to derogate those colleagues whom they perceived stood in the way. The internal conflicts in Union military leadership pervades Castel's study.
The book offers a chronological military history of the Civil War, but it moves back and forth between the many fronts in an insightful way that allows the reader to see the broad picture. The first chapter of the book sets the theme of the book in examining early military action in western Virginia. McClellan received credit for a cautious, uninspired campaign while the luckless Rosecrans, who performed well, was passed over. Subsequent chapters examine the relationship between Grant and Halleck in the West, Grant and Rosecrans in northern Mississippi following Shiloh, and McClellan's repeated failures in 1862 with his attempts to blame others. Rosecran's Tennessee campaign, deliberate and brilliant and much criticized by his peers, receives praise. Grant receives deserved credit for the brilliance of his Vicksburg campaign (with Castel suggesting that Grant prevented Rosecrans from taking Vicksburg earlier); but Castel downplays the military significance of the fall of Vicksburg. With his activities at Stone's River, the Shenendoah Valley, Five Forks and Appomatox, Sheridan emerges as a key figure in Castel's account. Sherman with his capture of Atlanta but with his many failures receives begrudging recognition. Castel recognizes the important nature of Thomas' accomplishments but tends to downplay him somewhat.
Following his description of the military campaigns, Castel sums up his conclusions in a chapter titled "Epilogue: Victors in Blue -- Who and Why." There is some ambiguity, as Castel's discussion seems to straddle between discussing the contibutions of each general to the result of the war and the subsequent achievements of each general. Grant was the most successful general in terms both of his contributions and of the subsequent rewards -- the presidency and his Memoirs -- in his later life. Sherman, Sheridan, and Scofield also received high honors following the war. Thomas died in 1870 and this seems to me to result in Castel undervaluing him. Castel shows a high regard for Rosecrans even with his near-disastrous defeat at Chickamauga.
Castel has written a thoughtful, provocative study of the nature of military leadership as well as of military culture during the Civil War. The book will be of most interest to readers with a detailed background in the military history of the Civil War. Informed students of the Civil War will find much to think about in Castel's discussion of generals and leadership.
