Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301240220
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT HILLDRUP
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Edited by Russell Duncan. University of Georgia Press. $29.95.\Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the Brave. By Ernest B. Furgurson. Knopf. $25.\ Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas. By John J. Hennessy. Simon & Schuster. $27.50.\ To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign. By Stephen W. Sears. Ticknor & Fields. $24.95.\ Civil War Tales. By Gary C. Walker. A&W Enterprise. $25.95.
Like the rattle of musketry, a whole new blast of Civil War books has been aimed at the reading public, capitalizing on America's seemingly endless fascination with that greatest of our national tragedies. And, like musketry, some are better aimed than others.
Most different is Duncan's work on Shaw, the white Union officer popularized along with his black regiment, the 5th Massachusetts, in the recent motion picture, "Glory." The Shaw who emerges in the letters is a strikingly brave, intelligent and attractive young man, as blithely ignorant of his hypocrisy and prejudice as any privileged 20th century Bostonian. It's a much more dimensional portrait than any movie could present.
Before Shaw is shot dead at Fort Wagner, S.C., while leading his black soldiers, he generates a massive outpouring of letters to his family. Duncan's selection is occasionally redundant and boring, but by no means all inclusive (the letters having been previously censored by family members). His work, however, does focus attention and perspective on a man who, though already well known to Civil War buffs, deserves more understanding and less worship than suggested by the film.
Furgurson's book on Chancellorsville is an excellent recounting of that Shakespearean battle of triumph and tragedy that came close to destroying the Union army, and which cost the life of Stonewall Jackson. It is, with Gettysburg, perhaps the most dramatic engagement of the war.
Tactically, Chancellorsville was a near masterpiece, involving as it did, the successful violation of a cardinal rule of war: never divide a smaller force in the face of a superior one. The battle is still studied in military schools throughout the world. But it also reads like a great play, and Furgurson takes advantage of the fact in his excellent work.
"Return to Bull Run" gives a detailed treatment of an oft overlooked battle - the Union's second whipping at Manassas, and one in which Pope's incompetency and Jackson's arrival played key roles. This is the most extensive work I've seen since - ironically - a novel, Tom Wicker's "Unto This Hour."
Hennessy suggests that Pope was a fool for bringing on the engagement. This may overstate the case, but not by much. What it does represent is some of the exceptionally savage fighting that proved - as did Fredericksburg - that smartly generalled Confederate armies could whip incompetently led Union forces, and still not be able to take strategic advantage of it.
Sears' "To the Gates of Richmond" is a careful, accurate summary of the Seven Days that saved Richmond and shattered the last hopes of everyone who hoped that this would be a short war. What it also proved (see Pope, above) was that the Union, in this case McClellan, didn't know what to do with a superior force and that the Confederates, though blundering badly a times, were learning to make the most of what they had.
Sears does not seem to add a great deal to other recent works on the same topic - Wheeler's "Sword Over Richmond," for example - but it's still a good, solid work.
Roanoke writer Gary Walker's locally produced "Civil War Tales" collects undocumented regional anecdotes about the war. Many undoubtedly have been tortured by time, and sources and even dates, are missing in many cases. The capture of the first yankee is a brief example. Still, with that warning, it's an interesting series of stories, many of which are unlikely to have had wide distribution, and thus may prove entertaining.
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.