ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608060031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG
SOURCE: ANNE GEARAN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
From atop the steep heights above the Rappahannock River, the futility of the Union army's assault in 1862 is laid out plainly.
In one direction the impregnable hillside falls away to the spot where the northern forces began their march to slaughter. In another direction lay the small squares of granite marked with numbers where the nameless dead repose.
The Battle of Fredericksburg was among the most one-sided of the Civil War - a bloody antecedent to the better-known Union triumph at Gettysburg. As rebels fell by the thousands a year later at Gettysburg, Union troops chanted ``Fredericksburg!''
The author who turned the drama of Gettysburg into a historical novel won a Pulitzer Prize more than 20 years ago and fed the modern fascination with the war.
Now, the author's son is following his father's success with a historical novel of his own about the battle at Fredericksburg.
Jeff Shaara's ``Gods and Generals'' is a bestselling prequel to Michael Shaara's 1975 novel ``The Killer Angels.''
``I think there is even something a little bit mystical about Civil War battlefields,'' Jeff Shaara said. ``The same thing affected my father. You know, we are a very secular nation. We don't have the notion of sacred ground except when you go to the battlefield. Something draws people to those places.''
It's also drawing readers to Shaara's thick historical yarn, which follows Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas ``Stonewall'' Jackson and their northern counterparts, Joshua Chamberlain and Winfield Scott Hancock, in the years leading up to Gettysburg.
The book focuses particularly on Fredericksburg, which is the first time all four generals participate in the same battle, and on the Battle of Chancellorsville, which took place nearby.
Like his father's book, the new novel puts thoughts into the heads of real historical figures and tries to tell their version of events.
Some of the dialogue comes from the generals' letters and journals, as well as contemporary accounts written by others. It's a somewhat controversial approach that marries scholarship and entertainment.
``It is fiction,'' said Frank O'Reilly, a historian with the National Park Service and author of several books about Civil War conflicts near Fredericksburg.
``We can't know what they were thinking or feeling, except as they themselves recorded it,'' O'Reilly said. Nevertheless, he welcomes the book because it will stoke interest in history.
The Battle of Fredericksburg on Dec. 13, 1862, and Chancellorsville the following May make fine a plot line, O'Reilly said.
The battles show an outnumbered South at its tactical best - winning impossible battles and breaking the Union will to fight. But at Chancellorsville also came perhaps the South's most debilitating loss - the accidental death of Jackson at the hands of his own men.
At Fredericksburg, some 35,000 Union troops marched wave after wave across the unbroken field toward Confederates tucked safely behind a stone wall or perched atop the heights with their cannons.
Nearly 9,000 fell dead or wounded, splayed on a plain not more than 800 yards long and 500 yards wide. Not one got within 50 yards of a Confederate soldier, O'Reilly said.
Including a larger engagement south of the town, the Union forces suffered 13,000 casualties, while the Confederates lost about 4,500.
``That field of concentrated dead is something that had never been seen before by these soldiers,'' O'Reilly said. ``Up to that point there was a little bit of romance of war left in the common soldier.''
Shaara, like countless tourists before him, stood amid the stones at the national cemetery in Fredericksburg and struggled to make sense of the butchery.
He also visited the little house near Fredericksburg where Jackson died. The room, the furnishings, the very bed are unchanged.
``It was almost a life-changing experience. I will remember it for the rest of my life,'' Shaara said.
Michael Shaara had much the same reaction while on a family vacation trip to Gettysburg three decades ago, Shaara said.
``Something happened to him there that was very powerful,'' Shaara said.
Michael Shaara's depiction of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg may have won the nation's top literary prize, but it was not an immediate commercial success.
Michael Shaara died five years before his novel became the basis for the 1993 film ``Gettysburg.'' At his death, the elder Shaara was estranged from his family and embittered from years of declining health.
His critically acclaimed character study eventually sold 2 million copies, and was cited by Ken Burns as an influence on his wildly popular public television series ``The Civil War.''
Jeff Shaara, a former rare coin dealer, got the idea for his own book after serving as a consultant for the filming of ``Gettysburg.''
``Gods and Generals'' is his first book. He's under contract for another, which will trace Lee and other characters after Gettysburg. O{ILLUSTRATION} PHOTO: AP. (From left) Mark Lockyear of Danvers, Mass., walks with his family, Mark Jr., 14, David, 11, and his wife, Cynthia, along a stone wall - now reconstructed - that was used by Confederate soldiers for cover during the Battle of Fredericksburg. The battle is the subject of ``Gods and Generals,'' a novel by Jeff Shaara. color.
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