DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9709040597

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: By Bill Roach

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

FROM THE MILITARY SHELF

THE WARRIOR GENERALS

Combat Leadership in the Civil War

THOMAS B. BUELL

Crown. 528 pp. $35.

Distinguished historian Thomas Buell has written a thoughtful study of three pairs of generals at three levels of command in the Civil War and, in so doing, challenges much of the accepted thought about the superiority of the Southern leaders.

Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, George H. Thomas and John B. Hood, and Francis C. Barlow and John B. Gordon are the pairs - Union and Confederacy - whom Buell examines by interweaving the battles they directed. Buell analyzes their beginnings, then takes us through campaigns in the Eastern and Western theaters, year by year. Antietam, Shiloh, Chattanooga and Spotsylvania are among the battles assessed.

Buell is especially critical of Lee, challenging his reputation as a military genius. But he declares Thomas, the ``Rock of Chickamauga,'' the greatest general in the war.

THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN

EDITED BY GARY W. GALLAGHER

University of North Carolina Press. 283 pp. $29.95.

The Wilderness Campaign of 1864 pitted Union General Ulysses S. Grant against Confederate General Robert E. Lee for the first time. In his book, Penn State history professor Gary Gallagher draws together a group of scholars to assess the circumstances of this series of battles as well as the planning of them.

The scholars also study the leadership and performance of other battlefield generals, including Union cavalry generals Philip Sheridan and James Harrison Wilson and the Confederate operations led by Richard S. Ewell and A.P. Hill.

Wilderness Campaign is not an easy read, but historians will appreciate it.

SOUTHERN FIRE

Exploits of the Confederate Navy

R. THOMAS CAMPBELL

Burd Street Press. 263 pp. $24.95.

As Confederate historian R. Thomas Campbell notes in his preface, ``The naval activity of the Confederacy during the War Between the States has been generally overlooked by the writers of history.'' And Campbell has set out to fill the void. This is his third book about the Confederate navy.

The narrative is heavily salted with excerpts from letters, journals and reports. Campbell focuses on several naval leaders, including commanders James D. Bulloch, John N. Maffitt and Joseph N. Barney, and lieutenants John Stribling, Charles W. Read and Charles M. Morris. The author notes the remarkable drive of the Confederacy to build a navy in the four years of conflict.

THE SHADOWS ON MY HEART

The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia

EDITED BY ELIZABETH R. BAER

University of Georgia Press. 355 pp. $24.95.

In 1861, 18-year-old Lucy Rebecca Buck, the daughter of a Virginia planter, began a diary that she kept until the end of the war. Academician Elizabeth R. Baer carefully edited that diary for The Shadows on My Heart, which recounts the difficulties of Southern women loyal to the Confederate cause but unhappy with the role and ideology that it thrust upon them.

Buck's diary gives remarkable insights into the commonplace and eventful happenings of the war.

SMITHSONIAN'S GREAT BATTLES & BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CIVIL WAR

A Definitive Field Guide Based on the Award-Winning Television Series by MasterVision

JAY WERTZ AND EDWIN C. BEARSS

William Morrow. 856 pp. $42.

This field guide to virtually every recorded battle and battlefield is an interesting approach to presenting the history of the Civil War.

The work is organized by states with frequent cross-referencing, so as to provide an ``easy-to-tour'' system. That's a significant step for the traveler who may wish to visit various sights and battlefields. But it does make it difficult to tie battles and campaigns together.

While the larger descriptions cover the South, there are significant sections that cover the Northeast and Northwest.

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