Gettysburg – Stephen W. Sears, 2003 ★★★★½

Teaching Lee Humility

It began a brazen demonstration of contempt and wound up a history-altering mistake. In between, over three days, came intense carnage. Still, who won Gettysburg was not decided immediately; much of the how and why parts of the battle are still being debated.

Today we see Gettysburg as the turning point in the bloodiest of American wars. Back then, concrete conclusions were harder to reach. Stephen W. Sears offers readers something the people who fought at Gettysburg didn’t have: clarity.

For the Confederates, what was at stake was clear enough. They needed to stay on the attack and put the fight to the North. The commander of their Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, explained: “There is always hazard in military movements, but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.”

Chancellorsville – Stephen W. Sears, 1996 ★★★

Slipping the Jaws of Victory

Initiative is a word you see a lot in military contexts. Aggressive generals seize it, unsuccessful ones fumble it, wargamers even roll for it. In Chancellorsville, Stephen W. Sears examines a major U.S. Civil War battle decided to an almost unfair degree by initiative.

On paper, it should have been a Union victory. Their usual advantage in numbers was increased when a key Confederate force was pulled away from Robert E. Lee’s command, giving the North a 2:1 edge in troops.

Learning from the mistakes of his Federal predecessors, Joseph Hooker tried something different from the usual frontal assault into entrenchments. He employed an ambitious sidelong thrust utilizing telegraph wire and secret river crossings. For a while, it was even working.

To The Gates Of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign – Stephen W. Sears, 1992 ★★★½

An Overlooked Bloodbath

Even for many American Civil War buffs, the Peninsula Campaign and its climactic Seven Days Battles are undiscovered country.

For concentrated blood and fury stretched out over an entire week, the Seven Days’ intensity is unrivaled. The Peninsula Campaign saw the first armored engagement – between the Merrimack and the Monitor – and the origin of “Taps,” yet people know the name “Bull Run” more than “Malvern Hill,” despite the latter’s higher body count and import.

Perhaps the campaign eludes easy comprehension because there wasn’t a clear winner. The North lost most of the battles, but the South lost most of the men. Fear trumped opportunity, while leaders of varying abilities all to varying degrees wilted under the spotlight.

Gettysburg it was not.

George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon – Stephen W. Sears, 1988 ★★½

General Delay

Terrible military leaders grab history’s attention like a car wreck on the highway, albeit with a much higher body count. Whether as monuments of supreme idiocy or just poor luck, they live on in a way only the best of the good leaders do.

Think of Custer or Crassus or Conrad von Hötzendorf, who all married bad judgment and wanton disregard for life to leave us eternal reminders of the folly of war. There are others not as spectacular but every bit as deadly.

Take, for example, George McClellan, whose leadership can be blamed for extending the U. S. Civil War. This at least is the impression left by Stephen W. Sears in this biography of McClellan.

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle Of Antietam – Stephen W. Sears, 1983 ★★★★½

Playing Rope-A-Dope with “Tardy George”

Sometimes it takes a setback to produce victory, a nasty punch in the nose that restores focus and the will to win. It can even be a simple matter of attaining purity of purpose through suffering.

Still, if sounds unpleasant, that’s because it is. Such was the American Civil War’s bloodiest single day, the Battle of Antietam, presented here in a book that is equal parts morality play and combat story.