Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War (review)

Abstract

60CIVIL WAR HISTORY treatment. Stoneman himself attributed much of his poor showing on a disastrous raid during the Atlanta campaign to prostration from blood loss. Welsh has produced an impressive volume—exhaustively researched and painstakingly prepared. A glossary of the most frequently encountered conditions and terms from the era's outdated medical nosology is included to assist the modern reader. Also useful is a sequence section that includes the dates of wounds, accidents, and deaths inflicted as well as geographic locations. Like Medical Histories of Confederate Generals, this volume will have a wide appeal to those interested in the Civil War and medical history. James O. Breeden Southern Methodist University Shades ofBlue and Gray:An Introductory Military History ofthe Civil War. By Herman Hattaway. (Columbia: University ofMissouri Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 28 1 . $29.95.) Herman Hattaway's Shades ofBlue and Gray is a concise, intelligent, and enjoyable overview of military affairs in the Civil War. Neither a textbook nor a scholarly monograph, it is essentially an extended essay that reflects the author's interests, experiences, and personality. Hattaway hopes his book will provide a "good grounding in fundamental Civil War military history" for recruits new to the field and a "distillation of my thinking and my ideas" for veterans in need of a refresher (ix). In that, and in much more, he succeeds. While it is not possible to summarize Hattaway's take on every aspect of the Civil War, readers familiar with his earlier work on Northern victory and Southern defeat will find few surprises. The book opens and closes with surveys of pre- and postwar military developments in the nineteenth century, especially the rapid pace of technological change and the slower but equally significant growth of military professionalism. In the course of analyzing most of the major campaigns and battles, Hattaway examines such topics as the emergence of "hard" war, the development of army-sized raids, and the strengths and weaknesses of key commanders. He writes, for example, of Henry Halleck's superb but underappreciated managerial skills and of the "blinding exhilaration" that gripped R. E. Lee after Chancellorsville and affected his performance at Gettysburg. But this reviewer's favorite passage is Hattaway's suggestion that Richard Ewell had "severe mental problems" (143). According to the author, Ewell not only looked like a bird, he thought he was a bird. This assertion should make for a fascinating recasting of the struggle for Culp's Hill. Shades ofBlue and Gray is not without a few flaws. In such a brief book the amount of ink wasted on the faddish but insignificant topic of women soldiers is annoying, especially when so little is included about the war on the water. While Hattaway notes the development of mines and submarines, he has relatively little to say about the wide array of maritime and riverine activities car- BOOK REVIEWS6l ried out by the navies ofboth sides. Hattaway devotes a disproportionate amount of space to events in the eastern theater, an oddly old-fashioned approach that is a particular sore point with this reviewer. On the other hand, the unorthodox annotated bibliography is a welcome feature. Included are novels, picture books, and musical recordings along with the usual dry-as-dust scholarly tomes. (Note to all: future bibliographies of this sort will have to include CD-ROMS, computer games, and internet websites.) Quibbles aside, Shades of Blue and Gray is a thoughtful, informative, and sometimes provocative book that incorporates much recent scholarship and successfully fits the Civil War into the larger context of military developments in the early industrial era. William L. Shea University of Arkansas at Monticello Civil War Generalship: TheArt OfCommand ByWJ. Wood. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1977. Pp. xii, 269. $59.95. Chroniclers of Civil War battles are not always good military historians, and vice versa. W J. Wood shows himselfadept at both in this insightful study of six Civil War commanders and how they coped with the unprecedented problems they faced. He beams with a discussion of that perennially interesting question of whether the Civil War was a modern war. His answer is that it both was and was not. It was, in his words, "the sandwiched war" (1...