Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 by Gary Ecelbarger, and: The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta by Earl J. Hess

Abstract

Reviewed by: Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 by Gary Ecelbarger, and: The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta by Earl J. Hess Christopher M. Rein Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864. Gary Ecelbarger. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0-8061-5499-2, 275 pp., cloth, $26.95. The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta. Earl J. Hess. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-4696-3419-7, 344 pp., cloth, $37.50. Comparative reviews provide a unique challenge for the reviewer—in addition to discovering similarities in coverage and contrasting differences in approach, style, and content, the reviewer can find it difficult to avoid developing a preference for one work over the other and then using the review to justify that opinion. While Gary Ecelbarger's Slaughter at the Chapel and Earl Hess's The Battle of Peach Tree Creek continue both authors' investigations into the pivotal Atlanta campaign of 1864, providing detailed, traditional accounts of Confederate general John Bell Hood's series of wasteful, attritional assaults in the last weeks July 1864, which eventually cost the Confederacy control of the city, there are subtle differences in approach, argument, and conclusions. Both books could be described as traditional military history, but Hess includes detailed information on women soldiers in the battle (202), while Ecelbarger provides extensive descriptions of leaders on both sides and command arrangements and, more accurately, dysfunction that will appeal to military professionals and students, demonstrating that both scholars have their eyes on a scholarly, or, at least, professional, as well as a popular audience. Though both accounts are deeply grounded in solid academic research and both read exceptionally well, a comparative analysis reveals Hess's scholarly approach and highlights Ecelbarger's popular appeal, betraying their respective occupations as a distinguished professor of history and as a public historian and battlefield tour expert. One hopes that Earl Hess does not run out of energy before he runs out of Civil War topics to write about. An established dean of the military and social history of the conflict, the prolific author has contributed studies on tactics, battles, individual commanders, theaters of the war, soldiers, and campaigns, including his own work on the Battle of Ezra Church published in 2015, making possible a true "apples to apples" comparison. But his goal here is to set the stage for the later actions by exploring the incredible challenges Gen. William T. Sherman faced in tightening the noose around Hood's still dangerous forces coiled like a snake inside Atlanta's formidable defenses. To untrained observers, Civil War battles appear to be decided before they begin in favor of whichever side can marshal greater combat power on the field, but this ignores the incredible complexity that reveals Sherman's military genius. Hess details how the Union commander had to constantly maneuver his forces toward and around the fortress city and shows that doing so exposed portions of his command to a sortie by the Confederate garrison. [End Page 304] Hess focuses on Hood's first opportunity to inflict a potentially decisive blow on a portion of Sherman's command as it straggled across Peach Tree Creek, leaving parts of Gen. George Thomas's Army of the Cumberland isolated and beyond supporting distance from the other two Union armies under Sherman's command. Fortunately, Confederate errors in deployment and stalwart Union resistance frustrated Hood's elaborate plans on that day, holding the position and inflicting irreplaceable casualties on the Confederate commanders. Hess's narrative unfolds geographically, as the echeloned attack hit sections of the Union line sequentially, pushing some portions back but failing to roll it up in the decisive action that commanders on both sides sought but rarely achieved. Befitting his exhaustive knowledge of Civil War tactics, Hess highlights the Union's superiority in artillery, a testament to the attention paid to both technology and logistics, but Ecelbarger's detailing of the almost complete absence of Union artillery at Ezra Church reveals there was more to the Sherman's army than just superior technology and...