The Ongoing Civil War: New Versions of Old Stories (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by Robert M. Sandow Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania The Ongoing Civil War: New Versions of Old Stories. Edited by Herman Hattaway and Ethan S. Rafuse. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Pp.164. Cloth, $32.50.) This collection of essays provides a representative sample of articles that appeared in the short-lived journal Columbiad: A Quarterly Review of the War Between the States. Throughout its four year history, the guiding principle of the Columbiad was to couple the standards of the trained historian with a style that appealed to general readers. [End Page 426] As Mark Grimsley points out in "The Professional Historian and 'Popular History,'" the harmonizing goal of Columbiad often evokes ambivalence if not outright hostility on the part of scholars. His contemplative article traces the rise of the popular history genre in America and the condescending response by the guardians of "scientific history." Grimsley encourages historians to praise any effort that enhances their influence over the way general readers understand the past. If academics shirk this social responsibility, they abandon their role as shapers of public memory, leaving this important work in the hands of untrained enthusiasts. Dominated by practicing historians, the essays in this volume pay homage to academic rigor. A number also serve as instructive models of historical empiricism weighing interpretations against evidence. Historians in the field may not consider these works path-breaking but general readers will be rewarded by the book's more positive aspects. It presents recent scholarly approaches and reevaluates figures often maligned or under-appreciated in popular history. Lay-readers will notice a shift away from battlefields and military biography. One effective theme focuses on the significance of wartime administration and logistics, casting bureaucrats and intelligence officers as the unsung heroes of the conflict. William A. Tidwell's "Before the Wilderness: What Lee Knew" pieces together and evaluates the patchwork of the little-known Confederate intelligence. He asserts that in spring 1864 Lee had an effective understanding of Union army operational plans and developed the Wilderness attack as a rational counter. In a similar fashion, two essays on Union administration and logistics suggest that Northern victory resulted in large part from West Point professionalism and bureaucratic management. Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones praise the dour Henry W. Halleck for his ability to deflect political pressures while running the Union war machine with an engineer's attention to detail. Mark A. Snell adds Halleck's departmental chiefs to the list of able administrators. Several essays reexamine wartime figures, such as the unappealing former president Franklin Pierce and the ever-controversial George B. McClellan. While McClellan may be perennially damned in and out of academia, Ethan S. Rafuse presents a sympathetic portrait of McClellan on his own terms. Rafuse attempts valiantly to exorcise McClellan's demons by depicting him as a pragmatic general keenly in tune with political and military realities. He argues that McClellan's conservative strategy was the product of the West Point curriculum and echoed the fundamental tenets of Napoleon's most influential interpreter, Carl von Clausewitz. Despite the work's positive aspects, it exhibits significant unevenness. It is not bound together by a coherent theme or guiding focus and the title of the book as [End Page 427] well as the essays are somewhat enigmatic. Rafuse's "McClellan, von Clausewitz, and the Politics of War" admits that there is no evidence McClellan ever read or was influenced by von Clausewitz. Michael J. C. Taylor's "Franklin Pierce and the Civil War" is a mysterious title for an essay that fails to satisfy any type of reader. If engaging a non-academic audience is the goal, several of the articles fall flat or go against the grain of popular interest. They labor over individuals condemned or ignored in popular history, Halleck and McClellan included. Albert Castel's "History in Hindsight: William T. Sherman and Sooy Smith" looks again at one of Sherman's less-gifted subordinates leaving an impression that the...