A British army officer analyzes the three main campaigns of the
Civil War and their generals:- Grant and Lee in the Wilderness, the
Cold Harbor and the Spottsylvania campaign; Sherman vs Johnston and
Hood before Atlanta, the Battle of Nashville and the March to the
Sea; Sheridan's raid through the Shenandoah Valley. Detailed study
of day by day moves, of the strategy used by each general, etc.
Specially drawn maps illustrated each day's events. Value
definitely for students of strategem and military tactics. Limited
in appeal. (Kirkus Reviews)
Had Lee enjoyed the manpower or materiel advantages of Grant, would
the South have triumphed? Had Hood possessed strength superior to
Sherman's, would he still have lost their encounters in Georgia?
Popular sentiment has long bowed to the military leadership of the
Civil War's victorious generals-a view that has been disputed by
modern scholarship. Many might be startled to learn that a British
army officer also called these opinions into question long ago.
Out of print for more than fifty years, Lee, Grant and Sherman
is an unrecognized classic of Civil War history that presaged
current scholarship by decades. Alfred H. Burne assesses the
military leadership of Grant, Lee, Sherman, Hood, Johnston, Early,
and Sheridan from mid-1864 to Appomattox, contradicting prevailing
perceptions of the generals and even proposing that Grant's
military capabilities were inferior to Lee's.
Burne sought to challenge the orthodox views of other
historians--J. F. C. Fuller on Grant and Basil Liddell Hart on
Sherman--but his assessments were so unorthodox that even with the
endorsement of preeminent Civil War historian Douglas Southall
Freeman, his book received scant attention in its day. He sees
Sherman as more concerned with the geographical objective of
capturing Atlanta than the military goal of smashing the
Confederate army, lacking Grant's understanding that the principal
object of war is to conquer and destroy the enemy's armed forces.
Yet he asserts that "Grant in his heart of hearts feared Lee" and
also suggests that Jubal Early's Valley campaign might have
been
the most brilliant of the whole war.
In his analysis of the Georgia campaign, Burne views Sherman as
a general who avoided risk and was too obsessed with raiding to
wage an all-out offensive battle. Refusing to dismiss Hood as
incompetent, as many historians have done, Burne points to his
brilliance in military planning and claims that most of his defeats
were merely the result of inadequate resources.
Burne's book was ahead of its time, anticipating later shifts in
historical evaluations of Civil War leadership. Now available in a
corrected edition, with Freeman's original introduction and a new
foreword and endnotes by Albert Castel, it is a rich source
of
insight for scholars-and for anyone willing to reconsider
traditional views of these generals.
General
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