This Great Struggle: America's Civil War (review)

Steven Woodworth's work regarding the American Civil War has been both prolific and impressive. He has authored, coauthored, and edited a prodigious amount of the literature that is available, and he is appropriately considered one of the premier historians of the period. This latest effort consists of an overview of the conflict that allows the general reader and the dedicated scholar to avail themselves of the insights he has gained through the course of that journey. Yet, This Great Struggle represents more than a synthesis of Woodworth's thought and interpretation; it is a narrative of the nation's "great struggle" that reminds readers of the centrality of slavery and emancipation, the significance of Abraham Lincoln's leadership in war and absence of it in peace, and the ability of the young republic to persevere in the face of disunion and bitter conflict.

From the first pages of the prologue to the final synopsis of Reconstruction, the author paints a gripping image of the Civil War and the places of soldiers and civilians in it. The most important elements are there, with actions that include the Trans-Mississippi as well as those in better-known theaters of operation to the east of that great waterway. Readers are allowed to follow the emergence of Ulysses Grant, the decline of George McClellan, and the ruthless wartime efficiencies of William Sherman and Philip Sheridan. There, too, are the perplexities of Leonidas Polk, Ambrose Burnside, Braxton Bragg, and a host of political generals that include Benjamin Butler and John C. Frémont on one side and Sterling Price on the other. The narrative touches on the international elements and homefront tensions experienced in a war whose impact could be felt beyond the battlefield. Copperheads and carpetbaggers, confiscation and conscription, rebellion and reconciliation all have their places in the greater story Woodworth weaves.

Largely, the volume benefits from a steady pace and a light step, but the work also omits information that would have enhanced the narrative. Early among these is the reference to an "extremely high" mortality rate in colonial Chesapeake that does not, at the same time, include the specific statistics that would bring the point home dramatically (2). An initial death rate of 75 to 80 percent helps to explain the use of white indentured servants from England before planters turned to another source of "nonfree labor," and at least a passing reference to the threat of social upheaval represented by Bacon's Rebellion would have been in order for this portion of the discussion of slavery as a basis for the coming sectional division and conflict (2). Curiously, references such as the one to an 1822 slave rebellion do not include names to which readers ought to be made aware, such as Denmark Vesey, while some of the more colorful stories, such as the dramatic demise of Elmer Ellsworth in 1861, also do not appear. Woodworth uses Edmund Ruffin on two occasions at the start of his volume but does not include the old fire-eater's choice to end his life rather than submit to Union rule at the end of it as an example that would have served his theme on secession and rebellion very well.

In the body of the text there are similarly puzzling omissions. William Sherman's performance earlier in Kentucky could help to explain his subsequent behavior at Shiloh. There is no reference to Allan Pinkerton's role in exacerbating George McClellan's faulty use of intelligence. Jeb Stuart's role in impacting Confederate reactions to McClellan's advance toward Richmond in 1862 does not receive mention until much later. The 1863 Suffolk campaign gets no responsibility for James Longstreet's absence from Chancellorsville, although he is identified as having "most" of his men on "detached duty" in North Carolina at the time, as indeed many of them were (209). Ulysses Grant undertakes an impressive campaign against Vicksburg in 1863, but not...