-
Bibliographical Essay
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Bibliographical Essay Despite its great importance, the Atlanta campaign remained for a century in the obscurity that long characterized historians’ treatment of Civil War military operations outside Virginia. Not until publication of Albert Castel’s Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of (Lawrence , ) did we have an adequate overall account of that year’s crucial events in North Georgia. Before the appearance of Castel’s work, the best published general treatment of the struggle was Jacob D. Cox’s Atlanta, an volume in the Scribner’s, Campaigns of the Civil War series. Two dissertations, both written at Emory University under the supervision of Bell I. Wiley, covered the operations with all the authority and expertise of graduate students: Richard M. McMurry, “The Atlanta Campaign, December , , to July , ” () and Erroll McGregor Clauss, “The Atlanta Campaign, July– September ” (). The starting point for all serious study of the campaign (and of all other Civil War military operations) is the United States War Department’s great compilation The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington , –)—the oft-cited of these pages—and its Supplement (now being published). Material on the Atlanta operations is in volumes , , , , , and (all in series ) of the and in volume of the Supplement. (Scattered relevant documents can be found in volumes in the other three series of the .) Unpublished letters and diaries are crucial for a study of the campaign. Serious students would do well to consult those in depositories in states of the Mississippi Valley whence came most of the troops on both sides of the great struggle for North Georgia. A special word should be said about the most important such Confederate document, the pocket diary of Lt. Thomas B. Mackall in the library at the College of William and Mary. That little document is the key that unlocks much of the Confederate side of the campaign during Johnston’s tenure as commander. Unfortunately, it does not lend itself to separate publication, but Bibliographical Essay for its fascinating history see Richard M. McMurry, “The Mackall Journal and Its Antecedents,” Civil War History (): –. All three commanding generals left memoirs of their military service. Those self-serving publications should be used with great caution, especially when dealing with controversial matters. The same care should be exercised when using the postwar writings of lower-ranking officers and enlisted personnel, especially those penned by Confederates. To some extent the modern biographies of the generals can offset those weaknesses. See John E. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (New York, ); Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography (New York, ); and Richard M. McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence (Lexington , ). Space constraints will permit only a few other listings. Thomas Lawrence Connelly’s Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee – (Baton Rouge , ), filled a long-standing void in the scholarship of the war in the West. Unfortunately, we have no similar studies on the Union armies, but Larry Daniel is presently hard at work on a volume covering the Army of the Cumberland that will be a welcome addition to the literature on the struggle for the West. Daniel’s Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee: A Portrait of Life in a Confederate Army (Chapel Hill , ) introduces us to the men who fought in the West for the Rebel cause. There is no exactly comparable volume on the Yankees who followed Sherman, but see Joseph T. Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (New York, ). For other works see the bibliographies in Castel’s Atlanta; those in the dissertations listed in the first paragraph above; and Stephen Davis and Richard M. McMurry, “A Reader’s Guide to the Atlanta Campaign,” Atlanta Historical Journal (Fall ): –. ...
