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Preface
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
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P R E F A C E THE OVERALL HISTORY of the Army of the Cumberland has been neglected. This indifference is perhaps understandable in light of how the nation has chosen to view the Civil War, namely through the eyes of the eastern armies. Even in light of morerecent western revisionism, however, this neglect has strangely continued. The modern reader sees the army's history only in fragments, through battle monologues or biographies that do not deal with the totality. The only serious history is Thomas B. Van Home's two-volume The Army of the Cumberland, a postwar work that fails in a couple of respects. First, it ignores the intra-army bickering that so often wracked the command; indeed, the officer corps was neither solidified nor fraternal. Second, the volumes often read like the impersonal battle reports that appear in the Official Records of the war. Third, Van Home was a George Thomas advocate and one of his chief biographers. It was his clear attempt to vindicate the general and have him emerge as the army's hero. Indeed, Thomas actually approached Van Home about writing the history, furnished him with documents, and edited the manuscript. Thomas has enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity due to historians such as Thomas Buell and Richard McMurry. Albert Castel has pronounced him the second-greatest Northern general, behind only Ulysses S. Grant. In the present volume, George Thomas emerges as the catalyst that gave the army its lethal edge, but he is a flawed character who does not mature until late 1863. Undoubtedly Thomas supporters (the general has two Web sites) will think me "too hard" on him. I did not begin with a set conclusion but simply followed the sources. Much of his reputation is grounded in postwar writings that cannot be substantiated in contemporary evidence. In 1882, as a part of the Scribner's campaign series, Henry M. Cist wrote a brief volume entitled The Army of the Cumberland , which includes little new information and leaves out much. While exonerating the army's high command, he blames incompetent corps commanders for failures. More recently, Gerald Prokopowicz's All for the Regiment documented the history of the Cumberland's predecessor, the Army of the Ohio. While an excellent work, it concentrates less on strategy and politics and offers a somewhat different twist, in that its primary function is to document the influence of small units on the army's development. Prokopowicz asserts that the manner in which the army was recruited and organized proved to be the primary determiner of performance. The Army of the Cumberland's primary opponent, the Confederate Army of Ten- XII P R E F A C E nessee, has had its history told in Thomas L. Connelly's iconoclastic two-volume work Army of the Heartland and Autumn of Glory. Amid modern western revisionism , it is time that the main Union army in the West receive its own full-length treatment. The sheer volume of manuscript material in the National Archives and in the Don Carlos Buell and William Rosecrans collections has perhaps dissuaded serious researchers. Much of the material has been previously published in the Official Records, but still thousands of other documents, as might be suspected, had to be discarded as useless for a study of this type. Thus, weeks of tedious research had to be spent in ferreting out nuggets buried deep within old bound volumes, all of which leave a tan-colored dirt on everything that they touch. The effort, however, has uncovered previously ignored sources that shed light on significant areas. Additionally , several state archives, particularly those of Indiana and Ohio, proved invaluable . Another problem relating to the Army of the Cumberland is the lack of colorful units and flamboyant officers. There were no "Iron Brigades" (although John Turchin 's brigade perfunctorily carried that name), "Irish Brigades," or "Fighting 69th" regiments that have so captivated students of the Army of the Potomac. Strangely the western army possessed only one sharpshooter unit. That is not to suggest that the army lacked color. For sheer raunchiness, the Irishmen of Chicago's 19th and 24th Illinois Infantry could match any unit in the East. While Don Carlos Buell and William Rosecrans both have solid modern biographies and George Thomas several of them (and another on the way by Brian Wills), most of the officers at the corps and division level (with the notable exception of Phil Sheridan) have been ignored. Commanders such...