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Foreward
- The Kent State University Press
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Foreword Phil Shiman, Springfield, Virginia Once in a while, a new book comes along that is both original and a real contribution to our understanding of the civil war. Paul taylor’s biography of Orlando Poe is such a book. a west Point graduate, Poe had a long and varied career as a topographical engineer before the war, a staff engineer and a combat commander during the conflict, and, later, an officer of the corps of engineers and aide-de-camp to william t. Sherman in the west. refreshingly , taylor does not focus unduly on Poe’s war service to the exclusion of his antebellum and postwar activities, but provides an unusually balanced view of his entire career. we are also treated to an uncommonly intimate look behind the public mask that Poe carefully maintained, thanks to the large collection of extant personal letters. (we can be forever grateful that his wife, eleanor, ignored his instructions to burn his letters to her as he had burned her letters to him.) while outwardly reserved, serious, modest, and thoroughly professional in his demeanor, in private he was playful, sentimental, judgmental, proud, and very ambitious. his drawn-out quest for a general’s star—a running theme in his wartime career—is almost painful to follow. in short, he is depicted as a living, thinking, feeling person, and not as a shadowy or twodimensional cardboard character so common in descriptions of staff officers. This study is useful in several ways. it provides an interesting portrait of Gen. George B. Mcclellan in the early months of the war and a good view of the war intheeasterntheaterin1861and1862.asabrigadecommander,Poetookpartin the battles of Second Bull run and Fredericksburg. More significant is the view this biography gives of the western campaigns of 1863–65, especially Sherman’s campaigns in Georgia and the carolinas. For many years, those campaigns were all but ignored by both historians and the reading public. Beginning during the war itself and continuing long after, most attention has centered on the struggle of the army of the Potomac against robert e. lee’s army of northern virginia. ix however, historians have increasingly become aware of the strategic importance of the other theaters of the war. The western campaigns of 1864–65 have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly and popular works over the past twenty years. albert castel provided comprehensive treatment of the atlanta campaign, while more recently richard M. McMurry and Philip l. Secrist have offered overviews of that struggle. interest in the Savannah and carolinas campaigns began in the mid-1980s with Joseph Glatthaar’s The March to the Sea and Beyond and James reston Jr.’s quirky Sherman’s March and Vietnam, and it has continued with scholarly studies by charles royster, lee Kennett, and anne J. Bailey, and popular accounts by richard wheeler and noah andre trudeau. Sherman himself has also received considerable attention of late. long an enigma to historians, the general has been revealed to be a fascinatingly complex character with an equally fascinating approach to war. indeed, Sherman may have more to say to modern generations than lee, Mcclellan, and others of his contemporaries, given the rise of destructive total war and the blurring of the lines between soldiers and civilians that began in the mid-twentieth century. Seeking to understand the man and his legacy, historians such as John Marszalek , Michael P. Feldman, and Stanley B. hirshon have published outstanding biographies of Sherman. Sherman’s memoirs have been reissued in several editions , and Brooks D. Simpson and Jean v. Berlin produced an excellent, longoverdue collection of Sherman’s wartime correspondence. Poe played a key but little-seen part in these final campaigns. he was a trusted member of Sherman’s staff and inner circle and, by the end of the war, the general’s friend, as demonstrated by the fact that their professional association continued long after the war. his superiors and colleagues alike recognized him as a steady and talented officer, and Sherman came to rely on him heavily . Poe performed valuable services both before and during the campaigns, planning fortifications (such as those that saved allatoona Pass), overseeing the preparation of maps and pontoon bridges, advising Sherman and acting as his commander’s eyes, ears, and voice. During the final campaigns to the sea and through the carolinas, Poe was responsible for what might be called Sherman ’s “official demolitions,” the destruction of railroads and military facilities in atlanta; columbia, South...