Sheridan in the Shenandoah (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Sheridan in the Shenandoah. By Edward J. Stackpole. (Harrisburg, Pa.: The Stackpole Company, 1961. Pp. 413. $5.95.) general stackpole's informal literary tour of the Eastern battlefields here follows Sheridan as "Jubal Early's Nemesis." The retired General, as before , follows his more or less avocational approach to Civil War armies, and applies his own war experiences to a narrative based on research limited to standard sources—with not too much depth or breadth in those. Predictably, he indulges in surface generalities in a penchant for covering a broad scope of action. As illustration, he evidently used the reports of Grant and Sheridan on Confederate cavalry action during Sheridan's raid on Richmond. The author states that, though Grant was deprived of his cavalry in his movement from Spotsylvania to the North Anna, one of Sheridan's achievements was to draw off Jeb Stuart's cavalry. Stuart sent only four brigades to what became the engagement at Yellow Tavern. It was the enterprise of Wade Hampton's division —while Grant was deprived of his own cavalry—that permitted Lee so complete an anticipation of Grant that the Confederates enjoyed a day of rest before Grant's turning movement was completed on Lee's new front at the North Anna. In handling the movements in the Valley, where the scope is limited, the story is clear and the background sound, though Stackpole here follows the conventional line of attributing the Federal successes to the gifts of Sheridan and the failings of Early. Jubal Early certainly made his mistakes. He was out of his depth as a corps commander and, as Stackpole points out, made poor use of his cavalry. But to analyze his failings as the factors of the Confederate defeat is like analyzing the mistakes made by a quarterback of some normal school as factors in a game against Ohio State. His fundamental mistake was to show up for the game. From another angle, who could have prevented Sheridan from using three-to-one numerical superiority to advantage against an exhausted, underfed remnant of any army corps for whom the tide was running out? The desperation of the situation was sufficient to cause Early to press, and lose command of the solid qualities he possessed in his proper niche—as a divisional commander. And yet, there is not one thing he did that would not have worked if he had been commanding Sheridan's army, and Sheridan had commanded his. Once analyses of commanding generals become the theme, comparative merits can only be assessed within the context of the team on which they 91 92CI VIL WAR HISTORY performed. If a narrative is to go beyond recounting action, the value of any analysis is why a general performed as he did under the precise circumstances controlling him as an individual. For example, Stackpole points out truly that Early, a bitter man and hard loser, was ungenerous in his attitude toward Sheridan. But why was Sheridan ungenerous to all the Confederates who opposed him? Moreover, did either personality affect the results? Rather, in their separate ways they were rough, hard men who played to win, and one was on the stronger club. Clifford Dowdey Richmond, Virginia Virginia Railroads in the Civil War. By Angus James Johnston, II. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Published for The Virginia Historical Society by The University of North Carolina Press, 1961. Pp. xiv, 336. $6.00. ) this is a superior piece of work. It is more than a monograph, and it is concerned with more than wartime transportation by rail. Indeed, it presents a quite admirable résumé of military operations in Virginia from 1861 to 1865. Mr. Johnston does not, to be sure, stray very far from his railheads, but neither did the major campaigning. For the Confederates, especially, the military effort seldom departed from a railroad base, and it is significant that when it did the Southerners usually found themselves in trouble. By contrast, it was the true interest of the Federal forces to make maximum use of the estuary system of the Chesapeake, and on those numerous occasions when they emphasized the iron horse, they performed with little distinction. That the...