Winfield Scott Hancock: Gettysburg Hero, and: George Gordon Meade and the War in the East (review)

The most recent additions to the McWhiney Foundation Press's series on "Civil War Campaigns and Commanders," Perry D. Jamieson's Winfield Scott Hancock: Gettysburg Hero and Ethan S. Rafuse's George Gordon Meade and the War in the East, appear to be very similar books. Both are brief on biography while focusing on their selected commander's experiences in the Civil War. Each has numerous concise essays that tell the reader about other key individuals in the narrative. Both are relatively short yet well written. But it is there that the similarities end.

Jamieson's work does little more than narrate the events of Winfield Scott Hancock's career. There are few insights into Hancock's command style, his leadership, or the degree to which he influenced the fights in which his division and corps participated. For instance, the chapter entitled "The Third Day at Gettysburg" gives the impression that the most important thing Hancock did that critical afternoon was to ride his horse up and down his corps' line. According to Jamieson's narrative Hancock gave but two orders: one to Henry Hunt to open fire with his artillery; the other to Colonel Arthur Deveraux, commander of the 19th Massachusetts, telling him to plug a gap at "The Angle." Surely Hancock contributed more than this to the day's events.

Jamieson often narrates events that are not critical to Hancock's story. For instance, interspersed throughout the chapters that address Gettysburg is an account of J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry raid, an episode critical to the campaign, but one which adds little to an understanding of Hancock. Even more curious is the space dedicated to the election of 1876, an event which, at best, was tangential to Hancock's career, and where Jamieson incorrectly states the situation in the electoral college. The book lacks notes and has only the briefest of bibliographies. Though Gettysburg Hero will be of value to those who have a casual interest in the Civil War, this is a work serious scholars can bypass.

Such is not the case with Ethan Rafuse's work. Rafuse provides extensive notes and a superb bibliography, containing sources he has used to delve deeply into Meade's personality, intellect, and his philosophy of war and politics, while also looking in detail at Meade as a battlefield commander. Perhaps the largest difference in the two books is that Rafuse's has a clearly identifiable thesis.

Rafuse tells the reader that his book "will delineate the forces that shaped the Union war effort in the East and the military and political problems Army of the Potomac generals encountered as they pursued victory" (p. 15). He identifies animosity between West Point-trained officers and the nation's political leadership as the overriding impediment to that army's successful operation. The most significant dispute, he argues, one which began with George B. McClellan, was "was over what line of operations Federal forces should adopt in Virginia." The West Pointers, Meade included, thought that the James River ought be the base of operations in Virginia, while the Lincoln administration insisted on the so-called Overland Route. Meade's Civil War career, Rafuse concludes, "was doomed to frustration by an operational approach he knew was flawed but was unable to convince a hostile civilian authority to change" (p. 16).

This is a thought-provoking and, for this reviewer, a controversial argument. In the end, I am not convinced. First, the dichotomy of West Pointers versus politicians is a false one. McClellan himself was a general with political aspirations, which was far more important than his West Point background in making him and his supporters suspect in Lincoln's eyes. Moreover, there were West Pointers, most prominently Henry Halleck, who endorsed the Overland Route. Another problem with the argument is that the alleged weaknesses of the Overland Route that, by Rafuse's account, plagued the Army of...