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  • Civil War Military Leaders Reassessed and Rehashed: Three Biographical Forays
  • Gary W. Gallagher (bio)
Byron Farwell. Stonewall: A Biography of General Thomas J. Jackson. New York: Norton, 1992. xiv 560 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper).
John G. Waugh. The Class of 1846. From West Point to Appomattox: Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, and Their Brothers. New York: Warner Books, 1994. xviii 635 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95.
John F. Marszalek. Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. New York: The Free Press, 1993. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95.

There seems to be no slaking the reading public’s thirst for books about Civil War military figures. The normally high level of interest in the conflict has increased dramatically over the past several years because of Ken Burns’s documentary, a spate of other television programs focusing on battles and leaders, and the adaptation of Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels to film as Gettysburg. University presses and commercial houses have responded with a stream of titles on Union and Confederate generals. To many academic historians, most such books lack conceptual imagination and seem content to follow their subjects from battle to battle. Other scholars respond that even the most written-about Civil War soldiers can benefit from studies that exploit new materials, ask different questions, or use the individuals to shed light on mid-nineteenth-century American culture and society. The three titles under review here provide ammunition for both sides in this debate. 1

Byron Farwell suggests that Stonewall: A Biography of General Thomas J. Jackson marks a departure from previous studies. Nineteenth-century British biographer G. F. R. Henderson, states Farwell, “like all the biographers who preceded him and those who have since written of Jackson’s life, was an ardent partisan.” Although the “best by far of the later biographies,” Lenoir Chambers’s two-volume Stonewall Jackson (1959) also was the work of “a votary” (p. x). In contrast, Farwell announces his desire “to present a balanced picture of an interesting man and a justly famous general” (p. xii). [End Page 226]

Unfortunately, Stonewall fails to deliver anything that expands our understanding of Jackson’s life and career. Farwell rarely probed beyond readily accessible printed materials (the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Virginia Historical Society are just three crucial manuscript repositories he chose not to visit). This reliance on extensively mined sources yielded the historiographical equivalent of an eclair without any filling. The book’s nearly 600-page bulk, handsome dustjacket, glowing blurbs, and respected imprint create an initial impression of substance, but the narrative moves along deeply worn interpretive paths. Only novices unaware they are getting nothing new, or perhaps buffs who prefer the story they already know told well to a different story told in any fashion, will benefit from Farwell’s text.

Standard anecdotes appear even where the author apparently knows them to be questionable. Farwell thus quotes Richard Taylor’s famous description of his first meeting with Jackson in the spring of 1862 — then warns readers in a footnote that “Taylor’s entire account..., like much else in his memoirs, must be taken with more than a grain of salt” (p. 274). The overall estimate of Jackson as a soldier is utterly familiar. An “incredibly brave... gambler, daring to the point of rashness... mission-oriented... [and] exceptionally aggressive,” Stonewall proved a “most able commander at every level of command up to a corps..., but it seems most doubtful that he would have been equally successful at any higher level” because he found it difficult to work with subordinates. “It was by dying when he did, at the height of his career,” concludes Farwell with a sure grasp of the obvious, “that he achieved the lasting fame of which as a young lieutenant he had dreamed” (p. 532).

Readers hoping to understand the political and social context of Jackson’s life will be especially disappointed. The handling of his reaction to sectional controversies and his attitude toward slavery illustrates this point. Jackson mentioned possible dissolution of the Union at least as early as 1856 and voted for...

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