Civil War Weather in Virginia (review)

Many years ago, Robert K. Krick admonished a young historian to avoid “misplaced concreteness” when writing or reciting history. By implication and reputation, Krick revels in “well-placed concreteness,” and Civil War Weather in Virginia certainly meets that description.

Krick knows as much about the Army of Northern Virginia, its personnel, and its battles as anyone alive, and in his latest publication he shares information about the meteorological conditions in which it (and its Union opponents) fought. Civil War Weather in Virginia uses “the fundamental weather details of temperature and precipitation” kept in a ledger by the Reverend C.B. Mackee, “who faithfully made readings in Georgetown, D.C. at 7 a.m., 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. each day” (1). Krick’s cited statistics cover the period from October 1860 through June 1865, a duration of 1,732 days. The tables also record the time of sunrise and sunset in Richmond and provide the day of the week for each date.

Beyond Krick’s brief introduction, which dwells primarily on the origin of the data that follows, the book contains little narrative, although what there is includes a scattering of words certain to lead many readers to their dictionaries, a Krick literary habit. He does supplement the statistics with scores of descriptions of weather conditions throughout Virginia derived from primary sources. Whether published or not, many of these quotations will be new even to veteran researchers of the eastern theater, demonstrating another of Krick’s trademarks. Although these accounts often appear to be randomly selected, many shed fresh light on the most important wartime events. The book includes numerous illustrations borrowed from less obscure places. The University of Alabama Press has done its usual professional job in producing a handsome, well-edited volume.

Krick freely admits that he made no effort to evaluate the effect of weather on the conduct of the war in Virginia, instead choosing reference over analysis. Given the author’s extensive background and broad knowledge, readers may be forgiven some disappointment in this limited objective. Still, Civil War Weather in Virginia stands as an instant corrective to several enduring myths about the fighting in the Old Dominion. As the data demonstrates, the battle of Fredericksburg was not fought in sub-freezing temperatures, nor did the armies endure a series of blizzards during their long encampment around Richmond and Petersburg in the winter of 1864–65. Writers and students will no doubt use this new tool to apply countless additional insights into the ways weather intruded on the soldiers’ missions.

Of course, herein lays the primary—and substantial—value of what is quite likely to become the latest addition to the standard reference works of Civil War history. Readers looking for precise information pertaining to the weather in the Washington-to-Richmond corridor during the Civil War will find what they are looking for, but few will derive as much satisfaction from reading this book as the author must have experienced in producing it.