The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (review)

BOOK REVIEWS83 from being cut in two. He describes the vicious fighting at close range, the untimely deaths of inspirational officers, the Confederate exploitation of gaps in Union lines, and the confusion at various headquarters that resulted in a stalemate by nightfall. Scott focuses his lively account of the May 6 fighting on the early morning Union assault that was designed to envelop the right of the Confederate line, and on Longstreet's arrival and subsequent attack against the Union left flank that smashed it. The author traces Hancock's retreat to prepared positions on the Brock Road. While Lee's desperate thrust against these field fortifications was repulsed, Scott feels that Burnside's weak counterattack and Gordons almost successful attempt to turn Sedgwick's right flank that evening ended any hope for a decisive Union victory. His conclusion that Grant nevertheless won a "moral victory" when he ordered the Army of the Potomac to resume its movement south on May 7 is similar to those previously reached by Catton and Steere. Scott's judgments are usually narrative statements and not qualitative conclusions. Missing from his assessment is the question of Meade's late start on May 4 and an evaluation of how this dictated the halt and initial fighting in the Wilderness. He does not consider why Gibbon failed to execute Hancock's attack order on May 6 nor does he discuss Sheridan's clash with Meade over the employment of cavalry in the Wilderness. Finally , Scott's observation that Grant intended to "keep moving on" is not an adequate commentary on how the battle affected the bloody campaign that followed. Scott skillfully uses personal accounts of officers and men to depict the "fog ofwar" as well as to illuminate the battle. The maps are helpful to the reader as is a chronology of events and order ofbattle in the appendix (although a careless error places the Army of Northern Virginia under the Army of the Potomac page titles). Those who remember "drums and bugles" will be familiar with the sources listed in the bibliography. Marvin R. Cain University of Missouri-Rolla The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. By Joseph T. Glatthaar. (New York: New York University Press, 1985. Pp. xvi, 318. $27.95.) Few events of the Civil War have stirred the popular imagination like the Union army's trek through Georgia and the Carolinas. One has only to think ofthe impact on American culture created by Gone with the Wind to recognize this truth. In recent years four books, Richard Wheelers Shermans March, Burke Davis's Shermans March, James Reston, Jr. s Shermans March and Vietnam, and now Joseph T. Glatthaars The March to the Sea and Beyond, have dealt with Shermans sweep through the South following the fall ofAtlanta. 84CIVIL WAR HISTORY Glatthaar, who teaches history at the Combat Studies Institute, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, does not cover the North Georgia campaign and fall ofAtlanta during the spring and summer of 1864, when a formidable Confederate army opposed Sherman's advance in a series of costly engagements. Rather, like Davis, Wheeler, and Reston, Glatthaar is concerned with the aftermath ofthat campaign: the march to the Atlantic and then through the Carolinas when, in the author's words, "Sherman's veterans adopted the total-war concept as retaliation for the deaths and tragedies that their ranks had endured and also because they saw it as the most effective means of winning the war." This book goes beyond all earlier efforts, including the 1956 work ofJohn G. Barrett, Shermans March Through the Carolinas, in examining the march from the level of the common soldiers, both enlisted men and officers. Campaign studies, the author contends, strip away "much of the reality of warfare." Reminding the reader that "war as seen from a headquarters field tent, although important in understanding the campaign or battle, is very different from war from a soldier's perspective," Glatthaar states that he hopes to restore much of war's reality "by examining these campaigns from the level of the common soldier. . . ."The author admirably accomplishes the latter, working through a...