The Spotsylvania Campaign (review)

book reviews163 brightest." Moreover, while Lincoln buffs will not find any surprising revelations in those of Brooks's 258 dispatches that Burlingame has selected, they will find entertaining vignettes of such cabinet personages as Edwin Stanton ("inexorable as death and as reticent as the grave"), Gideon Welles ("slightly fossiliferous"), and John Usher ("fair, fat, fifty and florid"). And they will discover such caustic reports as those that reveal that the officer corps of theArmy of the Potomac "is one vast hot-bed of bickerings, heart-burnings and jealousies ." In fact, with only slight digging, they will glimpse—for free, white males anyway—that long-lost more-egalitarian and less-bureaucratized society ofthe republican political culture in pre-industrial America. Thus, Brooks notes that Lincoln exhibited "plain republican manners and style as becomes a President of a republic." And, later, he notes Lincoln's deference to the common soldiers when Lincoln "touched his hat in a return salute to the officers, but uncovered to the men in the ranks." Despite the near hagiographical view with which Brooks writes about Lincoln, his observations contain many insights that only eyewitness accounts can bring us. Still, one must be conscious ofBrooks's bias and be informed by Burlingame's judicious comments to guard against such exaggerated and self-inflated claims as Brooks's unsupported assertion that Lincoln confided to him "his belief in Christ." But, Burlingame has done us a splendid service by making Brooks's journalism subject to our purview and to our analysis. Lincoln Observed can be a useful resource for many people interested in Lincoln and the Civil War. James A. Stevenson Dalton College The Spotsylvania Campaign. Edited by Gary W. Gallagher. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. xv, 257. $29.95.) As in previous books in the campaign series about the war in the east, this collection of essays centers around the second epoch of the overland campaign— the fighting around Spotsylvania, with the bulk of the text concentrating on the horrific battle against the Salient on May 12, 1864. What I enjoy most about books of this type are the varied perspectives of the contributors. As in the preceding book on theWilderness, Gary Gallagher has called upon Gordon C Rhea, Peter S. Carmichael, Robert K. Krick, Robert E. L. Krick, and Carol Reardon. Divided into eight sections, this book begins with discussions of Lee's versatile command style and the dysfunctional Federal general staff. Gallagher clearly illustrates that Lee could be a decisive and forceful general who could and did make tough decisions when it came to placing the right officers in the right commands at the appropriate times. William D. Matter, who wrote the first tactical study of the Spotsylvania Campaign, analyzed the command structure of theArmy ofthe Potomac. U. S. Grant commanded an army that had never fought under a general with his bulldog aggressiveness. The overland campaign, as it dragged on, taught them bitter lessons in modern warfare. l64CIVIL war history The next three essays concern themselves with specific tactical operations. Gordon Rhea's scathing assessment of Gouverneur K. Warren's dismal performance at Laurel Hill and Spotsylvania will leave one with a less than heroic image of the savior of the Union left at Gettysburg. Robert K. Krick's detailed description of the Confederate defense at the Salient on May 12, 1864 should be read and reread to absorb the gripping detail of that terrible slaughter. It is the best account that I have yet read of that struggle from the Confederate side. Robert E. L. Krick's account of Sheridan's Raid and the death of J. E. B. Stuart is another good tactical study of a little-studied part of the campaign. The final three essays deal with the effects of the campaign upon the survivors . In "A Hard Road to Travel," Carol Reardon explains how this new type of continuous warfare changed the mindset ofboth armies as they dug in for a war of attrition. Peter S. Carmichael's reflective piece on the 15th New Jersey compares and contrasts the veterans' postwar visitations to the battlefield with their actual experiences to explain how time and a need to bring...