The American Civil War: An English View (review)

BOOK BEVIEWS311 interest and study by the author. As a young man he talked with several of the surviving participants and tramped the fields of battle on many occasions. Yet his interest has gone beyond that of the local buff. A thorough researching of source materials in libraries across the country and some private collections makes this work a solid contribution to the understanding of an important peripheral action in that crucial year of 1864. The author would have greatly aided the reader not oriented to the geography of this region had he included maps showing Price's complete campaign and the immediate area of western Missouri where the final maneuvering and fighting took place. Wm. E. Parrish Westminster College The American Civil War: An English View. By Garnet Joseph Wolseley . Edited by James A. Rawley. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1964. Pp. xxxvii, 230. $5.00.) The Englishman whose view—whose many views—this book presents was the leading British soldier at the close of the nineteenth century, a chief architect of the modern British army who made military reform a byword throughout England. In a long career Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley never found a worthy foe; perhaps that was why he turned to military writing as an outlet for his energy and talents. The book is made up of three very different things. One is a piece of reportage that Wolseley produced late in 1862 after a visit to Richmond and Lee's army. Next is a eulogy of Lee, inspired by General Long's 1887 biography of the Confederate leader. Last and best—fortunately it forms two-thirds of the book—is a campaign critique that Wolseley published in 1889 as a commentary on Battles and Leaders. These appear in book form for the first time. Wolseley's report of his visit to Virginia is of little interest except as a period piece, illustrating how pro-Confederate an English journal—in this case Blackwood's—could be. To Wolseley the Lincoln government was a "vile faction," the Union army a "vast mob" of "descendants of the offscourings of every European nation." He parroted many of the southern canards and British anti-neutrality arguments. For example: McClellan would have seized the government if Lincoln had not returned him to high command after Second Bull Run. The Constitution stipulates that slaves are guaranteed to their owners. England should side with the South (blood is thicker than water, and cotton is thicker than either). If the Federals win, they wül promptly turn on England; but they cannot defeat "those in every way superior." B: these themes show no originality, they do demonstrate the writer's courage: the government he served was at that very time fighting off the war's most threatening parliamentary move for intervention. Although Douglas S. Freeman called Wolseley's 1887 sketch of Lee a 312CIVIL WAR HISTORY classic, it now seems almost a caricature of the conventional picture of Lee. It abounds in such combinations as unflinching determination, cool nerve, placid resolve, heartfelt intensity, lofty patriotism, soft tenderness, iron and determined will, daring courage—such is the flavor of the piece. It was a different and more comfortable Wolseley that analyzed strategy and tactics two years later. Extravagant partisanship disappeared along with rococo style, leaving seven essays of wide sweep and firm grasp. He did not pause to give the history of the campaigns but devoted himself to comment and evaluation. He was interested in large combinations and sweeping movements. Once armies lock in battle, Wolseley leaves the scene to take up some larger problem. His treatment of Second Bull Run, for example , reads as if Jackson's flank march were the whole story—but (he makes us reflect) perhaps it is. Predictably, Wolseley gives much attention to the question of concentration versus dispersion, in such familiar contexts as Washington's denial of forces to McClellan on the Peninsula and A. S. Johnston's failures to concentrate both before and after Fort Donelson. Here one finds Wolseley's sometimes-quoted indictment of "that hoary-headed and cruel old rascal, Public Opinion," whose influence was especially deplorable because this country, unlike England, has a Constitution that...