The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy by Christian B. Keller (review)

Writing about the relationship between Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson presents a challenge for a historian because it is a subject that has been consistently written about since 1865 and consistently written through the Lost Cause lens. Christian B. Keller has taken up this challenge in his new book, The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy, by utilizing his extensive experience as a professor of history at the United States Army War College. Keller argues that the strategic minds of both Lee and Jackson are central to understanding how their working relationship reversed the fortunes of the Confederate army in the East from May 1862 to May 1863. Jackson's role as a sounding board for Lee's strategic vision for the Confederacy, coupled with Jackson's own strategic ideas, provided the Confederacy with the best shot at winning the war and contributed to the ultimate failure for the South because Lee could find no one to replace Jackson.

Similarities to this argument can be found in other works, but Keller's book provides two things that are lacking in most examinations of Lee and Jackson. The first is the teamwork and leadership lessons Keller brings from his experience teaching military officers at the War College. Reexamining the relationship between the two generals through the pedagogy of a modern professional military education provides an interesting perspective. For example, Keller connects the audacity of Jackson's flank attack at the battle of Chancellorsville on the tactical level with both Lee's and Jackson's aggressive ideas for larger nationwide Confederate strategy, such as the potential gains versus losses of a northern invasion in the summer of 1862 or 1863.

The second aspect of this work that is not evident in many others is Keller's focus on the difficulty of writing about Jackson without an overreliance on Lost Cause works by former staff officers. Jackson's role as a martyr within the hagiography of the Lost Cause was already established in southern white minds by the time the war ended and only grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Keller openly identifies this challenge in the introduction and provides copious notes to defend the sources that he uses. When possible, the reader is provided with a defense for using former staff officer accounts written thirty years later by highlighting other primary sources from the war that confirm or provide context for the later source.

Overall, this book does a good job of analyzing the relationship between the two most famous Confederate generals, but it is also intended to illustrate leadership and team-building for military officers, businessmen, and others in leadership roles. Keller even provides an appendix that highlights some of the larger leadership lessons for modern readers. Sadly, this focus on the realworld potential of emulating Lee and Jackson's partnership provides a jarring disconnect between their professional relationship and the cause for which they fought. Little to no mention of slavery or the role it played in creating the Lee and Jackson team is evident in the book. The reader will discover pages about how their Christian faith influenced their lives, impacted their views of the war, and endeared them to each other, but there is no such examination of how a defense of slavery influenced their partnership or their insistence on an aggressive strategy for the war. Such a hole is quite noticeable and is a detriment to an otherwise in-depth look at the most famous partnership of the war.