Soldiers' Battle: Gettysburg (review)

330 CIVIL WA R HISTORY to a chapter on revolvers, and then note with surprise that the next chapter is on rifles again. It would have been much easier for the reader if the material had been organized by subject matter. Perhaps even more frustrating , however, is the author's propensity to stray from the subject under discussion or to carry on interminable "asides" about individuals and events. From the title of this book we have certainly every right to expect an objective and technical treatment. We do get this, but the author detracts from his book by an irritating display of sophomoric prose. For example, in discussing weapons disposal after the War, he informs us that "the polyglot minions of Peter the Hermit, slashing through the ranks of Saracens to protect the Holy Sepulchre from infidel defilement, never carried a more varied lot of arms and weapons." And when Mr. Edwards attempts to discuss European history, especially the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, the informed reader hurries on to those sections of the book which are based on facts and not subjective interpretation of history. These lapses are not improved by his pontificating, which appears throughout the book. Nevertheless, the work belongs on the bookshelf of every buff, weapons collector, national and local museum, and student of the military aspects of the 1861-1865 conflict. Extremely weU-iUustrated and weU-indexed, and rich in material resulting from extensive original research, Civil War Guns must be accorded a place among the truly worth-while books of this Centennial period. As is the case with other collectors of Civil War weapons, I am sincerely impressed with the substantive value of this book. It would be less than fair to let errors in style and organization affect an objective evaluation of Edwards' monumental contribution. Not only has he brought together for the first time a veritable encyclopedia of Civil War weapons, but he has made his mark by enriching the assembly of data with new material of very real interest and significance. Francis A. Lord RockviUe, Maryland Soldiers' Battle: Gettysburg. By James Warner BeUah. (New York: David McKay Company, 1962. Pp. x, 204. $4.50.) Of the many savage battles of the Civü War Gettysburg stands alone. It was the only major engagement fought on Northern soil and as such it has come to symbolize die high tide of the Confederacy. It was a tragic drama of heroic proportions, a prodigious struggle between two armies more or less equal in strength, quality, and determination, and with the repulse of Pickett's charge the curtain closes on a transitional phase of the war. Never again would Lee have sufficient resources to undertake a serious invasion of the North. Rarely after 1863 would cavalry fight again with shock tactics or infantry come to grips with the enemy in the open field. Gone too was the last real chance for foreign recognition of the Confederacy: if the Union could maintain the wiU to win, victory, however remote, was inevitable . Because this engagement has captured the imagination of the nation there Book Reviews331 is always room for another book on the subject. With insight provided by rich experience in two recent wars, Mr. BeUah has attempted to recapture the feelings of the rank and file and the reactions of the company grade officers as they were fed into the expanding fight along Seminary Ridge, grappled in darkness atop Culp's Hill, or prepared for the final assault against the Union center. With the imagination and skill of the accomplished novelist that he is, he has managed to reproduce a vivid picture of the battle as it must have appeared to the men who fought there. The book is weU-written—perhaps overwritten in parts—and obviously the product of laborious research. But it is an impression rather than a record of what reaUy happened, a mosaic in which the pieces quoted form an image only from a distance. The book is what the tide would indicate—a soldier's view of the battle; but one might question the validity of the author's assumption that Gettysburg in particular was a soldiers' battle because it was...