The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia (review)

The historians working for the National Park Service have seldom, if ever, received anything like the credit they deserve for their efforts on behalf of the historical profession. In books, articles, and countless short publications, in papers and other talks delivered at conferences, symposia, and in countless tours of historic sites, they help describe and interpret American history for thousands of visitors every year. The historians at the twenty-three national battlefield parks devoted to the Civil War have been especially active in sharing their knowledge with the public, but few of them have been as active as Robert K. Krick has been for more than thirty years.

Krick, recently retired as chief historian of the national park that includes Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania, has no peers—and almost no rivals—as an authority on the Army of Northern Virginia. This collection of ten essays is a wide-ranging look at the army's history certain to generate lively debates of all sorts among historians and buffs alike. Three of these essays are previously unpublished, while the rest have been significantly revised and in some cases expanded since their original publication, so much so that even readers familiar with them will find something worthwhile in these new versions.

The four chapters on Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet shed new light on their generalship, on the ways they were perceived by their contemporaries, and on their place in history and popular culture. The title chapter is a remarkably detailed and definitive study of the night Jackson was accidentally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville, while another examines his attempted court-martial of subordinate Richard B. Garnett after the battle of Kernstown. Two chapters on Longstreet, the first previously published and the second published here for the first time, explore his controversial performance—and his wartime and postwar justifications of it—on the second day at Gettysburg and during the Knoxville campaign.

Three additional biographical essays are among this collection's other highlights. A chapter on Maxcy Gregg, a revision of an article first published in this journal in 1973, is an engaging look at one of the war's many political generals. Two previously unpublished chapters give readers the best biographical study ever published of Robert E. Rodes, perhaps Lee's most accomplished division commander, and a sketch of R. Welby Carter of the 1st Virginia Cavalry, perhaps the worst colonel in the entire army. One of the most useful essays, and one which has long deserved a wider circulation than it has received until republished here, contains valuable suggestions on methods and sources for researching individual Confederate soldiers.

Krick's observations on the Confederacy's most famous army and on those who have written about it always have had an unmistakable style, demanding attention and deserving an equal amount of respect. Thought-provoking, and to some readers simply provoking, his penetrating assessments are invariably based on his encyclopedic command of published and unpublished sources, and while they are often vigorously disputed, they can not be easily dismissed or ignored. The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy will be read, reread, and argued about long after many books now being published about the Civil War are unread or forgotten.