Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign, and: Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage (review)

The tide of books about Gettysburg continues to swell. These two books offer a contrast in approach to this controversial and much written about campaign. Woodworth's succeeds as a concise and scholarly synthesis that focuses on command decisions and performance, plus regimental and brigade encounters garnished by quotations from soldiers' letters that convey the range of individual experiences. He also attempts to relate the campaign to broader issues raised by the Civil War. At the outset, he declares his hand with the familiar argument that the Gettysburg campaign "proved only the near impossibility of decisive action in the eastern theatre" (p. xiii). He implies this had a lot to do with the geography of Virginia and therefore Lee had to find fresh ground on which to defeat the Union Army. Woodworth defends Lee against his recent detractors, but his overall perspective can only produce a paradox, because if Woodworth is right, then Lee's efforts were fruitless, and he was guilty of repeated error and miscalculation. Woodworth is more critical of Meade, whom he judges rendered an "adequate if not spectacular" performance (p. 210) at Gettysburg. He tends to show greater understanding of the problems of Confederate generals, even when he is critical of their actions. In his discussion of Daniel E. Sickles, for instance, he too readily reveals his own prejudices.

Trudeau's book offers a richer, more expansive and certainly more graphic narrative. He also offers more material on the experience of Gettysburg's civilians. Although Trudeau includes more maps than Woodworth, they are less helpful, being too small, overcrowded, and unclear. Nonetheless, Trudeau presents a brilliant kaleidoscope of descriptions of great events that resembles a television documentary with comment. Despite Trudeau's skill in developing this format, firmer intervention and guidance by the author is sometimes required. For instance, Trudeau suggests that Lee was not present at the Confederate cabinet meeting that approved his second invasion of the North. Most other authorities (including Woodworth) attest his presence. Trudeau offers no explanation for the variation in his account. Similarly, basing his account on the unpublished memoir of Campbell Brown (p. 284), Trudeau argues that Lee continued to consider Longstreet's advice to move around the Union left flank and force Meade to attack him on ground of his own choosing, after he had appeared to reject it. Ewell received a warning to be prepared to disengage and shift to the right. Some comment is surely needed on the relative importance of this evidence. Finally, Trudeau dismisses Lee's famous admission that the defeat was "All my fault" as a myth, but does not explain why. In a rare error, Trudeau believes that Charles Marshall was Lee's chief of staff, a position held by R. H. Chilton until March 1864.

Both these books in their different ways make effective contributions to a study of the campaign. As well as discussing its perennial controversies, they take up other themes of interest. Both discuss Confederate plundering, notwithstanding Lee's issue of General Order No. 73 (wrongly numbered by Woodworth as 72) prohibiting pillage. Woodworth argues convincingly, and Trudeau concurs, that the Army of Northern Virginia behaved no differently from other Civil War armies in this respect. Both authors also denounce, but offer little new information about, the appalling Confederate practice of enslaving northern free blacks.