Meade's Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman (review)

In 1922 George R. Agassiz published a volume of selected letters that his uncle, Theodore Lyman, had written to his wife while serving in the Army of the Potomac's headquarters from late 1863 until the end of the Civil War. Meade's Headquarters, 1863-1865 provided historians and buffs alike, this author included, with invaluable and intimate details of the personalities and politics within that at times troubled organization. Now David Lowe has published an updated volume that includes not only the letters previously identified by Agassiz, but also the near-daily entries Lyman had made in notebooks he kept during those critical years. The result is a resource of nearly unsurpassed value.

Meade's Army begins with a lengthy introduction that serves both as a brief biography of Lyman and as an explanation of how and why he secured his position on Meade's staff as a volunteer aide-de-camp. The "how" is simply explained: as a student in natural science at Harvard, Lyman went to Florida in 1856 to collect specimens. There he befriended 1LT George Meade. In December of 1862, with Meade still a division commander, Lyman contacted his friend and asked if he might serve with him. Meade warned Lyman of the dangers involved but told him how to proceed. By the time Lyman was able to make the necessary arrangements, Meade had taken command of the Army of the Potomac. The "why" appears more complicated. Shortly after the war began Lyman and his young family departed for a sojourn in Europe, and it is apparent that he could have ridden out the war there had he so desired. Moreover, it is clear that he had little sympathy for abolitionist "radicals". But as the war raged and friends fell, Lyman felt pangs of guilt. One death, that of Henry How, appears to have struck him deeply. "He entered college the year I graduated," Lyman wrote. "Such notices stick fires in me. I feel my life is going along and I [am] doing nothing. Not that I want to be killed, only here is a young man who risked himself with the rest, and a bullet was a bullet" (p. 10). As his letters and notebooks make clear, Lyman's duty in Meade's headquarters offered ample opportunity for both service and "a bullet".

The volume provides insights both about Lyman and about those with whom he worked. His evolving evaluation of Gouverneur K. Warren sheds light on Warren's eventual removal from command. On his arrival at the Army of the Potomac, Lyman wrote, "Oh, dear, dear. Geniuses do not grow on every bush; and I do not know when I have been so struck with it as here in the army. . . . Gen. Warren is the only man of inborn originality, and even he is perhaps at his maximum with a Corps" (p. 41). By May 1864, however, Lyman's opinion had changed. Warren, he wrote, "is not up to a corps command. As in the Mine Run move, so here [at Spotsylvania], he cannot spread himself over three divisions . . . . and the result is partial and ill-concerted and dilatory movements" (p. 151). The war did not abate Lyman's prejudices toward African-Americans nor did it appear to change his understanding of the conflict's causes. Lyman believed that slaves lived longer and procreated faster than did free blacks, thus implying blacks were better off as slaves (p. 102). Of black soldiers' capabilities he wrote that "The Negro cannot change his nature; thus hath God made him. As a rule he cannot fight against the White. This is leaning on a broken reed. There is no general historical precedent for their being efficient troops" (p. 80). The course of the war, including the death of his friend, Robert Gould Shaw, appears not...