A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Paperback)

Overall, the book is not the most stimulating reading, unless you are very interested in the subject (i.e.- you have already done some reading about the war). None the less, I really enjoyed the first part of the book (about the roots of the war and military strategy used in this era), and the end of the book (about why the North prevailed, and how the Confederacy collapsed so quickly, in the end) the most. I think that Dr. Weigley makes some great insights during these two sections.

In a bit of a surprise, the political sections of the book are better written and more interesting to read than the military sections. I find this slightly strange, because of Dr. Weigley's expertise in US military history. For some key battles (Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville), he gives only a cursory summary, and does not add any new insight into these battles and their outcomes. I guess I expected to learn more about the military perspective than the political one by reading this book. But I must admit that it ended up the other way around for me, in this case.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I must agree with a previous reviewer that this book is not on the same level as Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. Simply put, if you have time (and/or interest) to read only one book about the war, don't read this one. Read the McPherson book instead. It is a more thorough and enjoyable book.

On the other hand, if you are a student of the war (I fall into this category), or consider yourself a Civil War buff, this would be a good choice to add to your Civil War library

As befits a leading military history with broad knowledge of his field, one of Weigley's strengths is presenting the Civil War in context: I found the section of the introduction entitled "Nineteenth-Century Americans at War" and the sections in the second chapter entitled "Napoleonic War" and "War in a New Style" especially interesting. When democracies go to war, military decisions and politics cannot be separated, and Weigley wisely interweaves the two subjects in his narrative. Central to Weigley's interpretation of the war is this passage: General Robert E. Lee "rightly believed that the longer the war, the smaller the Confederacy's chances of winning it, because of the relative scarcity of Confederate resources. The South's best hope of keeping the war short lay in the Washington-Richmond theater." In this, I believe Weigley is absolutely correct. Although the war raged at various times from Pennsylvania to Texas and from the Atlantic Ocean across the Mississippi River, the conflict's most important events generally occurred in northern Virginia and its environs. General Lee's campaigns which ended at the battles of Antietam in September 1862 and Gettysburg in July 1863 were attempts to pose threats to the national capital so severe that the Union government would be forced to sue for peace, allowing the Confederate States of America to go their own way. Weigley's presentation of these critical campaigns are stronger on description than analysis of their consequences. However, Weigley make some telling statements of fact and observation about the key players. Early in the war, Lee "was widely distrusted in the Confederacy." General George B. McClellan, who commanded the federal forces around Washington D.C., during the first two years of the war, tended to avoid combat because "[l]aboring under the terrible responsibility of dispatching men to die, he apparently found the prospect of actually witnessing many of the deaths more than he could bear." According to Weigley, General Thomas "Stonewall" "Jackson's flank march to Manassas Junction [for the Second Battle of Bull Run] had been a Napoleonic manoeuvre sur les derrières as brilliantly executed as any by Napoleon himself." And, about the brutally-destructive Union campaign in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1864, Weigley writes: "A pillar of fire marked [General Philip] Sheridan's route northward...[I]n Sheridan's interpretation of what was necessary to deny sustenance to the rebel army, barns, mills, and corn-cribs all went to the torch. When occasionally a fire spread to a barn or farmhouse, that was unfortunate but part of the chances of war."

Weigley makes some curious choices. For instance, he devotes over four full pages to "Pea Ridge: The Great Battle of the Trans-Mississippi," in March 1862, which is noteworthy, as Weigley observes, primarily because it was "one of the few major Civil War engagements in which the Federals were substantially outnumbered," but less than a page to the battle of Fredericksburg in December of that year, when the Army of Northern Virginia mauled a considerably larger Federal force as it futilely assaulted Confederate forces dug into the high ground overlooking the Rappahannock River in this central Virginia city. Fredericksburg is significant in its own right, as well as because of the influence it had on the battle of Gettysburg; in the rolling hills of south-central Pennsylvania in July 1863, the Federals offered battle precisely because they held the high ground along Cemetery Ridge, and Confederate General James Longstreet's hesitated to assault the far right of the Federal position on the critical second day of the battle as a result, as Weigley notes, from Longstreet's fear of a "foredoomed Fredericksburg in reverse." In a book of only 450 pages of text, hard choices are necessary: Pea Ridge was noteworthy, but, in the grand scope of the war, Fredericksburg was more significant. Weigley might also have devoted more attention to comparing the presidents of the warring nations, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Weigley could have made the point that Lincoln, a president without a West Point education and experience as Secretary of War, largely had to leave matters of tactics, if not strategy, to his generals. But Davis had both that education and experience, as a result of which he spent most of the war meddling. In contrast, Weigley's comparison of President Lincoln with General McClellan, and especially their conflicting views about the war's purpose is splendid. (McClellan was eventually relieved of command and ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1864.) There is absolutely no question about Weigley's command of the material. When I am critical, it is only of the author's execution of the daunting task of compressing that material into a cohesive narrative of approximately 450 pages.

A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History is written in smooth but not especially compelling style. I enjoyed reading it because the military history of the Civil War is among my favorite subjects, but I cannot honestly recommend this book as superior to previous one-volume histories, most notably McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Although Weigley is an exceptionally accomplished military historian, this book does not quite carry the day.