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Review: Gwynne, Rebel Yell (2014)
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. GwynneMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
So okay. This is a massive (almost 600 page) biography of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. It is excellent. Gwynne has a lovely, easy prose style, has done his research, and is able to explain battles so they make sense (or as much sense as they can make---there are several points where he has to say, "no one knows why General X did this"). He is careful about chattel slavery, acknowledging it as a cause of the Civil War, putting it in the context of the OTHER causes of the Civil War, and trying to show the spectrum of attitudes people both North and South had about the subject---and the spectrum of other reasons Southern people were fighting. For me, chattel slavery is at the root of it, and Gwynne acknowledges that slavery was part of the way of life in the South even for people who did not own other people themselves, but many (most?) Southerners believed they were fighting for other reasons. I can think they're wrong---consider the contradiction of people announcing that they are fighting for their liberty when part of their definition of "liberty" is their right to own other people---and I do, but I can't argue that they didn't believe what they clearly PASSIONATELY believed. Both Lee and Jackson were profoundly loyal to the state of Virginia, and for them that trumped everything else (like "my country, right or wrong," which is itself a highly problematic moral/ethical stance). Jackson was anti-secession right up to the point that secession happened, and then he flipped a switch and said, "Okay, let's burn them down": Military men make short speeches, and as for myself I am no hand at talking anyhow. The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon. And when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard (p. 29). Jackson wanted, at the BEGINNING of the war, to burn down Baltimore and Philadelphia, to pursue, essentially, the strategy that Grant and Sherman and Sheridan employed at the END of the war, to make the war so costly that the other side would yield. Of course nobody listened to him.
Jackson is a strange study in contrasts. A gentle, kind, shy, devoutly religious man who loved his wife (both 1st and 2nd) deeply, who loved European art and architecture...and who was a stone cold killer. Also a tactical and strategic genius. One of the things this book made me think about was whether Lee doesn't get unfairly lionized when the magic seems to have resided in the COMBINATION of Lee and Jackson. Most of Lee's great victories came because he told Jackson, "Do this," and Jackson went and did it. (Jackson also did extremely, CRUSHINGLY well on his own, which is...less true about Lee.) I think I commented on my review of one of the books about Gettysburg that a lot of Lee's problem was his hands off style of generalship, but it makes more sense seeing that that was exactly how it worked best with Jackson.
(I'm sure I am not the first person to think this, but I haven't yet read a book that makes that argument.)
I did not end up LIKING Stonewall Jackson, but I did end up understanding him---or, maybe more accurately, understanding the fundamental knot of his personality that can't really be teased apart and understood.
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I also just wanted to say what an immense joy all your reviews are--every time you drop a batch of these onto DW, I'm ecstatic. I never know what subject may have consumed your reading interest of late, but I know you'll write about it with incision and depth. As someone who doesn't naturally gravitate to nonfiction, it's marvelous to have this wealth of reviews at my fingertips that, if I'm feeling in the mood for something chewy and historical, I can just browse until I find what catches my fancy. So thank you for this lovingly maintained archive, even if they sometimes drop with few replies; I, for one, am reading with avid enthusiasm.
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