Review: Glatthaar, General Lee's Army (2008)

[truepenny]

General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse by Joseph T. Glatthaar

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is, as the title suggests, a history of the Army of Northern Virginia. It is partly based on socioeconomic data analysis, so Glatthaar can, based on his sample of 600 soldiers, talk about what percentage of soldiers were slaveholders, how much wealth they had (which ranged dramatically from $0 to over $10,000), etc. He does a good job of explaining why the South thought the war started without falling into the error of defending their point of view. This is a history, not an apologia.

Talking about the Army of Northern Virginia is difficult because the soldiers suffered dreadfully---from lack of basic equipment like shoes and pants, from disease, from the awful meat grinder that was a Civil War battlefield---and they sincerely and passionately believed that they were fighting for liberty. And could not see that fighting for the liberty to own other people is the cruelest of paradoxes, just as they could not understand why their slaves fled to the Northern lines by the thousands. Maybe it's that disjunct that fascinates me.

Considered as an army, the Army of Northern Virginia accomplished amazing things, and Glaatthaar does a great job of describing what battles looked like from the South's point of view, which I found an interesting..."corrective" is not the word I want, but it's like reading about the Civil War backwards.

Four and a half stars, round up to five.



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