Review: Royster, The Destructive War (1991)

The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans by Charles Royster

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a really excellent book that's kind of difficult to describe. It's partly about Stonewall Jackson and William Tecumseh Sherman, but it's mostly about how Americans in 1861-1865 understood the war they were fighting. Royster really digs into his primary sources, which I appreciate, and his chapters about how Americans conceptualized the Civil War are fascinating. I think his title does a bad job of explaining what the book is about, although one of his principal arguments is about how and why the Civil War became so destructive---which would be why Sherman is one of his main characters. Although Jackson was also a proponent of destructive war, his place in the book is more a discussion of secular hagiography: why did Thomas J. Jackson of all people become a hero to BOTH South AND North, and what work was that image of him doing?

Royster writes beautifully and engagingly, and I found him very persuasive.



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