WITH MY FACE TO THE ENEMY

A new collection of essays on the US Civil War, by many of the leading scholars in the field.

A typical problem with collections of essays is that they are often uneven in quality. Happily, there is no such inconsistency here. Among the best is Noah Andre Trudeau’s “The Walls of 1864,” which looks afresh at Grant’s campaigns in Northern Virginia by emphasizing the use of entrenchments and how they figured into the underestimated general’s keen understanding of modern warfare. Trudeau maintains that Grant realized, better than most generals of his day, that victory came from destroying the opposing army rather simply forcing it to retreat. Towards this end, defeats and victories in particular battles meant less than imposing a proportionally higher rate of casualties on your enemy than you yourself suffered. Grant was therefore willing to accept terrible losses, provided that Lee’s outnumbered army was being used up at a faster rate. In a good complement to Trudeau’s piece, Joseph T. Glatthaar further burnishes Grant’s reputation with his examination of the tactics he employed at Vicksburg, the victory that earned him his command in Virginia. However, the greatest charm of the anthology is its many treatments of less well-known events and personalities. Real Civil War buffs will be delighted by Stephen Sears’s exceptional piece on Lee’s famous “lost order,” which allowed McClellan to intercept the Confederate Army at Antietam. Likewise, Glenn W. LaFantasie’s essay on William C. Oates, the colonel who was defeated at Little Round Top, fills a lacuna in the literature on Gettysburg, while simultaneously providing a compelling human-interest story.

A gem: well-written, engaging, and sure to make a significant contribution to the already voluminous Civil War literature.