THE EDGE OF GLORY: A Biography of General William Rosencrans

The man who probably could have defeated Lee at Gettysburg, could have taken Grant's job, and might have been President instead of Andrew Johnson, is honored by this excellent biographical study. Rosencrans, a Catholic, the son of a lusty pioneer family, an accomplished engineer, seemed star-crossed, frustrated from the very beginning of the Civil War. Perhaps it was his blunt, unpolitic honesty which made him so, perhaps it was his temper. But in this book, he emerges as a brilliant, reflective, painfully honest man. His early victories over the Confederates, his occupation of Nashville, his successful battles at Stone Ridge and Tullahoma, followed by the disaster at Chickamouga which removed him from any major command, are dealt with clearly, and in detail. His days cleaning up bushwhackers in Missouri, and a post-war political career which found him time and again battling with Grant and his other Army enemies, are shown in similar detail, with ample reference to the political mood of those times. The book is long, it is highly ambitious in time covered, but it is very successful. An important contribution to Civil War literature---and as a study of how greatness can be missed by a fraction!