General Lee's Army

General Lee's Army

Review by William C. Davis Anyone who has read the works of Joseph T. Glatthaar knows that he combines both scholarship and insight to make him a leader in the “new military history” field. His Partners in Command, in which he explored senior command relationships in the Civil War that worked and those that didn’t work, is a model management study. In Forged in Battle he presented the finest picture to date of how white officers and black soldiers combined their efforts to make a successful new arm of the Union army. And in March to the Sea and Beyond, he delved into the inner nature and experience of the soldiers who followed William T. Sherman on that epic 1864-1865 campaign across the Deep South. Glatthaar’s new work, General Lee’s Army can be seen as a follow-up to March to the Sea, for it is an exploration of the makeup and inner soul of the Army of Northern Virginia. As such, it is the first in-depth work on that army in more than half a century since Douglas Southall Freeman’s landmark Lee’s Lieutenants, and in fact it goes into areas that Freeman left untouched. Glatthaar explores motivations as much as anything. Why did the men who served Lee and his predecessors volunteer in the first place? What kept them in the army, and why did they fight, especially after 1863 when the war was turning against them? How did he and they achieve so much success against a superior numerical and materiel foe for so long? The author’s approach combines the latest in quantitative analysis, without sacrificing narrative style. Through research in the letters and diaries of a staggering 4,000 soldiers, as well as in their service records, census records, state and local court documents, and other sources, he developed a statistically representative “portrait” of Lee’s soldiers, and using that has addressed lingering questions about just who they were and why they fought, what kept them together through adversity and defeat, the effects the war had on them as soldiers and as men, and the spiritual and physical impact of the war. And through it all looms the figure of Lee, the man who was their inspiration as well as their commander. As Glatthaar shows in General Lee's Army, it is no accident that the Army of Northern Virginia achieved the impossible, and the reasons he finds lie in everyday men placed in extraordinary circumstances, and under the hand of a most extraordinary man in particular.

Hardcover: 400 pages

Publisher: Free Press ( March 18, 2007 )

Item #: 65-0632

ISBN: 9780684827872

Product Dimensions: 6.0 x 9.0 x 1.46 inches

Product Weight: 28.0 ounces