The American Civil War

Review by William C. Davis

Any new book by John Keegan is an event. Ever since The Face of Battle appeared almost a generation ago, his work has been the benchmark for outstanding military history: thoughtful, incisive and so much more than repetitious accounts of which regiment went where. He has touched on the Civil War in past works, but now at last in The American Civil War: A Military History he takes on the whole story, and brings to it the accumulated skills of a career at the top of his field.

From the opening paragraph it is evident that this is a thoughtful work. In declaring that the war itself was necessary, he observes that the divisions between North and South had grown so great by 1860 that only what he calls “some profound shift of energy” could provide a resolution. That, of course, was war. Certainly warfare is never a desirable end, but at least it can bring an end to a conflict when all other remedies have failed.

It was, says Keegan, “a body-count war,” and indeed it was. For four years east of the Appalachians there was so little movement that victories and losses could be measured in few terms other than killed and wounded. West of the mountains, of course, victories were measured in hundreds of square miles or even major chunks of states changing hands, yet there, too, the body count dominated public awareness.

Keegan calls this “one of the most mysterious great wars of history” for a host of reasons that he explores, including the commanders themselves, and he offers some challenging assessments. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, “an undoubted master,” is still “not really a general of the highest gifts.” Braxton Bragg was “a considerable military intellect,” despite his shortcomings of personality and character. Lee was a great tactician, not a strategist. And Grant was “the greatest general of the war who would have excelled at any time.”

For those wanting to challenge Keegan’s judgments, they must read this cogent, well-argued and insightful book, which approaches so much of the story from a vantage different than that of most of our Civil War scholarship. Overall Keegan finds it remarkable that out of a cadre of no more than 3,000 trained officers, the Civil War produced such great soldiers as Grant, Lee, Sherman, and at a lesser level George H. Thomas, the “exotic” Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jackson.

The author also breaks down the elements of battle in the war, noting the unusual fact that they were so frequent compared to other wars of the time, and so intense, and ponders how a single democratic society could produce such a ferocious intensity of war against itself. That indeed is one of the great questions he addresses, for Keegan has no hesitation in saying that the Civil War was “the most important ideological war in history.”