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Title: Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865
ISBN: 0375412182
Author:
Steven E. Woodworth
Publicate Date: 2005-10-25
Publish: 2005-10-25
List Price: $40.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $9.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $4.49
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Great overview of the Army of the Tennessee
Nothing but Victory is the definitive account of the Army of the Tennessee and the winning of the civil war via the west. The idea that the west played a critical role in the Civil War has been around for sometime but only in the past 5 to 10 years has it become a dominant idea that the battles of the Army of Tennessee were the critical link in allowing the Union to win the civil war and destroying the confederacy. This book provides an overview of the tactics, strategies and human stories that made up this "invincible" army. Molded by General Grant it was made to be aggressive and continue fighting. They never lost a major engagement (although Vicksburg was a long campaign) and their stories would catapult Grant, Sherman and Sheridan to fame.
I will echo one complaint that I have with the author that others have pointed out. There is a annoying lack of maps throughout the book and in fact there is only one at the beginning which is not very good to following the army of the Tennessee. Despite this through the book is well worth the time to investigate and while the author makes a bold claim he supports it well. For those looking to see a different side of the Civil War this is the place to start.
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2: Total lack of maps, absence of any southern perspective
What this book does well it does very well. The writer weaves in personal experiences of soldiers in the Army of the Tennessee, has very good research on officers and command structure of the Union armies etc.. It gives a nice portrait of Grant and Sherman. The author seems to have a fairly negative bend and appears to delight in ripping weak-minded and or political generals. What this book doesn't do well for such a large book is provide any maps which isn't a huge problem for knowledgable readers but leaves novices very confused especially for a very complicated campaign of movement like Vicksburg. Also, in 600 pages it would have seemed possible to give some color on Confederate strategies and tactics or leaders. For example Nathan Bedford Forrest is mentioned 4 times in a total six sentences! The reader is always wondering who the Army of the Tennesse is fighting. All in all a solid, thorough work that probably should have been 2 or 3 volumes.
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3: Grants First Army: In His Image
This is the story of an army that literally marched across the south. The premier army of the western theater was able to capture two Confederate armies and never suffered a serious defeat. The book is easy to read and holds your interest. It includes details of all the operations that the army undertook as an army or as part of the larger western army in the last year of the war in the campaign to Atlanta and then the sea. There are details on all the major battles. The book includes many personal antidotes of the operations of the army. The author collected personal information from a large volume of unpublished sources as well as published sources and includes many eyewitness accounts of the army. The only map, after the introduction, was a large-scale map of the area of operations of the army during the war that indicted major battles. More maps of individual campaigns or battles would have been nice. Pictures of Major Generals were included so we could see how they wanted to be remembered. I would recommend this book to serious students. For one without knowledge of the campaigns the lack of maps would be a problem.
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4: An Overly Bold Title
Some years ago when I could still count myself, as Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny so wonderfully termed it, "a Yute", I subscribed to a periodical entitled "Runners' World". One regular feature of this magazine was devoted to new scientific studies that pertained, however marginally, to health, fitness and running technique. If one actually read the magazine and had a (probably) slightly better than average memory it did not take long before you could become confused by the abundant display of seemingly contradictory information displayed in succeeding issues. Wind sprints were good, no they weren't. Weight training was helpful, no it wasn't. Eggs and wine were harmful, no they were helpful.
So pity the poor Civil War historian. His subjects have long ceased to be available for interview. Campaigns and strategies are impervious to recapitulation. His "data base" falls so outside the purview of the "experimental method" that it must appear to many that he is setting out to "Round the Horn" with a boat rigged to catch the solar wind. So, before jumping on board for the journey, a healthy skepticism stowed along with your foul weather gear would not be unwarranted.
Professor Steven Woodworth of Texas Christian University's history department has written a book with the overly bold title, "Nothing But Victory" about Grant's (and then Sherman's) Army of the Tennessee from its inception on the fairgrounds and temporary camps in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri to its final victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. In the course of their circuitous journey from Cairo, Illinois to Washington D.C. they had wandered more than Odysseus, slogged more miles than Daniel Boone, become more familiar with the Mississippi River than Huckleberry Finn and, according to some, devastated more land than the Biblical plagues and Attila the Hun. While the Army of the Potomac was dinking around in Virginia, the Army of Tennessee was staking a personal claim to most of the rest of the Confederacy. In short a dramatic story that would seem to beg for an equally dramatic account.
This book is not it. At 641 pages (excluding notes) it seems to put in the requisite mileage, but the text is long on minutiae and short on scope. Woodworth has accumulated an admirable, if not exhaustive volume of personal letters that provide an excellent account of the life of the common soldier, but his work quickly bogs down when coming to grips with the larger issues. First and perhaps foremost, the man commits the cardinal sin of any scholar by wearing his prejudices on his sleeve like the service stripes on a Sergeant Major. As if history has not been sufficiently unkind to the likes of Don Carlos Buell, John Charles Fremont, Henry Halleck, Nathaniel Banks and most particularly John McClernand, Woodworth seems to take delight in "piling on" as if he thought he could add one more definition of "stupid" to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The results can be intriguing, if not downright amusing. So when the Union forces on their advance from Bruinsburg to Port Gibson run into opposition in that area of Mississippi Grant referred to as "standing on edge" Woodworth offers, "McClernand then took over direction of the attack and imposed his own tactical scheme. No West point strategy for him - this attack was going to be a matter of brute force right up the middle, and he had the manpower to do it" and goes on to derisively describe the same tactic Longstreet used at Chickamauga in what another historian referred to as presaging Guderian!!!
Conversely, the professor finds little fault with Grant. He makes the barest reference to his reluctance to accept a cease fire after one of his headlong attacks at Vicksburg to clear the dead and assist the wounded. While trumpeting his brilliant campaign of confusing Pemberton once east of the Mississippi, he makes no mention of Pemberton's lack of cavalry and a one sentence reference to Benjamin Grierson's cavalry raid to which Foote devoted seven full pages and John Wayne made into a movie. Perhaps, bouncing around in the saddle all day, the cavalry were notoriously poor letter writers.
Sherman does not get quite the same accolades. He does critisize him for his inability to perform well on the offensive, but finds nothing wrong with his army's conduct in Georgia and South Carolina where the story takes on the trappings of a publicist's "puff piece".
Then there is the problem where the subject matter, narrowly defined, gets in the way of a good story. So when Sherman begins his essentially unsuccessful assault on the flank of Missionary Ridge we hear nothing of Thomas spectacular charge on its front. Of course, Thomas is part of the Army of the Cumberland.
But Professor Woodworth is best at relating the personal. One thing that this army became particularly good at was improvised engineering, particularly bridge building. One of their practices was to use local finished materials. So when retreating Confederates burned a bridge over the Tallahatchie River in the town of Wyatt, Mississippi, Union engineers dismantled some adjoining houses to replace the bridge. In an account that could well stand as a theme for their entire campaign, Woodworth relates,
"Once the bridge was finished and Sherman's column was marching away, a number of Wyatt's citizens came to Sherman demanding vouchers against the U.S. government for the value of their dismantled houses. "Call upon the Southern Confederacy," Sherman replied, "You let them burn the old bridge, and I was forced to build another. To do this I was forced to use your houses, in exchange for which I give to you the bridge. Take good care of it; do not force me to build another."
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5: Well worth the read!!
This is a must-read for any Civil War buff! From the beginning to the end of the War, Woodworth provides an inspiring look at the men, both common soldiers and commanding generals, who fought against incredible odds and fierce enemies to preserve the Union. His use of diaries and writings of the soldiers provides an interesting and riveting account of the War in the West. I give this book 5 stars out of 5!
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