Stephen W. Sears

I have long been a Civil War buff, although unlike many of this ilk I have zero interest in re-enactments and actually a rather limited interest in the battles themselves, from a military standpoint. Rather, I am far more taken by the political dimension of the war for our national history and how its legacy defined the America that we live in today. Still, an understanding of the critical battles is essential to comprehending the war, even if you are willing to eschew the tactical details show more that so fascinate the military historian. My interest in the war – and its battles – has been reawakened by the sesquicentennial of this seminal conflict, and I have not only returned to reading about the Civil War but also began visiting its battlefields: Manassas, Fredericksburg, Antietam, even Fort Macon in NC. I hope to visit Gettysburg this year for its own sesquicentennial, and in preparation I picked up the highly acclaimed Stephen Sears book, entitled simply Gettysburg.
I have attempted Sears before, most recently with his landmark Landscape Turned Red about Antietam, which I abandoned about forty percent into it, not because he is a bad writer but only because I found the narrative too pregnant with military minutiae for my taste. Somehow, my instincts communicated that this would be different with Gettysburg, and my instincts were correct. Not that military nuts-and-bolts in great detail don’t dominate here, because they do, but for me Gettysburg rises well above that to capture the personalities of the generals and their lieutenants and even the average soldier clad in blue or butternut, as well as the state of the armies, the lay of the land and the greater themes of the war – on and off the battlefield – that are of paramount interest for me.
Like other works by Sears, there is far more informational detail here than I would care to learn, especially as it relates to preparation for the battle, yet this time it seems to click with the non-military historian – myself – in a way that vividly highlights these components as they fit into the grander scale of the event. This time, I found the characters and events so well animated and integrated that I did not lose interest as we moved forward, even with an avalanche of minutiae, and I came to feel – much like, I suspect, the average soldier on either side – the tension build toward the crescendo of battle, although certainly my armchair was far safer than their killing fields.
Some have called Sears the Bruce Catton of today and characterized Gettysburg as the best one-volume treatment of the battle. I think it earns these superlatives and more. Of all the authors and books on the Civil War that I have read, this is the one that most brought the distant Robert E. Lee to life for me, and made me feel what it must have been like to serve with or against Stuart, Longstreet, Sickles, Hancock, Chamberlain, Custer and many more. A magnificent book on a multiplicity of levels, if you ever wanted to read one book on Gettysburg, read this one! show less

This is the first of a four volume series published by Library of America. The editors have done an excellent job in providing the reader with a diverse group of selections written by a varied group of contributors. Many of the selections are speeches and other official writings that you would expect to find. At least one-third are letters and diary entries from people whose names were never in the newspapers. At the back of the book the editors have provided a section of short biographies show more of all of the contributors. This was very helpful in providing a context for the selections by the writers I was unfamiliar with.
Reading through the book I felt like an amateur historian. Reading primary source materials was similar to going through archives hunting for the facts about different events. The selections fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and changed my understanding of many events. One good example was a speech by Senator John J. Crittenden. In early 1860 he introduced several measures to provide a compromise to secession. Reading about it on other occasions I felt he was just an old man holding on to the past. The text of the speech was full of passion for the Union and the desire to take any steps necessary to save it. The emotion that came through his words created a vivid memory.
One woman writing in her diary questions, "Is this the beginning of the Civil War we have heard about?" which gives a sense of the immediacy of events that were happening out of control. The irony is that the entry was written January 9 and the war didn't start until April 12.
Reading the selections I realized that history does not happen in nice and neat packages of events. History as it happens is a messy confluence of happenings that doesn't fit any pattern or theory. Very few people writing in the first year of the war thought it was possible it could last more than a year. Many Southerners thought they had won the war after The First Battle of Bull Run.
I enjoyed reading this book very much. It added a great deal to my understanding of what it was like to live through this time. Along with the biographies the book includes a chronology, notes on the texts and 50 pages of end notes. I look forward to the next volume. show less

In this age of twitter, I can follow the political machinations of the Trump Administration from moment to moment, from every imaginable side, and with the perspective of a variety of viewpoints. I have often wished that we could have the same level of information about historic periods.

This massive and detailed study by Civil War historian Stephen Sears makes me feel as if my wishes had been granted, at least with respect to the creation and ongoing development of the Union Army during the show more Civil War. By focusing on the processes by which generals and officers were selected, trained, honed, and culled, Sears catalogues the evolution of a self-taught army led by volunteers into the experienced and efficient fighting machine that was in place by the end of the struggle. His is a story of backbiting, jealousy, outright sabotage, lapses, blunders, meddling, timidity, inexperience, disjointedness, miscommunications, resentment, and paranoia. But it is also a tale of courage; personal growth of many actors, both political and military; and ultimately of triumph. Mostly though, one may think of this book as an organizational history.

To my surprise, my opinion of George McClellan actually improved from this account (although I feel a bit like Senator Al Franken on Ted Cruz, who said on CNN, ”I probably like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz.”). Sears demonstrates rather convincingly that McClellan, for all his faults, took on the leadership of an inadequately-sized army with few officers and helped form it into something workable.

In 1860 the U.S. Army was small - less than 15,000 present for duty, with most of the army posted west of the Mississippi River, and having just 372 line officers and five general officers. Nearly a quarter of West Pointers on active duty in 1861, and close to 37 percent of cadets at the time of the secession crisis, joined the Confederacy. The General-In-Chief was 74-year-old Winfield Scott, an erratic and quarrelsome man in bad shape and ill health who was not up to much more than broadly overseeing the course of the army.

As Sears writes, when McClellan was called to Washington to assume command of the new Division of the Potomac in July, 1861, “Ahead of McClellan loomed an enormous task, no less than building a new army upon the ruins of an old one.” Morale was also in tatters. George McClellan may have not liked to fight, and he was certainly paranoid and delusional, but he was good at organizing, and at restoring the army’s confidence in itself. He revamped the army’s officer corps (incidentally creating a group of men fiercely loyal to him). He structured the army into divisions and set up programs for drilling recruits. Although he could not entirely evade (much to his chagrin), the popular political patronage process of the appointment of company and regimental officers, he supported examining boards for officer competency, and widened the use of courts-martial.

McClellan didn’t take kindly to any second-guessing of his decisions, nor could he abide the administration’s unwillingness to respond “appropriately” to his call for massive numbers of new recruits based on his wildly inaccurate assessments of enemy strength. But ultimately, it was his stubborn reluctance to fight that led to his replacement. It was not an easy decision for Lincoln, given McClellan’s popularity with the army he had virtually created from scratch. But it was the right decision to win the war.

Ulysses S. Grant, who eventually took over as head of the army, also found that serving as the top commander did not insulate him from political pressures, especially as he was compelled to keep on less than competent and/or compliant division leaders. But Grant was there to fight a war, and he did what he could to work around political realities.

Typical of Grant’s military leadership vis-a-vis others that came before him was this description of Grant’s behavior at the end of the Wilderness campaign:

“May 7 marked a watershed. It did not occur to Grant that day . . . to pull back across the Rapidan, in the manner of Hooker or Burnside (or McClellan, changing his base), to lick wounds and regroup and plot some next campaign.”

Grant’s attitude, Sears notes, was not lost on the men of the Army of the Potomac.

Grant was as eager to work with other generals as McClellan had been to run every operation himself. Grant, a humble and generous man, worked well with Meade, Sherman, Sheridan, and others in a way that showed respect for these men and their talents, allowing them to blossom and thrive under his direction. He made mistakes, but for the most part owned them, and did not cast off blame on others. He welcomed Lincoln’s counsel rather than eschewing it as did McClellan, and in return received Lincoln’s utmost confidence and support.

Sears reports that “…the Potomac army that marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in spring 1865 [after the surrender of Lee’s army at Appomattox] was almost a completely new army, top to bottom, from the Potomac army that went to war on the Virginia Peninsula in spring 1862.” Only a handful of officers of position from those early days remained by the end. Whole army corps had come and gone…. “For all the turnover at the top,” Sears writes, “the Army of the Potomac conquered, forcing the surrender of its renowned opponent. Obscured by the extensive turnover of generals, a vital, solid core of leadership remained, survived, prevailed. It was this lesser-known half of the high command that held the Potomac army together through one battlefield hellfire after another.”

And it is this story he tells in great detail in this valuable addition to Civil War scholarship.

The book includes blow-by-blow accounts of many battles, extensive notes and more than 150 illustrations.

Evaluation: There isn’t anything really “new” in this book, but the detail lends a feel of immediacy to the story by the author’s incorporation of extracts from journals, diaries, letters, wires, congressional post-mortems and other documents. Sears reports Stanton and Lincoln hanging onto updates by wire just as we now flock to twitter to see what is happening from moment to moment. With this book, we too are behind the scenes, privy even to more than Stanton and Lincoln, as we follow the ins and outs of the history of a great fighting machine. show less

There are few generals of the Civil War as controversial as George Brinton McClellan. His command of the Army of the Potomac during the early years of the Civil War generated a storm of criticism and sparked debates still being waged by historians today. Drawing heavily on McClellan’s letters and other documents, Stephen Sears offers a convincing assessment of McClellan and his military career, one that places him squarely in the ranks of McClellan’s critics. His biography of the general show more reveals McClellan to have been a man with many gifts, of which he was perhaps too well aware. His outsized self-regard generated constant disputes with his superiors, as he saw what was often reasonable arguments as driven by implacable opponents determined to destroy him.

These tendencies were only magnified by the pressures of the command. Had McClellan been as successful as his prewar reputation promised little may have come of this, but his Peninsula campaign was hobbled by "Little Mac"'s insistence on caution, one magnified by a continual fear that he faced an enemy superior in numbers. As a result, he was continually outfoxed by his opponents, making his "Young Napoleon" label (the source of the book's subtitle) ironic rather than accurate. Such was his stature, though, that even after his dismissal he was well-regarded enough to be selected as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in their losing 1864 campaign.

Sears's focus in this book is on McClellan's Civil War service, as he spends only four of the book’s seventeen chapters on McClellan's life before and after the conflict that defined his historical legacy. Though regrettable in some respects, it is an understandable decision to focus on the years in which he made his greatest historical impact and which continues to generate debate even today. In the end, though, it makes for a sad tale of a man who, for all of his gifts, ultimately came to be defined by his limitations. show less