Brian Holden Reid

Was hoping for a Sherman biography that was a balance between "war criminal" and "greatest general ever", but this tends toward the latter.

Anything that goes wrong is the fault of a Sherman subordinate; thus, the canard of "slowness" is repeatedly thrown at George Thomas. Joe Hooker is also given no due whatsoever for his contributions to the combat; Reid even slanders Hooker as a drunkard on the campaign.

Albert Castel, in his magisterial "Decision in the West", even after almost 30 years, remains the definitive study of the Atlanta Campaign and is highly critical of Sherman. Reid attempts to refute Castel on a number of points, but his claims are superficial and unconvincing.

Reid even claims that "in some ways", Sherman's crossing of the Chattahoochie was "even more impressive than Grant's crossing of the James." Seriously, on page 302.

It goes without saying that according to Reid, Sherman bears no responsibility whatsoever for the burning of Columbia or any of the other private dwellings that his men torched. And yet, Reid admits that, once Sherman crossed into North Carolina, he explicitly noted to a subordinate that "a little moderation may be of political consequence to us in North Carolina." This, of course, is proof that Sherman in fact did have control over the devastation his soldiers committed in Georgia and South Carolina.

Two stars for a good overall exposition of Sherman's evolution from "protect southern property" to "take all their food"; for an excellent, full depiction of his wife Ellen; and for an effectively presented conclusion, even though it does mostly reiterate his bias toward Sherman.… (plus d'informations)

The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman is a outstanding addition to the literature on Sherman.
Ample time is spent on his leadership an contributions at Shiloh, in support in the Vicksburg campaign, Chattanooga and his southern campaigns.

A full life biography the focus is as it should be on Sherman’s Civil War accomplishments and to a much smaller degree his post war yeasts which include the period when he was the General in Chief.
The author spends the last chapter evaluating Sherman’s ability and accomplishments and places his importance only behind Lincoln and Grant. While discussing his ability to become involved in the running of a Corp when he should be providing direction to the army and deals with the facts that he rarely was involved a a large scale decisive battle the author does not hold this against Sherman but rather lauds him for the intellectual abilities he brought to his command.

A well balanced addition to the literature and worth the time to place in your library and on your TBR pile.… (plus d'informations)

William Tecumseh Sherman ranks among the most celebrated and controversial figures in American military history. His famous “Marches” – first to Georgia’s coast, then northward through the Carolinas – earned him the hatred of generations of Southerners and has been viewed by some as an early version of the “total” war that would define so much of the 20th century. Yet these events represent just one part of a long and extremely active life, one that must be understood to appreciate fully Sherman’s ideas and achievements.

Understanding Sherman’s views on war is one of the gals of Brian Holden Reid’s book. A distinguished military historian and specialist on the era, he chronicles the span of Sherman’s accomplished life. The son of a prominent Ohio settler, Sherman’s life was upended when his father died at an early age, forcing the dispersal of the Sherman household. Nominated by his foster father, Thomas Ewing, for a position at West Point, Sherman thrived academically and graduated near the top of his class. Sherman served in the United States Army for the next decade and a half, where he demonstrated his intellectual and organizational gifts but missed out on combat during the war against Mexico in the 1840s due to his posting in California.

Though Reid covers Sherman’s pre-Civil War career well, his main focus is on his service during the Civil War. Having resigned his commission a few years beforehand, with the outbreak of fighting in 1861 Sherman searched for a way to resume his military career. Gaining a commission as a colonel, Sherman distinguished himself at the first Battle of Bull Run but suffered a breakdown when given a theater command soon afterward. After recovering, Sherman was assigned to the Army of West Tennessee, where be began his enormously successful partnership with its commander, Ulysses S. Grant. Throughout these chapters Reid details Sherman’s activities, drawing from them a sense of his approach to war. Central to it was his ever-evolving sense of what it would take to achieve victory. Reid shows Sherman to be a true military thinker, one who applied his considerable intellect to resolving the challenges of the war in order to work out the best way to win it.

Sherman’s thinking about the war culminated in his famous Marches. He had developed his views of the South after several years of living there, during which time he gained a respect (arguably an exaggerated one) of their determination. By 1864 the general concluded that defeat on the battlefield would not be enough – Southerners needed to make a “moral expression of Union military power” in order to demonstrate the extent of the Union’s victory both to the Southern states and to the larger world. This the Marches did, exposing the inability of Confederate and state forces to withstand Sherman’s divisions and thus underscoring their impending defeat.

In Reid’s view, Sherman’s success cemented his position alongside that of Grant and Abraham Lincoln, as one of the architects of the Union victory. Sherman’s fame was such that after the war he went on to serve as commanding general of the United Sates Army, and was even approached to run for the presidency of the United States – a position for which Reid judges the thin-skinned and highly-strung general unsuitable. It’s a judgment that reflects Reid’s critical eye, as while generally admiring of his subject he does not hesitate to highlight Sherman’s shortcomings and mistakes. This strengthens the value of his analysis, and makes for a valuable interpretation of Sherman’s life. Even the typographical and other printing errors in the book don’t detract from this, though the misplaced maps and misattributed photos (with the same image of George Thomas used to depict both him and P. G. T. Beauregard) can be more than mildly irritating. Yet this shouldn’t deter readers from enjoying this judicious and perceptive study of a one of the Civil War’s key commanders.… (plus d'informations)

Brian Holden Reid’s goal in this book, as he states in its introduction, is to place the Civil War in context with two other major conflicts of the mid-19th century, the Crimean War and the wars of German unification. Contrary to many traditional accounts of the warfare of the era, he sees the three as reflecting the evolution of large-scale industrialized warfare during those decades, with the different struggles nevertheless demonstrating commonalities in the impact of new technologies and the changing scale of war.

This is evident beginning with the Crimean War. Fought in the shadow of the Napoleonic wars (the British commander had been Wellington’s secretary), Reid nonetheless demonstrates, in a very British-centric account, that the expedition to the Crimea would have been impossible without the steam-powered ships which sustained the forces. Yet while he challenges the notion of the British military as being “a museum piece”, he does note that the reforms introduced hardly addressed the challenges of the new warfare that commanders like Lord Raglan faced.

Similar limitations emerged at the command level during the Civil War. Reid’s analysis of the conflict dominates the book, taking up three of its five chapters. His analysis if primarily operational and strategic, and it reveals how unready – and in many cases, unadaptable – commanders on both sides were to the new scale of warfare. Grant emerges as the dominant commander, Reid argues, not because of his ability as a field commander (which he sees as inferior to Lee’s), but because of his grasp of “what was important in the higher level of the conduct of war.” In this Reid ranks Grant with Helmuth von Moltke as the first masters of industrialized warfare, as the Prussian general demonstrated similar attributes in his successful pursuit of victory against Denmark (which is only briefly addressed), Austria, and France.

All of this Reid presents with a generous seasoning of his sharp observations which leave little doubt as to his opinion on matters (his assessment of the staff of Austrian general Ludwig Benedek is that they “made for an entertaining dining club” is one of the more amusing among many) and make for a lively text. By comparing the three wars, he demonstrates clearly how industrialization transformed warfare, while his operational narrative shows how slowly commanders adapted to these changes. Heavily illustrated with photographs and maps, it is a quick read, and serves as an excellent introduction to the Civil War while putting it in the context of the evolution of modern warfare.… (plus d'informations)