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Summary: History and Drama Combine in This Study of a Bloody Battle
Review: Written in the author's consistently clear and accessible style, and supported by years of research, Stephen W. Sears's Gettysburg is both an authoritative work of impressive scholarship that will appeal to academics and a dramatic story that will fascinate Civil War buffs. The author of six award-winning books on the Civil War--including George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon; Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam; To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign; and Chancellorsville, Stephen W. Sears is one of the best Civil War historian writing today. Fought in and around a sleepy Pennsylvania town, the three-day Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) was the "granddaddy" of Civil War battles--the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere. On those three hellish days, two contending armies--the (Confederate) Army of Northern Virginia, led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the (Union) Army of the Potomac, led by Gen. George Gordon Meade--suffered 45,438 casualties. During the six-week Pennsylvania campaign their joint losses came to more than 57,000, including some 9,600 dead. Prior to the Battle of Gettysburg, "Johnny Reb" had twice defeated "Billy Yank"--at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Nevertheless, the outlook for the Confederacy was grim. In a war of attrition, the advantage of the Union in superior manpower and materiel meant that the South would slowly be squeezed to death by superior forces. Sears points out that Lee faced a Hobson's choice (an apparently free choice when there is no real alternative). He could remain on the defensive and face slow strangulation or he could seize the initiative ("We should assume the aggressive," Lee had written to Confederate President Jefferson Davis) and roll the die in a desperate gamble--the invasion of the North. The two armies blundered into each other at Gettysburg, a battlefield on which neither general had wanted to fight. The desperate charge made by Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble on Day Three of Gettysburg marked "the high-water mark of the Confederacy." "In command and capability," writes Sears, "indeed in offensive power, the Army of Northern Virginia would never recover." In this outstanding battle study, Sears chronicles, in minute details, the events leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg, an almost blow-by-blow description of battlefield maneuvers during the three days of action, and the aftermath of battle, as Lee's army took "the long road back," retreating into Virginia. It's all here: the battle for McPherson's Ridge, Seminary Ridge, and the clash in the streets of Gettysburg (Day One); the struggle for Culp's Hill (on the right flank of the Union Army) and the horrific encounters on the left flank of the Union Army, at the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, the Devil's Den, the Slaughter Pen, Rose Woods, the Valley of Death, Spangler's House, the Trostle House, and Little Round Top (Day Two); and the renewed attack on Culp's Hill and the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble charge, a massive assault on the center of the Union line (Day Three). "Pickett's Charge," as it is popularly known, was the greatest military blunder of Lee's otherwise brilliant career (except, perhaps, for his choosing to fight for the Confederacy after being offered command of the Union army). Lee's "Old Warhorse," Gen. James Longstreet, strongly disagreed with Lee and advocated instead an attempt to flank the Union's left flank. With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, we can see clearly that Longstreet was right and Lee was wrong. After his masterful documentation of this titanic struggle, Sears concludes, "The fact of the matter is that George G. Meade, unexpectedly and against the odds, thoroughly outgeneraled Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg." Readers who approach the subject for the first time can, and perhaps should, resort to other more general accounts, but Civil War buffs looking for an authoritative, detailed account of troop movements, leadership, tactics, and strategy, should snap up this book with alacrity. It surely is the best one-volume account available on the Battle of Gettysburg.
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