Shenandoah, 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign
Thomas Jonathan Jackson is either extravagantly loved or extravagantly hated – or, if not actually hated, then certainly dismissed as a military accident whose successes can be written off to the incompetence of his opponents and whose personality is simply too bizarre to be taken seriously. So on one hand, Robert Lewis Dabney, John Esten Cooke, James Robertson and Robert Krick laud Jackson’s “far-seeing generalship, his prudent boldness, and that indomitable resolution and tenacity of purpose which no storm could shake.” But then there is Robert G. Tanner (Stonewall in the Valley), who believes Jackson recklessly ran his Valley Army into the ground; Charles Royster (The Destructive War), who treated Jackson’s Calvinist piety as a strategy “to infuse governmental policy with Christian conscience, making the state, like the churches, an inducement to piety and to salvation of souls”; and A. Cash Koeniger (in Gary Gallagher’s The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862), who thinks that Jackson’s strategic genius was undone by his “clumsy or even inept” handling of subordinates. Peter Cozzens, whose outstanding histories of Iuka and Corinth, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga gave him a catbird seat from which to observe some indisputably dysfunctional Confederate generals, turns his attention for the first time to a campaign of the Eastern Theater. His evaluation of Jackson’s performance in the celebrated Shenandoah Valley Campaign from March to June of 1862 will not give much comfort to Jackson’s admirers. Cozzens regards the Valley Campaign, tactical success though it was, as more of a morale-booster for the Confederacy rather than a genuine strategic contribution to the war. And Jackson’s successes were as much due to Abraham Lincoln’s inept deployment of independent commands for Nathaniel Banks and Irwin McDowell as to Jackson. Cozzens’ Jackson is a religious crank whose piety had turned him into “a wall of stone long before victory at First Manassas accorded him the cognomen.” He is a Jackson who unwisely targets the B&O Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio canal locks for pointless raids in the winter of 1861-62 … who oversteps his orders to take Romney by overextending his lines to Bath and Hancock … who indulges “a fetish for secrecy”; whose officers and men complain behind his back … and whose tactics are guided by a “reckless spiritual ecstasy” during which Jackson “accorded the Almighty credit for his victories” but was “reluctant to accept responsibility for his defeats.” Jackson mishandles his troops at Kernstown, loses an opportunity (after 2nd Winchester) to seize Harpers Ferry, descends into “erratic” behavior which includes “stunning breach of conduct,” and allows himself to be surprised at Port Republic, only winning a victory there despite the “folly” of “piecemeal deployment.” At the end of the campaign, Jackson can think of nothing better than to throw his little force into an invasion of Pennsylvania, which Robert E. Lee gently countermands. In almost every other respect, Cozzens’ narrative of the Valley Campaign is an outstanding piece of work: the narrative is crisp and troop movements clear (aided considerably by a brace of George Skoch maps), and he has made good use of a number of manuscript collections from both Union and Confederate participants. Cozzens is not particularly friendly to Confederate civilians, especially the women of Winchester. But he has not discovered much to say about the Valley battles that Tanner, Robertson, or even William Allan, haven’t already said, and his eagerness to leap to judgment, about Jackson and nearly everyone else, can become insufferable. Tolerate that, though, and Shenandoah 1862 will offer a refreshing review of the Valley Campaign, and maybe even raise a qualification or two in the reader’s mind about “Stonewall Jackson’s Way.”
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College.
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Illustrated, maps, notes, order of battle, index, 623 pp., 2008. University of North Carolina Press, 116 S. Boundary St., Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808, $35 plus shipping.