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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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All for the Regiment: The Army of the Ohio, 1861-1862
by Gerald J. Prokopowicz.
. Illustrated, maps, notes, bibliography, index, 265 pp., 2001. The University of North Carolina Press, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288, $34.95 plus shipping.
All for the Regiment was written by author Gerald J. Prokopowicz to prove a thesis that Civil War armies "developed certain social and organizational characteristics … that made those armies inca-pable of destroying one another on the battlefield." He uses the history of the Army of the Ohio to illustrate his hypothesis, but it can be ap-plied equally to all Civil War armies, North and South. The central point of Prokopowicz’s dissertation is that organizational loyalty and unit cohesiveness during the American Civil War rarely rose higher than the regimental level. This was due to several factors, among them: the recruiting and conscription methods employed to raise troops; the training methods, that seldom involved drilling above the regimental level; and leaders who had little understanding of the peculiarities of vol-unteer soldiers, and no experience in managing units higher than a regi-mental level. Civil War regiments were raised by individual states, and most com-panies were made up of members of the same county and communities. The men served and fought alongside their relatives, friends and neigh-bors, and their first loyalty lay to the company. The company was an ex-tension of the hometown; to disgrace oneself in front of comrades, or to desert them, could mean banishment, forever, from one’s home. The second loyalty was to the regiment, formed from a collection of companies from the same state, with officers elected by the men. Even many of the U.S. Regular regiments were not professional soldiers from throughout the U. S., but were made up of volunteer companies whose men joined the Regulars as a unit because their state’s recruitment quota was full. To fight a Civil War battle required that each regiment have the ability to maneuver flawlessly under fire. To perfect this, each regiment was drilled endlessly, and this constant enforced teamwork resulted in pride and loyalty to the regiment almost on an equal to that of the company. However, brigade drill was rare, and maneuvers at the division level or higher were virtually nonexistent. In addition, organizational levels higher than the regiment were con-stantly in flux and many of the men never formed friendships outside their regiment. It was not unusual for an army to spend an entire winter encampment with no interaction between the men of the regiments of the same brigade, camped in close proximity. Large engagements, dependent upon maneuvering on the brigade, divi-sion and corps level, usually ended in mass confusion, with units inter-mixed and unable to coordinate their movements. The cohesiveness of a regiment meant that it would remain intact as the fighting force even af-ter taking enormous casualties, making it almost impossible to destroy a Civil War army on the battlefield. But the inability to maneuver in con-cert with larger organization made it nearly impossible to achieve a deci-sive victory. Prokopowicz has done a masterful job of providing convincing proofs of his thesis, and a reading of All for the Regiment should result in a reevaluation of many previous analyses of Civil War strategy and tactics. In addition, he has provided a much-needed history of the Army of the Ohio, long neglected in Civil War literature. I highly recommend this volume for all Civil War buffs.
Robert L. Durham
Robert L. Durham is a computer specialist. A longtime Civil War buff, he is also interested in Old West history and has written articles and book reviews for Alamo Journal, True West, Journal of the Alamo Battlefield Association, and Alamo de Parras web site at www.flash.net/~alamo3/
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