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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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"We Shall Meet Again": The Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run) July 18-21, 1861
by JoAnna McDonald.
Illustrated, bibliographical references, index, 183 pp., 1999. Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016, $14.95 plus shipping.
Statistics do not fully explain battles. High casualties usually mark the large battles, but beyond that, statistics tell us little. Battles like Gettysburg, The Seven Days, and Stones River statistically dwarf the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, or First Bull Run. But many of these smaller-scale battles were as significant in the Civil War as the larger, bloodier engagements. The First Battle of Bull Run exemplifies this type of smaller, but important, battle. Compared with the 51,000 casualties at Gettysburg, or the 7,000 casualties in 30 minutes at Cold Harbor, the 900 men killed over the entire day of fighting at First Bull Run is a small number. But Bull Run’s importance is found not in its numbers, but in what the fighting disproved. Both sides believed they were superior to the other until Bull Run sobered that arrogance. Men, North and South, thought war was a glorious adventure until the fields around Manassas Junction swam in blood. But most tellingly, elites and laymen alike, from both sections of the torn nation, thought the war would end after one great battle—the Americans who fought at First Bull Run proved them dead wrong. In her book, "We Shall Meet Again": The First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) July 18-21, 1861, JoAnna McDonald tells the story of First Bull Run. She opens the book with a short introduction providing readers with a brief look at the events preceding the battle, a synopsis of the battle, and an overview of the battle’s significance. From there, McDonald moves to a discussion of uniforms, the confusion about which led to instances of "friendly fire" at Bull Run, Union and Confederate battle flags, and the battle’s key leaders. Beginning with her second chapter, McDonald carefully guides her readers through the combat and maneuvers. Starting at Blackburn’s Ford, on July 18, 1861, she highlights the major movements and general progression of the battle as it ignited on July 21 near the stone bridge, moved northwest towards Sudley Spring, echoed backwards to Matthew’s Hill, and then finally culminated on Henry Hill. McDonald sets out to make her book understandable to all — from historians to novices — and she accomplished her goal by using a unique, if somewhat flawed, format. Prior to her discussion of each stage of the battle, McDon-ald includes a photograph or picture of the officers who will be doing the fighting on the ensuing pages. At first, the officers’ photographs are interesting and helpful, but as one reads deeper into the book the many photographs of the same officers every seven to eight pages, and in some instances every one to two pages, becomes distracting. Despite the redundancy and overuse of photographs, McDonald succeeds in simplifying the battle without sacrific-ing vital details. She aptly recounts the battle plans of both commanders and explains how those plans changed once the fighting began. As the book unfolds and the battle becomes more complicated, McDonald breaks down the many contests within the battle into stages. For instance, rather than creating a large, complex, unbroken narrative explain-ing the intricacies of the fight on Henry Hill, McDonald subdivides that specific portion of the battle into 14 stages. Altogether, this battle fragmentation simplifies a complicated progression of combat and affords readers many oppor-tunities to review previously read pages as references. How McDonald fragments the fighting, though, is questionable. More than once she creates two stages when one would suffice. For example, the seventh stage in the chapter explaining Henry Hill is four sentences long and states no more than the "1st Michigan charged into the Confederate line and then fell back to the Sudley Road." It is un-necessary and makes the reading choppy. Exacerbating the stop-and-go reading are a few factual mistakes. McDonald erroneously writes that the Union was made up of 18 states when in fact it had 19. She also contends, incorrectly, that Delaware was not a border state. Later, in a caption under a photograph of James Longstreet, McDonald writes that Longstreet’s family moved to Alabama from South Carolina, which is wrong. When Longstreet was a boy his family moved to Georgia, not Ala-bama. But this is not to say the book is fatally flawed. McDonald’s writing is professional and the information presented is interesting and well thought out — after all, we should not be too critical of an author who goes to great lengths, as does McDonald, to assure her readers understand the material. McDonald makes excellent use of maps (45 maps in 184 pages) and quotations. Placed every four to five pages, the maps are helpful tools and her use of quotations brings the fighting to life. One of McDonald’s most effective quotations describes Col. Frances Fiske’s reaction to seeing a shell explode between a soldier’s feet. "..he seemed to me to rise a musket length in the air without any will or effort of his own, and I expected to see him fall dead, but he alighted on his feet with an oath, which showed that he was very much alive and in no fear of immediate judge-ment. He walked back to Washington that night." Another attribute of "We Shall Meet Again" is McDonald’s vignettes that reveal the human drama of the battle. One particular vignette recounts the story of Mrs. Judith Henry, an old decrepit woman lying in her bed while the battle raged outside. Too weak to be moved, she was struck and killed by shrapnel from an artillery round that smashed into her house. Another touching vignette contains the letter written by Pvt. Sullivan Ballou to his wife days before the battle. In the letter, Ballou writes of his overwhelming sense of nationalism and willingness to die, and includes a comforting message, for his wife, about an uncertain future. Ballou’s wife was widowed at the battle of First Bull Run, but her husband’s words echo through time. "We Shall Meet Again is an excellent selection any new Civil War enthusiast would enjoy. The maps, the simplification, the detail and the vignettes are all positive features of the book and outweigh the few factual and edi-torial mistakes. The epilogue completes the book well by describing the reactions of soldiers and civilians from the North and South. The citizenry cried for more blood, some for freedom’s sake and others in the name of revenge. Many soldiers simply prayed. They prayed for salvation, life, their country, and to ward off another battle, but "For the next four years thousands of Americans would meet again and again staining fields of battle with their crim-son blood." First Bull Run was only the staging point.
Chuck Romig
Chuck Romig graduated from Penn State University with a B.S. in secondary education and teaches history at Penns Valley High School in Spring Mills, Pa. He continues to read and research Civil War history.
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