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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas
by Ethan S. Rafuse.
Maps, footnotes, bibliographical essay, index, softcover, 226 pp., 2002. Scholarly Resources, 104 Greenhill Ave., Wilmington, DE 19805-1897, $17.95 plus shipping.
First Manassas, or Bull Run, has received less attention in Civil War scholarship than many campaigns. It was the first major battle in the Eastern Theater, but it was overshadowed in memory by later confrontations between larger armies. Dr. Ethan S. Rafuse persuasively justifies his new book. He points out that William C. Davis’s Battle at Bull Run was a campaign study, while John J. Hennessy’s First Battle of Manassas was on the tactical level. His goal was to combine the strengths of both of his predecessors’ works and place the campaign in a broader, cultural context. He succeeds, and he does so with a well-written narrative that flows gracefully. His opening chapters compare the social and economic strengths of the North and South, and how each side believed that it had the moral edge with only a single, decisive victory necessary to decide the war (hence the book’s title). There is an excellent explanation of Winfield Scott’s “anaconda plan” that corrects some misconceptions about the proposal. Rafuse goes a step further and demonstrates how the general was opposed by Montgomery Blair who wanted an immediate invasion and ultimately won Abraham Lincoln’s approval. Despite the author’s objective to place the campaign in a cultural context, this is good military history as well. Three-fourths of the book is devoted to the campaign and battle. Like most writers, Rafuse is charitable toward Irvin McDowell and critical of Robert Patterson in assessing the Union defeat. Confederate heroes are many, including P.G.T. Beauregard who benefited by having McDowell seize the initiative, Joseph E. Johnston who cannot be accused of a strategic withdrawal on this battlefield, and of course the famous stand of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. This volume is part of the “American Crisis Series,” so it complies with the dictated format of brief notes and a select bibliography. Readers who prefer that each fact be documented should bear this in mind and not fault the author. The bibliographical essay provides an excellent guide for additional reading. It is this reviewer’s wish (not criticism) that the bibliographical essay included Joan Zenzen’s Battling for Manassas which is somewhat beyond the book’s purview but worth noting because of Manassas’s significance in the battlefield preservation movement. And somehow the cartographer’s otherwise clear maps erroneously show Bull Run flowing into the Rappahannock River on page 56. Obviously these are picayune quibbles. This is a concise, balanced account of First Manassas that clearly depicts the expectations and realities of that early campaign.
David F. Riggs
David F. Riggs is a mu-seum cu-rator with the National Park Service at Colonial National Historical Park, Yorktown. He has a BA in history from Lock Haven University and MA in histo-ry from Penn State. His publi-ca-tions include Embattled Shrine: Jamestow
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