 For People With An Active Interest in the Civil War Today |
|
Use these links to navigate on CWN's web site Home/
Calendar/
News/ News
Archive/Opinion/ Book
Reviews/Living History
|
|
|
Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
|
|
A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius
by Edward H. Bonekemper III.
Illustrated, maps, appendices, bibliography, endnotes, index, 446 pp., 2004. Regnery Publishing Inc., One Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001, $27.95 plus shipping.
Bonekemper’s opening salvo in the preface makes his position clear. Grant’s military successes have been “seriously slighted”; the oft-applied label of butcher is a “tenacious” canard; and Grant was simply “the greatest general of the Civil War.” The author leaves no room for doubt or misinterpretation of his opinion of Grant. What follows is a concise and informative review of Grant’s Civil War campaigns, bolstered with adjectives such as “brilliant,” “amazing,” “aggressive,” “bold” and “great.” Vicksburg was “the greatest campaign of the war,” and even the bloodbath of the controversial 1864 Overland Campaign yielded losses that Bonekemper regards as “militarily acceptable.” The author makes frequent use of data concerning the percentage of men lost by Grant and his opponents, especially Robert E. Lee, in several battles. Bonekemper points out that Grant nearly always lost a smaller percentage of his available forces than Lee, and could more readily replace his casualties. Lee seems more the butcher in the author’s view, since he lost men he could ill afford to lose in unnecessary offensive operations. Bonekemper does not attempt to justify or apologize for the staggering numbers of Union dead under Grant’s command. Bonekemper’s defense of Grant continues in Appendix I, entitled “Historians’ Treatment of Ulysses S. Grant.” Examining Grant’s reputation through the eyes of various historians, the author praises those who praise Grant, and sniffs disdainfully at those who look at Grant in a harsher light. When William McFeely criticized the Overland Campaign in his 1981 Grant biography as “a hideous disaster in every respect save one—it worked,” Bonekemper alludes to the notion that McFeely was “an academic historian who was influenced by the Vietnam War.” An interesting if unapologetic work, A Victor, Not A Butcher firmly establishes Bonekemper as Grant’s chief defender and hagiographer. Whether Grant truly needs such an advocate is another question.
John E. Deppen
John E. Deppen is a member of the Susquehanna Civil War Round Table. He has an MA in military studies with honors in Civil War studies from American Military University.
|
|
| Use these links to navigate on CWN's web site Home / Calendar / News
/ Opinion / Civil
War on the Internet |
|