by John Keegan
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Potter, D. M. The South and the Sectional Conflict. Baton Rouge, La., 1968.
Pullen, John J. The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War. Philadelphia, 1957.
Reid, Brian Holden. The Origins of the American Civil War. New York, 1996.
Rutledge, Archibald, and Richard Rollins, eds. Pickett’s Charge: Eyewitness Accounts at the Battle of Gettysburg. Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2005
Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years. New York, 2002.
Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. New Haven, Conn., 1983.
____________ To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign. New York, 1992.
____________ George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York, 1996.
Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. London, 1975.
Smith, Robin. American Civil War: Union Army. Brassey’s History of Uniforms. London, 1996.
Sommers, Richard J. Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg. New York, 1991.
Stevens, Joseph E. America’s National Battlefield Parks. Norman, Okla., 1990.
Tanner, Robert G. Stonewall in the Valley. Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1996.
Tate, Allen. Stonewall Jackson: The Good Soldier. Nashville, Tenn., 1991.
Thomas, Emory M. Robert E. Lee: A Biography. New York, 1995.
Trudeau, N. A. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865. Boston, 1998.
Turner, G. E. Victory Rode the Rails. New York, 1953.
U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion. 36 vols. Washington, D.C., 1880-1901.
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ric and Ken Burns. The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York, 1998.
Waugh, John C. The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox; Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan and Their Brothers. New York, 1994.
Weigley, Russell F. History of the United States Army. New York, 1967.
___________ A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865. Bloomington, Ind., 2000.
Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. New York, 1983.
________ The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. New York, 1952.
Williams, Kenneth P. Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War. 5 vols. New York, 1950-59.
Williams, T. Harry. Lincoln and His Generals. London, 1952.
Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York, 1994.
Winik, Jay. April 1865: The Month That Saved America. New York, 2001.
Woodward, C. Vann. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. New Haven, Conn., 1981.
Woodworth, Steven E. Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865. New York, 2005.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is fitting that my first debt of gratitude goes to Bill Coolidge. It was through his philanthropic enterprise that I and many other Balliol men and women were introduced to the United States. In 1957 I became a Coolidge Scholar and embarked on a tour of the country, primarily to visit some of the Civil War’s most important battlefields.
Twelve years before I undertook that journey, hundreds of thousands of American men were returning from fighting in the twentieth century’s most terrible conflict. Their not-so-distant Union and Confederate relatives must have experienced the same emotions as they, too, were reunited with their families after surviving what remains to this day the United States’ most costly of wars.
So it is natural that my second debt of thanks goes to the people of the United States. To arrive in post-war America as a twenty-three-year-old Englishman was to step from the shadow of European reconstruction into the light of a nation determined to realise its own interpretation of a democratic society. Since then I have been fortunate enough to have made numerous return journeys to the United States and witness that ongoing ambition. There are countless individuals and institutions who have so generously played host and to list them all after my fifty-year association would constitute a book in itself. But I would like to thank staff at West Point, Vassar College, and Princeton University and the U.S. Army Center of Military History, including General John Foss, who was the first of the post-war West Point liaison officers at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and finally a four-star general, and Professor James McPherson of Princeton University. I owe special thanks to the thoughts and suggestions provided by my numerous friends and colleagues, including former Senator Paul Sarbanes, Tom Clancy, and George Thompson, who assisted me so kindly during my last visit to the United States.
I must single out my publisher at Knopf, Ash Green, for his stoic faith in this book and for the unrelenting support he has so generously given. George Andreou, who succeeded Ash during the final editing, has graciously carried on that baton of encouragement.
In England my gratitude goes to my agent Anthony Sheil who has, as ever, paid such careful attention to the project. Anthony Whittome, my editor at Random House, deserves special praise for his patience and encouragement during the time I spent writing this book, as does my picture editor Anne-Marie Ehrlich. I owe a lifetime of gratitude to two great British institutions: the Army and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, from where so many talented soldiers and academics have emerged. In particular I must thank Field Marshall Sir John Chapple, General Sir John Wilsey, Major-General Charles Vyvyan, Colonel Mike Dewar, and Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hoare. From Sandhust I have received great support from my former colleagues Duncan Anderson, Christopher Duffy, and Ned Willmott. I also wish to acknowledge the support of The Daily Telegraph and in particular Con Coughlin, Simon Heffer, David Twiston-Davies, and Pat Venter. I would also like to thank Professor Robert O’Neill and Professor Hew Strachan, the past and present Chichele Professors of Military History at Oxford University.
I would not have able to undertake this book without the love and support given to me by my family. My wife, Susanne, has been, as always, a tower of strength, as have been our children and children-in-law, Lucy and Brooks Newmark, Tom and Pepy, Matthew and Sharon, and Rose and James McCarthy. Their wonderful children, Benjamin, Sam, Max, Lily, Zachary, Walter, Martha, and Mamie have all helped make the passage of this book easier to navigate. I would also like to thank friends in Kilmington, who include Nesta and Michael Gray, Shirley Thomas, and Eric Coombs. And finally thanks to my assistant Lindsey Wood, to whom this book is dedicated. Her tolerance and hard work in difficult circumstances were central to its completion.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Abraham Lincoln: Photograph by Anthony Berger. Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19305.
Jefferson Davis: The Art Archive/Culver Pictures
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson: The Art Archive/National Archives, Washington, D.C.
George McClellan: The Art Archive/National Archives, Washington, D.C.
Former slaves: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-USZ62-118354.
Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry: Photograph by William Morris Smith. Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-04294.
Zouave Company: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-03688.
A cavalry repeating carbine: © The Board of Trustees of the Armouries
A Springfield percussion rifle-musket: © The Board of Trustees of the Armouries
David Farragut: The Art Archive/National Archives, Washington D.C.
Officers of the USS Monitor: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-USZC4-7979.
The Confederate ram Stonewall: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-04311.
Improvised Union hospital: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-00202.
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Basic amputation set: © Dr.MichaelEchols/www.braceface.com/medical
Confederate dead in a ditch at Antietam: Photographs by Alexander Gardner. Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-01100.
Dead Confederate infantrymen in the Devil’s Den: Photograph by Alexander Gardner. Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-03701.
Ulysses S. Grant: The Art Archive/Culver Pictures
William Tecumseh Sherman: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-07314.
Robert E. Lee: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpbh-03116.
George Thomas: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpbh-03123.
Union engineers bridging the North Anna River: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-03568.
Union engineers destroying a Confederate railroad: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-00391.
Confederate dead gathered for burial: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-00907.
The McLean house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-03957.
The ruins of Richmond, 1865: Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-02696.
The gallows built in Washington Arsenal: Photograph by Alexander Gardner. Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, LC-DIG-cwpb-04198.
Veterans of Pickett’s charge: Pennsylvania State Archives, RG-25 Records of Special Commissions, Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pickett’s Charge of July 3, 1913
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Keegan was born in 1934. He is the author of twenty books, of which the best known are The Face of Battle (1976); Six Armies in Normandy (1981); The Mask of Command (1987); The Second World War (1989); A History of Warfare (1993), which won the Duff Cooper Prize; Warpaths (1985); The First World War (1998), which was awarded the Westminster Medal; Intelligence in War (2003); and The Iraq War (2004). In 1998 he gave the BBC Reith Lectures, which were published as War and Our World.
From 1960 until 1986 he taught military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He has been Lees Knowles Lecturer in Military History at Cambridge University in 1986—87, a fellow of Princeton University in 1984, and Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar College in 1997. He was a trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund from 1994 to 2000 and is now a commissioner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded the O.B.E. in the 1991 Gulf War Honours List and was knighted in 1999 for services to military history.
Since 1986 John Keegan has been defense editor of The Daily Telegraph. He is married to the biographer Susanne Keegan and they have four children. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by John Keegan
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this book originally appeared in
The Civil War Times and Military History Quarterly.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keegan, John.
The American Civil War : a military history / by John Keegan.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27314-7
1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns.
2. Military geography—United States—History—19th century.
3. United States—Strategic aspects. 4. United States—Geography. I. Title.
E470.K255 2009
973.7′3—dc 2009019469
v3.0