Lee & His Army in Confederate Hi

Lee & His Army in Confederate History. By Gary W. Gallagher. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Although losing the American Civil War, Southerners came out winning the memory of the war. This is perhaps most evident in the way Americans remember Robert E. Lee. Lee and his army had taken center stage in conflict due in part to Lost Cause author’s interpretation after the war. This presumption held sway in the historiography until revisionists in the inter-war period began to tear it down completely. Claiming history as no place for hagiography, they attempted to alter the importance and role of Lee. Gary W. Gallagher believes that the truth lays somewhere in the middle of these two views. In his collection of essays, Lee & His Army in Confederate History, he argues that some Lost Cause points should be taken in consideration, as they were based on researched facts and merely presented in a more exaggerated light.

Beginning with a reevaluation of four campaigns and battles, Gallagher begins to reevaluate the memory of the Confederate army. Looking at Antietam (Fall 1862), Fredericksburg (Winter 1862), Gettysburg (Summer 1863), and finally the defensive campaign of spring 1864, the author finds that contemporary Confederate opinion did not mimic historical memory of Southern feelings about the battles discussed. Lost Cause historians applied a primary emphasis to Antietam as the end of Confederate government and Gettysburg as the pivotal moment that lost the Confederacy militarily. However, Gallagher finds that historians applied too much hindsight to their evaluations, as few Southerners felt in these pessimistic terms after either of these events.

Initially considered a victory, reports about the battle at Sharpsburg merely stated the high casually rate as the main drawback of the Maryland campaign. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, along with the Union defeats at Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown, painted a picture of Southern victory in Confederate newspapers. High casualties, low morale, and desperation of Union leaders looked more to be a sure sign of good things to come for Southerners than the lack of supplies, heavy casualties, and orderly retreat from Antietam looked a crushing defeat. Gallagher finds that the Battle of Fredericksburg actually had negative connotation amongst Lee and his men. Most soldiers mimicked Lee’s disappointment that the rebels did not achieve enough. They did not emulate historians’ view that the battle raised morale significantly. Furthermore, Gettysburg, in comparison to Vicksburg, did not have the negative association for the South that Lost Cause historians bestowed unto it. In fact, Lee believed that much had been achieved with the invasion of Pennsylvania, and that the battle was not a decisive victory since the Confederate troops chose to leave the battlefield on the fourth of July.

Gallagher’s reevaluation continues with Lee’s reputation. Many Lost Cause historians posited that the Confederate general was outdated for his time. Using tactics that led to heavy casualties, and subscribing to a personal style of leadership, Lee, a great man, just could not fight a modern war where he did not understand the technology. Gallagher finds this to be totally false. He finds that Lee did have a grip on modern technology, and calculated his battle strategies to the best of his or any other contemporary’s ability. Lee, keen to politics and war, believed in an aggressive strategy as the best possible way to achieve Southern political goals. Therefore, opinion dictated the need to participate in offensive campaigns. Finally, the author finds that Lee’s gentlemanliness did not interfere with his ability to command and lead.

Gallagher ends the book with an examination of Lost Cause scholarship. He finds that Jubal Early and Douglass Southall Freeman, although the main perpetuators of the Lee myth did have valid points that should be considered. For example, they were the first historians to latch onto the numerical superiority of Union troops, a valid point when talking about wartime strategy. They also pointed to the importance of Lee. Although they may have taken it too far, Gallagher believes the error is not in the glorification of Lee and his abilities, but with the way that Lost Causers had overshadowed the memory of other portions and commanders of the war with the veneration of Lee.

Gallagher presents a very interesting and in depth look at the memory of Robert E. Lee and the confederate army. By looking at newspapers, correspondence, personal accounts and diaries, the author has redefined how Southerners viewed the war effort during and after the war. Any scholar of the civil war or historical memory will find this book useful, and most should find it enjoyable also.

Dan Vogel Texas Christian University

Lee & His Army in Confederate History. By Gary W. Gallagher. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

In the book Lee & His Army in Confederate History, Gary W. Gallagher compiles a collection of his previously written articles on Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Here Gallagher sets out to show that early Lee biographers, who created a sense that Lee and his army held center stage during the Civil War, were closer to the mark than many historians who have argued that they have been overrated. These essays “explore the relationship between Lee’s operations and Confederate national morale, the quality and nature of his generalship, and the thorny problem of how best to handle Lost Cause writings about the Army of Northern Virginia and its commanders.” (ix)

Gallagher first looks at several battles which the Army of Northern Virginia fought in and the reactions of most importantly soldiers, but also citizens, to these battles. He explains that although hindsight tells us one thing, contemporary record reveals something completely different. He looks at the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, and Fredericksburg, then moves on to the winter and spring of 1864. Gallagher argues that Confederates typically responded differently to news of the battles than many typically assume. Citizens often had to rely on fragmented accounts of battles from relatives and friends in the army, the frequently inaccurate reports in newspapers, and rumors. Many Confederates saw neither Antietam nor Gettysburg as military disasters and some even expressed happiness with the outcome of Fredericksburg. Even in the winter and fall of 1864 countless Southerners expressed their belief in eventual Confederate victory. With this Gallagher stresses the necessity of relying on the evidence of the time rather than reading backward with knowledge of the war’s outcome to understand the complexity of morale and attitudes. Before Lee and his army marched toward Pennsylvania in 1863, the Confederate population had begun to look to them as their best hope for winning independence. Gallagher argues that this actually cushioned the Confederate reaction to Gettysburg and continued to feed optimism in early 1864.

Gallagher then moves on to look at Lee’s generalship. Here he argues against what he considers a flawed interpretive tradition. “Nourished by the writings of both critics and admirers,” Gallagher contends, “it presents Lee as a throwback to an earlier style of leadership ill suited to a modern mid-nineteenth-century conflict between democratic societies.” (xii) Instead, Gallagher maintains that Lee understood the kind of war he was engaged in and what it would take to win. Those historians who criticize Robert E. Lee for being old fashioned because he pursued offensive tactical victories give him little credit for linking such battles to civilian morale. He then looks at the idea that Lee was too much of a gentleman and therefore had a hard time making tough decisions about his top lieutenants. Gallagher moves on to examine Jubal Early’s role in the Chancellorsville campaign.

The last part of the book looks at Lee, Early, and Douglas Southall Freeman and how they shaped the way Americans have understood Confederate military history. All three argued within the Lost Cause tradition, with Early and Freeman presenting Lee as the most important and talented Confederate general. Gallagher maintains that abundant wartime testimony leaves no doubt that Lee held a commanding prominence in the Confederacy. Both highlighted Lee’s disadvantage in human and material resources, maintaining that superior northern numbers greatly determined Confederate defeat. Yet in doing so, according to Gallagher, they sidestepped the fact that it took the leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant to guarantee decisive use of northern means. Regardless, this was far from a postwar spin by Lost Cause warriors, an abundance of Confederate writings alluded to northern superiority in these categories.

Gallagher has written a thorough account of the importance of Robert E. Lee, not only as a general during the Civil War but also in his contribution of how Americans remember the war. It is apparent that Gallagher is a strong supporter of Lee and not without merit. His argument that Lee was as good as those in the Lost Cause made him out to be is very compelling. Still, Gallagher maintains that the eastern theater contributed more in the outcome of the Civil War than the western theater simply because the people during the war believed so. Though it is important to realize that we have the luxury of hindsight and should try to look through the eyes of our subjects, this does not mean that what they viewed was always accurate. Sometimes their vision is obscured through not holding all of the facts. With hindsight it is clear that though the main focus of the war remained in the east, the western theater contributed more severely to the defeat of the Confederacy.