Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862. By Joseph L. Harsh. (Kent, Ohio and London: The Kent State University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 278.)

“All we want is to be let alone.” (5) These words by Jefferson Davis seem to point toward a defensive stance by the Confederacy, but Joseph Harsh argues that the Confederacy never intended, nor could it afford, to conduct a defensive war. Arguing against the idea that the Confederacy contributed to its own demise by conducting too many offensive campaigns, Harsh believes the Confederacy would have benefited from conducting a more aggressive strategy, especially earlier in the war. Harsh focuses on explaining how Robert E. Lee developed a grand strategy for prosecuting the war which was consistent with Confederate war aims.

The first part of the book looks at the start of the war and the tactics presented by P. G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston. These men suggest several offensive movements but are rejected by Davis and Lee as too complicated. Harsh argues that this was the time to strike because Union forces were in disorder due to the loss at Bull Run and Confederate forces would never again come close to matching Union forces. Jefferson Davis, it is argued, favored an aggressive approach because Confederate war aims wanted to keep all slave states together. This meant that the Confederacy would have to attack Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in order to keep this idea alive. In addition, secession pre-disposed Confederate state for attack, due to their aggressive takeovers of Federal lands and buildings. Because Robert E. Lee had been military adviser to Davis, he understood these aims when he took command of the army after Joe Johnston was injured at Seven Pines.

Lee becomes the centerpiece of the work as he takes over command. While no official plan of attack was placed on paper, Lee’s time with Davis helped him understand what the government wanted and what was needed for success. Though he originally favored a more defensive approach, Lee changed course when he became commander because he recognized the problems faced by the Confederacy in conducting a defensive war. Eventually, resources would run scarce, and Lee did not put much hop in the possibility of outside intervention. Lee, therefore, advocated “aggressive offensive maneuvering,” (144) which would help the Confederacy choose when and how to attack and help lead to war weariness in the North. This strategy involved large-scale turning movements, which came to epitomize Lee’s strategy. A series of rapid decisive victories against Union forces would push the northern public to sue for peace. The victories needed to cost the Union dearly while keeping Confederate losses at a minimum. Harsh describes this overall tactic as offensive-defensive; a term used by military theorist Antoine-Henri Jomini. If viewing Lee from this vantage point, he acted correctly in his aggressiveness at the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, and invasion of Maryland because aggressive tactics were the only way to bring about the Confederacy’s independence.

Harsh asserts that Lee and Davis have not been given enough credit for their abilities and decisions to conduct a more offensive war. Indeed, he even believes Davis could be one of the greatest American Presidents of all time if eligible for the post. Lee’s abilities are in taking a positive attitude about all circumstances and settling the chaos that surrounds him. He is neither the military genius nor blind attacker of other historians. Criticism of Lee’s Lieutenants, however, abounds. Longstreet, Stuart, A. P. Hill, and even Jackson are criticized while Union general John Pope is a much more competent than previously believed. While an intriguing and thoughtful read, there are a few problems. Harsh does not discuss to what extent Lee’s immediate subordinates, or even officers in other theatres, knew or understood the grand strategy. If that is the case, it is not a grand strategy but Lee’s strategy, which others are either not privy too or do not understand. Finally, because the work is a precursor to a larger monograph on the Maryland Campaign, it does end quite abruptly, leading the reader wanting more.

Well-researched and thought out, Harsh’s work offers a different take on the offensive nature of Confederate military operations. With six appendices discussing military definitions and a bevy of notes, Harsh offers a very compelling argument which certainly generates debate.

Texas Christian University                                                                                                             Blake Hill

Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862. By Joseph L. Harsh. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 278.)

            In 1994 historian Joseph L. Harsh began research for an introductory chapter on the Confederate military strategy in the Maryland campaign of 1862 and the project transformed into a review of the Confederate war strategy of the first year and a half of the Civil War.  Originally, Harsh began the project to investigate the logic behind Robert E. Lee’s decision to cross the Potomac River with the Army of Northern Virginia in September 1862.  His research produced two books, Confederate Tide Rising (1998) and Taken at the Flood (1999).  The first book serves as an introduction to the author’s findings and his efforts to recast the existing ideas surrounding the Confederate military’s war strategy in the first year and a half of the war. 

            Harsh states that while the Confederate government, specifically President Jefferson Davis, publically stated that the South wanted “to be let alone” in practice, the Confederate military pursued an offensive and not defensive war strategy.  The Confederacy chased three war goals, “independence, territorial integrity, and the union of all the slave states” (7).  Harsh argues that the Confederacy’s primary goal was independence but that could not be accomplished by secession.  The Confederate States of America had to gain their independence from the North because the South could not maintain independence through political declarations.  Various obstacles stood in the way of true independence for the South.  Most importantly, other nations had to recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation.  The recognition from other nations would not happen if the South publically pursued an offensive war but President Davis and Lee recognized that a defensive war strategy would only work if the Confederate military could thwart invasions and hold their ground.  President Davis and Lee understood that the South had fewer men and fewer resources than the North and could not successfully implement a defensive war strategy.  Harsh argues that these obstacles forced President Davis and Lee to execute an offensive war strategy in the beginning of the war to break the will of the North. 

            The second war goal of territorial integrity was achieved by casting out any Federal forces and seizing Federal resources.  Confederate forces confiscated “nineteen forts, sixteen ships, eight arsenals and depots, three army barracks, one payroll, one mint, one hospital, and numerous customhouses and post offices,” by April 11, 1861 (8).  Harsh argues that while acquiring the Federal resources in the South was aggressive, Southerners viewed their actions as fair because they were simply taking back what was owed to them.  The third war goal was to have all fifteen slave states and territories in the Southwest join the Confederacy.  The seven states that seceded from the Union used their provisional government to persuade the remaining eight states to join their cause.  The author asserts that regardless of the other eight states lack of efforts to join the Confederacy, the desire to expand the South’s boundaries shaped the Confederate war strategy and public policy (9).  By examining the Confederacy’s three war goals Harsh successfully demonstrates that the South employed an offensive and not defensive war strategy but publically maintained that the South wanted “to be let alone.” 

Interestingly, the author explores the relationship between President Davis and Lee as they constructed military policies and strategies.  President Davis did not have a staff or coordinating boards to transform war goals into a military strategy.  President Davis worked with the secretary of war and military generals to conduct the war.  They did not write down a comprehensive war strategy and all orders came through letters and instructions from war councils.  For President Davis, his relationship with Lee proved most valuable because he depended on his military leaders to conduct the war without a structured plan or chain of command.  Harsh states that if Lee and President Davis did not have a strong relationship built on trust and respect then the Confederacy could not have executed their war strategy. 

Confederate Tide Rising is short in length with six chapters and several appendices but most importantly the book could easily be utilized in a variety of educational courses for undergraduates and graduates.  The author simplifies the Confederate war strategy and convincingly proves that the South had an offensive war strategy but kept it from the public.  Harsh successfully entices his readers with his arguments by making a potentially technical and complicated subject easy to comprehend for novice and well-read students of the Civil War.

Texas Christian University                                                                              Brooke Wibracht

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Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862.  By Joseph L. Harsh.  (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1998).

             During the campaign season of 1862 the newly formed Confederate States of America grappled with the repeated invasions by United States forces descending from across the Maryland-Virginia frontier.  After the successful expulsion of Union armies from the state of Virginia the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, declared that offensive operations should proceed at once.  The strategy behind this seemingly contradictory approach to territorial defense is the subject of Joseph L. Harsh’s Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862.  Harsh argues against previous historians that have viewed the Antietam campaign as a change in Southern strategy to win the war.  For Harsh, the Antietam campaign represented merely the continuation of an already existing policy established by Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis to take the offensive whenever practical.  To support this contention, Confederate Tide Rising examines the preceding year and a half of conflict in the Eastern Theatre in an effort to show the offensive-defense scheme that the Confederacy ran.  Lee’s campaigns in northern Virginia repeatedly showcased a willingness to take the offensive when ever possible in order to threaten lines of supply, redirect Union reinforcements, and arrange U.S. military formations into positions where they could not mutually support each other and in turn be destroyed individually.  Harsh contends that these operational deployments represent a concerted effort by the Confederacy to conduct a primarily offensive strategy during the war. 

            Harsh asserts that despite Confederate claims that they wanted merely to be left alone and did not seek war with the United States the very nature of the Confederacy required an offensive if the Confederacy wanted to ensure Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland’s inclusion into any new nation.  Further, according to Harsh, the Confederacy had no choice but to conduct offensive operations against the Union in order to receive international recognition and therefore legitimacy as a nation.

            While Davis or Lee never committed to paper a clear strategic plan as Winfield Scott, George McClellan, or Ulysses S. Grant did, Harsh asserts that a vision of what their plan was can be formulated by looking at the actions carried out by Lee and Davis early in the war; especially when Lee worked closely in Richmond with Davis directing the war prior to his commanding the Army of Northern Virginia.  This is the policy of offensive-defense for which Harsh makes such a strong case.  The problem with this conclusion is that Davis or Lee communicated this plan to other theatre commanders, and therefore cannot be proven an actual comprehensive strategy for the war as a whole.  Further, there is substantial evidence to suggest that Lee and Davis did not develop this “strategy” and communicate it to their subordinates at all.  The idea of the offensive-defense became popular in the mid-nineteenth century as an operational or tactical employment of force after its successful use by Napoleon Bonaparte.  Later writers on military thought and culture such as Karl von Clausewitz and Antoine-Henri Jomini were required reading at the United States Military Academy where many of the leaders of the Civil War were educated.  Both of these authors carefully dissected Napoleons methods and taught them to new generations of military men.  That numerous Confederate generals thought similarly about issues of warfare should be little surprise and does not indicate a concerted effort to transmit wartime policy to commanders in the field.

            Further, Harsh argues that Davis and Lee preformed the offensive-defensive masterfully and that Lee is a great general and Davis is one of the greatest American presidents of all time, if he could get included on the list that is.  Where Harsh, and possibly Lee and Davis, are mistaken though is in the actualities of the political situation in which they are fighting.  Jomini and Clausewitz wrote on how an existing nation-state should conduct warfare.  The Confederacy however was not in a conventional war between two nation-states; it was in a revolution trying to become a nation state. 

            On one of the first pages of front matter, Harsh includes Clauswitz’s famous, “War is not to be regarded as an independent thing, but rather as a political instrument.”  Harsh is not able to resolve his contention that Lee and Davis conducted a brilliant strategy of offensive-defense in the truest form of Napoleon, and the fact that they ultimately lost the war by frittering away the meager resources the Confederacy had.  Davis and Lee, it may be argued were great military leaders, as revolutionary leaders they were a failure.  For any revolution to succeed its army and government need only outlast the opposition’s willingness to fight.  In reading his sources as closely as he has Harsh gives us interesting insight into the war Lee and Davis thought they were fighting, unfortunately for them that was not the reality.

Joseph Stoltz                                                                               Texas Christian University

Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862. By Joseph L.Harsh. (Kent, Ohio and London: The Kent State University Press, 1998). 

Historian Joseph L. Harsh prefaces his tome, Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862,  with a quote from Karl von Clausewitz’ classic treatise on the nature of warfare titled, On War, which states that war exists as an instrument of political policy.  Taking his cue from Clausewitz, Harsh demonstrates that Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, prosecuted his wartime strategy according to the demands of Confederate political objectives: the continued independence of the Confederacy, establishment of securely defined territorial boundaries, and the cohesive union of all slave-holding states.  The author notes that Lee and Davis recognized that declaring independence hardly ensured independence.  Harsh focuses his work on the Maryland Campaign of September 1862   

Harsh’s work provides an examination of the Confederate war effort during the first year and a half of war.  The author’s research lead to his conclusion that Lee’s crossing of the Potomac River represented a logical extension of his strategy over the prior three-month period.  Lee’s successes leading up to the crossing of the Potomac led the recently appointed Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to the political center of the Union.  Although many other historians view Lee’s decision to cross the Potomac as a rash action by a “brilliant practitioner who lacked farsightedness,” Harsh argues that Lee envisioned the move as providing the opportunity to pursue Confederate political objectives and secure the success of his mission.  According to the author, Lee’s actions adhered to the war aims of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, and his administration.  Despite rhetoric depicting the Confederate struggle as defensive in nature, Confederate leaders pursued aggressively offensive objectives.  Confederate aims to incorporate the border states and to secure the resources of the upper South demanded offensive strategic planning by Confederate military leaders.  Harsh argues that both Lee and Davis understood this salient point.  As a result, the Confederate strategy of offensive-defensive operations often undertook aggressive strategies.

Harsh’s research includes an assessment of the relationship between Lee and Davis.  According to the author, Davis provided Lee and other Confederate military leaders with room to maneuver within the parameters of overall Confederate strategies.  As a result, Lee undertook his crossing of the Potomac without awaiting confirmation from Davis.  Lee simply viewed his initiative across the Potomac as a continuation of existing Confederate military policy.  Harsh’s analysis of the relationship between Lee and Davis reveals a mutual confidence in the abilities of the other.  The combination of Davis’ political acumen and Lee’s military genius “allowed the Confederacy to survive longer than it had any right to expect.”    

In his first chapters, Harsh provides readers with an overview of Confederate strategy during the first year of the war, followed by a review of Lee’s career up to his appointment by Davis as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.  The following chapters examine events of the late summer of 1862, detailing the campaign from the Seven Days campaign through the encounter at Chantilly.  Perhaps most notably, the author argues that interludes between engagements provided Lee with time to develop strategies to combat McClellan’s forces. 

Harsh concludes his work with six valuable appendices, allowing the reader to examine the working definition of strategy; mobilization, strengths and casualty figures; Lee’s notes on strategy; notes on war councils and strategy conferences; notes on the Richmond campaign, and notes on the campaign against Pope. In addition, the author provides comprehensive endnotes and a bibliography for further research.     

Melanie Kirkland