Davis and Lee at War. By Steven E. Woodworth (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995. Pp. xiii +409.).

Military historians of the US Civil War are few in number; those with venerable reputations are even fewer. It is surprising then that a scholar as young as Professor Woodworth has contributed as much as he has to Civil War historiography. Davis and Lee at War is in many ways an extension of Jefferson Davis and His Generals, but with a major and quite interesting difference; Woodworth’s scholarship has centered on the Western theater of the War. In Davis and Lee, he focuses largely on the Eastern Campaigns that he has so proactively attempted to put in their right (subordinate) place.

Woodworth’s work wisely attempts to reconcile the historical personalities with their decisions; this is important because the Confederate High Command could be best described as a collection of personalities. Woodworth’s scholarly despising of Lost Cause literature does not keep him from treating Jefferson Davis fairly. In fact Woodworth’s book comes as close as any to painting a balanced picture of Davis. History has painted Davis as a blundering meddler; if he had only left strategy to the generals (and by generals one really means Robert Lee) the Confederacy might have won the war. If they had not won, they might have at least not lost; Davis’ strategy all along was not total military victory but a careful defensive strategy that could help the Confederacy outlast the Federal will to fight. Operating on the Davis Defensive thesis, Woodworth (audaciously, some might say) proposes that Robert Lee’s audacious and often bloody style of fighting cost the Confederate cause more than President Davis’ strategy. Lee’s ability to control Davis meant that two strategies dominated the Confederate high command and neither was pursued with a sense of focus. Lee, in fact, won out. But Woodworth refuses to fundamentally disagree with Lee’s strategy.

General Lee’s strategy might best be termed the cosmopolitan strategy. Lee’s attitude might best be described as a Civil War Era “shock and awe.” Although Woodworth might seem to arguing opposites, his point is well argued.  Lee’s victories tended to be sensational. Lee’s victories tended to startle the opposing army, and often his reputation for invincibility became more unassailable because of the totality of his victory in battle. Audacity and perceived invincibility fit into Lee’s vision for war; if your enemy believed he couldn’t beat you morale would fall. And so the Confederate President pursued a strategy built on the premise of outlasting the enemy. His supreme field commander believed that if he exhausted himself pulling off wildly unexpected victories over superior forces he could destroy northern morale. Neither strategy could be a panacea but the problem remained that neither was ever effectively implemented. Lee’s ability to control Davis created an undesirable reality; Davis believed that Lee understood and carried out his strategy. Lee didn’t.

Few scholars have found serious criticisms to level at Woodworth; the reason is that Davis and Lee at War recognizes an essential historical truth. Historical reality is rarely an extreme but instead a combination or compromise. Woodworth’s scholarship is pursued with military efficiency. He doesn’t waist time on emblemism or particularly symbolic victories. The work’s clean scholarship is devoid if any emotionalism. Lee and Davis were both right and wrong.

Woodworth’s book has been universally called excellent; and it is. It is more relevant than ever now. In the fifteen years since Davis and Lee new cosmopolitan approached to studying the Civil War have made headway in scholarly circles. Woodworth’s work, in particular, gives historical background to certain Confederate diplomatic actions. Woodworth’s scholarship neatly explains Robert Lee’s near pathological attempts to procure more troops. The book also is useful for students of Confederate diplomacy and transnational relations. Over a century ago James Morton Callahan argued that Robert Lee’s army was the best European public opinion influence the Confederacy had. Lee deplored various monetary and social exemptions. Lee hoped for an early, total, and overpowering military blitz; Davis’ measured defensive strategy led him to see less evil in the social nature of the army. In the end Woodworth conceded that Lee’s strategy could have won the war; in the end, however, generals like US Grant and William Sherman ended the Confederacy by turning Lee’s violent strategy on the South.

Miles Smith                                                                            Texas Christian University

 

Davis and Lee at War.  By Steven E. Woodworth.  Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

            In Davis and Lee at War Steven Woodworth looks at the eastern theater of the Civil War.  Unlike other historians in the past, he does not focus solely on the actions and success of Lee and instead looks at Davis’s performance in this theater.  Here he shows that although Lee pursued an offensive strategy, this was one of two possible strategies the South could have used to obtain its independence.  Jefferson Davis favored the other strategy, that of the thoroughly defensive, survival-oriented warfare.  The tension between Davis’s defensive strategy and Lee’s offensive pursuit for early victory formed the central theme in Davis’s war for Virginia and Confederate independence.

            In Virginia, Davis failed to find and direct generals in a way that they would carry out his ideas in the operation of the Confederate army, this forms the main theme for his relationship with the generals of this theater of the war.  This problem with generals creates four chronological periods that each lasted about a year.  The first period began when Davis arrived in Virginia and started directing his energies to the commands of this theater of the war.  The generals that Davis chose in the beginning, such as Johnston and Beauregard, proved themselves failures and showed that they were incompatible with Davis’s approach to the war in one way or another.  Beauregard spent too much time planning unrealistic schemes for Confederate offensives, while Davis had a hard time getting Johnston to fight, even on the defensive.

            After Johnston was wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, Davis chose Robert E. Lee to succeed him, bringing about the second period.  “Davis and Lee became one of the most potent high-command collaborations of this or any other war.” (329)  Still, they had different concepts of how to wage the war.  Lee believed that since the South was weaker it must strike fast and hard to win victories which would demoralize the North and temporarily paralyze its military strength.  Moved by Lee’s victories and persuasiveness, Davis gave in to Lee’s strategy only enough to stretch his defensive ideas.

            The defeat at Gettysburg brought about the third period.  Between Gettysburg and the beginning of the Richmond-Petersburg siege, Davis and Lee worked harmoniously together.  The president still supported Lee but became more assertive about his own strategic ideas of the defensive.  Despite Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg, Davis continued to express confidence in his general.  Lee, although he had not changed his mind about how to wage the war, was limited in his ability to carry out the type of warfare he had in the previous year because Davis transferred troops from Lee’s army to the West.

            The last period, the Richmond-Petersburg siege, the Appomattox campaign, and its aftermath still showed cooperation between Lee and Davis, but also revealed Davis’s increasingly unrealistic faith in the continued possibility of a Confederate victory.  The president’s inability to see the obvious would mean that peace would come only when the South was thoroughly devastated.  Still, Woodworth argues that Davis was the best that the South could offer and only defeat exposed his weaknesses of indecisiveness, pride, and reluctance to change his opinion or admit error.

            Steven E. Woodworth has written an excellent book on President Davis and his generals in Virginia.  We find that the decision to place Lee in command of the army in Virginia was one of Davis’s most significant.  The relationship that he had with Lee made him more willingly to let the general take the offensive, but only to an extent.  This book is very well written and captivating as he shows the relationship between Davis and his generals in the east, especially that of his leading general, Robert E. Lee.

Leah D. Parker

 

Davis and Lee at War.  By Steven E. Woodworth.  (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.  Pp. 409.  Cloth.)

In 1990, Steven E. Woodworth published his acclaimed Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West in which he examined the problems of Confederate command in the all-important Western Theater of the American Civil War.  Building upon the success of that publication, Woodworth returned to the extensive holdings of the Jefferson Davis Association at Rice University to produce another award-winning treatise on the relationships between Davis and his generals in Davis and Lee at War.  Published in 1995, Davis and Lee at War examines the complex network of personalities that carried out the Confederate war effort in the Eastern Theater, and as such, it would not be erroneous to consider this the second volume in a comprehensive study of the Confederate high command.   

The primary purpose of Davis and Lee at War is to investigate the relationship between Davis and Confederate General Robert Edward Lee, an association that “became one of the most potent high command collaborations of this or any other war” (p. 329).  In accomplishing his task, Woodworth first presents Davis’s strategic vision as both conservative and defensive.  Davis recognized the Union’s overall strength in manpower and material, and he believed the best chance for Confederate victory lay in prolonging the war and wearing down the North’s will to continue the fight.  In line with his strategic interests, Davis sought to avoid hazardous all-or-nothing battles and only advocated offensive raids into enemy territory when the risks were minimal.  In short, Davis believed his fellow southerners’ morale would outlast that of northerners and that the South could be victorious in its bid for independence “simply by not losing” (p. 157). 

Juxtaposed with Davis’s defensive approach is the aggressive mindedness of General Lee.  Characterizing Lee as an honorable gentleman who defeated his conscience in a battle over his decision to resign from the U.S. Army, Woodworth surmises that Lee “sometimes acted as if he felt a need to vindicate his choice by military victory” (p. 115).  Often acting with what one contemporary characterized as “sublime audacity” (p. 193), “Lee sought crushing victory” (p. 214) in his quest for “a quick resolution to the conflict in order to relieve the tension of moral uncertainty” (p. 227).  According to Woodworth, Lee did not share Davis’s “unquestioning confidence in the rightness or the ultimate success of the cause,” and he believed the war “could be lost simply by not winning” (p. 157).  Fearing that the Confederacy was composed of people who shared his moral ambivalence, Lee felt that the South needed “resounding victories and an early peace, or its morale was bound to crumble” (p. 157). 

Ultimately, Lee was able to convince Davis to support many of his gambles.  Lee understood how to coax Davis, and he constantly cultivated their relationship by keeping Davis informed and asking for his counsel on military matters.  Generally, Lee’s success in influencing Davis can be attributed to his capacity for “placing his own daring schemes in the most conservative possible light,” but he was not above going around Davis when he felt his aggressive overtones might not sit well with the president (p. 183). 

Despite their ability to maintain a good working relationship, the conflicting strategies of Davis and Lee doomed the Confederacy to defeat.  Woodworth asserts that “[e]ither policy, pursued consistently, gave some hope of success.  The trouble was neither was so pursued” (p. 330).  Lee persuaded Davis to all but abandon his defensive grand strategy in favor of supporting the offensive, but Davis did so reluctantly and prevented Lee from acting unilaterally.  In contrast, Lee bled his army nearly dry in his desperate attempts to achieve his crushing victory.  There is little evidence to suggest that either strategy would have led to a definite Confederate victory, but Woodworth’s contention is that “[n]either got a fair chance” (p. 331).  

If anything falls short in this book, it is the title.  Davis and Lee at War is far more inclusive and covers many other relationships besides that of Davis and Lee.  Granted, Davis and Lee are the principal protagonists through most of the book, but other generals and politicians play key supporting roles.  Despite its somewhat misleading title, a quibble hardly worth mentioning, Davis and Lee at War provides a provocative analysis of the Confederate high command in the Eastern Theater.  Through meticulous interrogation of the sources, Woodworth presents a thorough examination of Jefferson Davis and his generals in Virginia and concludes that “Davis’s inability to find and direct generals in such a way that they would carry out his ideas in the operation of southern armies forms the main theme in his relations with his generals in Virginia” (p. 327).  Despite these failures in overall strategy and command, Woodworth maintains that “Davis was the best the South could offer” (p. 333), and although Davis’s “performance was less than perfect, it would have been more than adequate if the Confederacy had had a larger margin for error” (p. 201).      

Jason Mann Frawley

Texas Christian University