A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas. By Ethan S. Rafuse. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002. Pp. xvi, 226.)
Ethan S. Rafuse determines that the lack of scholarly attention to First Manassas in civil war literature is due to the relatively small scale of the battle, but he believes that it deserves more consideration. His book, one of the civil war era books of the American Crisis series, describes the period in 1861 from the firing on Fort Sumter in April to the clash at Manassas in July and places the events in a cultural and social context. Rafuse examines the personalities, strategy, and tactics of the campaign, but also explores the reasons soldiers fought and the perceptions civilian Americans had of the war. He relies heavily on secondary sources and published collections of primary materials, so the contribution of this work is its approach and presentation, not its research. A Single Grand Victory is a thorough yet concise account of the first major campaign and battle of the civil war.
Rafuse divides his book into three sections. Part I examines the expectations most Americans had of the war after it had officially gotten underway in South Carolina. Rafuse notes that almost everyone expected the war to be short and determined by a single battle. This notion, he suggests, was misguided and yet understandable given the nature of warfare at the time. In an interesting introductory chapter, he explains why both sides believed they had the advantage. The North clearly had the material benefits in industry and agriculture and, furthermore, viewed itself as more socially sophisticated. The South, however, also had some material advantages like a large span of territory and the expectation of European aid. Like in the North, southerners believed they had the superior cause and culture. Rafuse also explores the reasons that soldiers on either side fought, pointing out that belief in defending ideological causes like unity or slavery motivated some, but that most simply fought to defend their homes and communities. Part I also investigates the development of military strategy, focusing in particular on the debate in the North over whether to go on the offensive or proceed with the more restrained Anaconda plan. Wanting to test the notion that the war could be won with a few bold actions, Lincoln soon sided with those favoring an immediate offensive against Manassas Junction.
Once Lincoln made the decision for action, his generals had to prepare their untested troops and finalize plans for the campaign. Rafuse covers these developments in Part II. Small skirmishes had taken place in several theaters in the months following Fort Sumter, but Rafuse opines that everyone knew that the decisive battle would take place at Manassas. The chapters in Part II primarily focus on the movement of Federal troops under Irvin McDowell, and P. G. T. Beauregard’s attempt to prepare for an attack that he knew was coming. Although McDowell had a good plan of attack, declining soldier discipline and some leadership blunders—like the fiasco at Blackburn’s Ford—gave the South a morale boost going into the battle.
The most substantial section of the book, Part III, is a narrative of the actual battle on 21 July 1861. The South had the advantage of confidence going in to the engagement and Beauregard hoped to take the offensive. The North, however, still had the numerical advantage. Rafuse offers details of soldiers’ movements as the battle unfolded, and comments on the abilities and faults of military leaders on both sides, including William T. Sherman, Thomas J. Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston. Henry Hill was the key to the battle, according to Rafuse. He attempts to explain why McDowell, having won the advantage at Matthews Hill, decided not to immediately pursue the Confederates south. He concludes that “it is clear that McDowell’s decision to halt his drive south was a terrible mistake—one of the most important made by any officer during the entire campaign” (145). Rafuse offers several additional critiques of McDowell and other officers—Sherman in particular—that he believes explains the Union defeat in the battle. In the aftermath of Manassas, Americans on both sides of the conflict were sobered by the human costs of war and realized that it would take more than a single grand battle to achieve reconciliation.
As a publication of Scholarly Resources, this book targets undergraduate students and is accessible to a wide audience. For scholars and other readers interested in more details about the battle and its cultural context, Rafuse has included a helpful bibliographic essay. For a relatively small volume, Rafuse provides a nice account of the campaign and battle of Manassas, and fills a scholarly gap by combining the traditional military approach of detailing strategy and tactics with a “new” military history approach that incorporates social aspects of war as well.
Jensen Branscombe
Texas Christian University