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A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865. By Russell F. Weigley. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, c. 2000. Pp. xxx, 612. $35.00, ISBN 0-253-33738-0.)
Using his own family's connection to the Civil War as a point of departure, Weigley, a respected military historian, presents a highly readable, balanced account of the conflict beginning in the secession winter of 1860-61 and continuing to the final Confederate surrenders in the late spring of 1865.
Weigley confidently and forcefully states his opinions, some of which are conventional and some controversial. Among the former is his assessment that the rifle-musket was the key factor in Civil War tactics, rendering infantry assaults futile and bloody. Among his more controversial opinions is his approval of Abraham Lincoln's spring 1862 decision to divert troops from George B. McClellan's offensive toward Richmond in order (as the president hoped) to trap Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, and his assertion that Daniel E. Sickles may actually have been justified in moving his corps into the notorious salient that became the scene of the second day's fighting at Gettysburg.
Some of Weigley's assessments affirm long-held beliefs that many modern scholars are now disputing. Most striking in this category is his defense of Joseph E. Johnston and that general's Fabian policy of avoiding battle. "If there was any way for the Confederacy to win the war," Weigley writes, "it was by such strategy as Johnston had employed ... to trade space for men and time .... But the Confederacy...