The American Civil War : a military history / John Keegan

Originally published: London : Hutchinson, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-373) and index.

North and South divide -- Will there be a war? -- Improvised armies -- Running the war -- The military geography of the Civil War -- The life of the soldier -- Plans -- McClellan takes command -- The war in middle America -- Lee's war in the East, Grant's war in the West -- Chancellorsville and Gettysburg -- Vicksburg -- Cutting the Chattanooga-Atlanta link -- The overland campaign and the fall of Richmond -- Breaking into the South -- The battle off Cherbourg and the Civil War at sea -- Black soldiers -- The home fronts -- Walt Whitman and wounds -- Civil War generalship -- Civil War battle -- Could the South have survived? -- The end of the war.

American scholars tend to write the Civil War as a great national epic, but Keegan, an Englishman with a matchless knowledge of comparative military history, approaches it as a choice specimen with fascinating oddities. His more thematic treatment has its shortcomings-his campaign and battle narratives can be cursory and ill-paced-but it pays off in far-ranging discussions of broader features: the North's strategic challenge in trying to subdue a vast Confederacy ringed by formidable natural obstacles and lacking in significant military targets; the importance of generalship; the unusual frequency of bloody yet indecisive battles; and the fierceness with which soldiers fought their countrymen for largely ideological motives. Keegan soars above the conflict to delineate its contours, occasionally swooping low to expand on a telling detail or a moment of valor or pathos.