Product Description: In the spring of 1862, Federal troops under the command of General George B. McClellan launched what was to be a coordinated, two-pronged attack on Richmond in the hope of taking the Confederate capital and bringing a quick end to the Civil War. The Confederate high command tasked Stonewall Jackson with diverting critical Union resources from this drive, a mission Jackson fulfilled by repeatedly defeating much larger enemy forces. His victories elevated him to near iconic status in both the North and the South and signaled a long war ahead. One of the most intriguing and storied episodes of the Civil War, the Valley Campaign has heretofore only been related from the Confederate point of view. With Shenandoah 1862, Peter Cozzens dramatically and conclusively corrects this shortcoming, giving equal attention to both Union and Confederate perspectives.
Based on a multitude of primary sources, Cozzens's groundbreaking work offers new interpretations of the campaign and the reasons for Jackson's success. Cozzens also demonstrates instances in which the mythology that has come to shroud the campaign has masked errors on Jackson's part. In addition, Shenandoah 1862 provides the first detailed appraisal of Union leadership in the Valley Campaign, with some surprising conclusions.
Moving seamlessly between tactical details and analysis of strategic significance, Cozzens presents the first balanced, comprehensive account of a campaign that has long been romanticized but never fully understood.
Good, but not great This is a well-written book as far as style and prose. However, it gets some of the details wrong (Hamden-Sydney College is NOT in Lex., VA), the company level descriptions of unit movements gets numbing, but more important, they treatment of Jackson is lacking something. I agree with the author's premis that SJ is over-rated and has not been looked at critically enough. However, Cozzens never really gets into the mind of TJ. We see him from a distance, and then hear from the author what TJ did wrong. Needs far more analysis of TJ's ideas, motives, generalship.
Has Anybody Got a Map??? Peter Cozens has penned a detailed, well written, densely researched account of the endlessly instructive Valley Campaign of 1862. It would be easier to heap praise on his prodigious effort if Cozzen's publisher had loosened up on the purse strings and sprung for some decent maps and illustrations.
The Shenandoah Valley is not Kansas or the New Jersey Turnpike, and superior knowledge of its intricate topography was one reason the Confederates came off so well in 1862. Without decent maps to accompany his voluminous descriptions of battles, march routes and villages, Cozzens is forced to waste whole pages describing specific geographic and tactical features. I LIVE in the Shenandoah Valley, but still found myself bewildered by some of these incredibly wordy place descriptions. The few maps included in the book are murky, monochromatic, incredibly hard to read, and on occasion baffling. The devoted reader is best advised to have a good high-scale map of the Shenandoah Valley at hand well before undertaking Cozzen's otherwise exemplary tome.
The Fairest Assessment of the 1862 Valley Campaign I've ever read Cozzens' Shenandoah 1862 is by far one of the best accounts of a civil war campaign/battle that i have ever read. His fair and even dealings with both sides of this epic event are a breath of fresh air to a literary civil war community that has developed a tendency of "revising" reputations to sell books. There is no overblown worship of Jackson nor is there the usual condemnation of the Union Generals and the tactics they employed. Cozzens shows the campaign as I imagine it really was - a matchup of armies feeling out each other early on in a conflict that was about to take on a very different nature. In doing so, he draws on previously unused letters, diaries and other first hand accounts to enhance the narrative and allow the story to be told by those who were involved. Because of this and Cozzens' superb writing abilities this did not feel like a 500+ battle narrative. He balances the minute-by-minute troop dispositions and other exacting details of militaria with the more important broader implications of overall strategy and personal experiences. This is impressive (and rare) in most campaign narratives. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in military strategy or civil war/american history.
High time It was high time for a well researched, thorough, and detailed account of the 1862 Valley campaign with perspectives covering both sides. Cozzens brings the same level of excellent writing and history from his Western theater books to the East and does not disappoint. A must read for all serious Civil War buffs. Without being judgmental Cozzens provides facts and personal anecdotes that allow the reader to understand that historical figures are rarely as good or as bad as many histories have portrayed them.
Stonewall in the Valley Of all the various authors currently writing Civil War history, I think Cozzens is by far the most readable. This book covers the entire campaign in the Shenadoah Valley up to the time Jackson's forces were pulled out and thrown into the defense of Richmond. you won't find anything here on Jackson's participation in those battles, as it falls outside of the scope of this book and it's just as well, as it wasn't exactly Jackson's shining hour.
The Valley campaign firmly established Jackson's reputation as one of the great military commanders in the South, and a beacon of hope in a very dark hour for the Confederate cause as well. But, you'll find he comes into considerable criticism as a commander throughout the book, especially for someone whose image has been carved into the side of a mountain down in Georgia, a literal iconic figure. It took a quite a bit of on the job training for Jackson to reach the brilliant peak of his career at Chancellorsville, and a lot of good men died on the way.
Watching Jackson develop as a commander is one of the more interesting aspects of this book, and one of its great strengths. He's probably the most eccentric of the great Civil War leaders. Almost no one under his command seems to have had any idea what was on his mind at any point during his campaigns, up to and including the other generals. Cozzens makes an interesting point that this may have been because he was all but incapable of expressing his thoughts verbally. It reminds me of a point in the Ken Burns' Civil War series, when Shelby Foote was talking about Jackson and someone tells him that one of his aides had been killed. According to Shelby, Jackson exclaimed "very commendable, very commendable", primarily as he knew he had to say something, but had no idea what to say. Jackson's strong Christian beliefs come into play in the book as well with several instances of Jackson criticising his commanders for using profane language. The image of Jackson pausing to pray to God for divine assistance during a particularly critical point in one battle is practically Old Testament.
Jackson pushed himself and his troops to the point of collapse, often for very limited results and never really accepted their physical limits or his own. He was particularly demanding of his subordinate officers and attempted to wreck the careers of two of his generals for their supposed failures in several battles. He also seems not to have understood at this point how to coordinate and deploy large units into battle.
However for all his faults, he was overwhelmingly the superior of most of the Union commanders he faced, and Cozzens does an exceptional job of giving the reader solid images of every one. Shields and Fremont in particular come in for well-deserved criticism. But Lincoln gets a fair amount as well, as at this stage he hadn't found dependable commanding generals and took a personal hand in directing the war. However, you get the clear idea from Cozzens that Jackson's reputation was built on fighting inferior generals, and the impression if Grant and Sherman had been in charge of the Union forces in the Valley, we would have a very different image of Jackson today.
This is a great book for the Civil War buff, you could hardly ask for better. It's probably more than a bit much for the average reader, but then if you're buying a book of this length on one campaign, you probably should rank yourself among the buffs. If you like this book and haven't already read Cozzen's other Civil War books, you definitely should.
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