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The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock
written by Francis Augustin O'Reilly
Studio : Louisiana State University Press
by Louisiana State University Press
Publisher : Louisiana State University Press
Released : 2006-04
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780807131541
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 22 reviews)
List Price : $24.95
Our Price : $15.39
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Book Description |
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The battle at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862 involved hundreds of thousands of men; produced staggering, unequal casualties (13,000 Federal soldiers compared to 4,500 Confederates); ruined the career of Ambrose E. Burnside; embarrassed Abraham Lincoln; and distinguished Robert E. Lee as one of the greatest military strategists of his era. Francis Augustín O'Reilly draws upon his intimate knowledge of the battlegrounds to discuss the unprecedented nature of Fredericksburg's warfare. Lauded for its vivid description, trenchant analysis, and meticulous research, his award-winning book makes for compulsive reading. AUTHOR BIO: Francis Augustín O'Reilly is also the author of Stonewall Jackson at Fredericksburg: The Battle of Prospect Hill. He has written numerous articles on the Civil War and conducts extensive battlefield studies and tours throughout Virginia. He lives in Woodford, Virginia. |
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Excellent telling of a terrible day |
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One of the finest researched and written campaign studies to come out in many years. I have read this fine book twice. It is a big battle with a lot of brigades and regiments coming and going, yet O'Reilly keeps the action organized and the flow of the battle understandable. He describes each action individually within the context of the overall battle, helping the reader to fully comprehend the sequences of each attack and there importance. The battle of Fredericksburg was actually two different battles being fought simultaneously. The description of the horrific attacks by the various Union brigades on the stone wall is some of the best combat narratives you will find anywhere. The author truly knows this subject, and this battlefield. It is a great accomplishment in recent Civl War scholarship. |
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Irritating and Dull |
We have been reading books on the Civil War for years now, particularly accounts of important battles such as Shiloh or The Seven Days. Many of them have been of the same genre as The Fredericksburg Campaign, Winter War on the Rappahannock by O'Reilly. That is, detailed accounts of particular battles or campaigns as integrated into the broader context of the war. Sears's books, e.g. To The Gates of Richmond and Landscape Turned Red are exemplars of the genre. Hennessey's Return to Bull Run is a solid entry. Tanner's Stonewall in the Valley is another favorite of ours.
O'Reilly's The Fredericksburg Campaign is by far the dreariest, most unfocused, and annoying book of this type that we have read.
Mr. O'Reilly clearly sympathizes with the South. That is not, per se, what makes his writing style so irritating. What makes this aspect of his writing so annoying is that, like a handful of other southern-leaning modern writers, he is still fighting the war, not with rifles and cannon, but with adjectives and emphases. This unpleasant slant permeates the book, leading to an implicit theme that is not otherwise supported with evidence or balance. We'll give just a couple of the more striking examples here.
In the chapter on the sack of Fredericksburg, O'Reilly discusses Union General Sully's entering his sister's home--she and her husband were Confederates--and using it as his headquarters, standard practice during the war on both sides. There was no damage at all done to the house. However, we had to read this paragraph twice to be sure that this was the case. O'Reilly tells the story in terms of (characteristic northern) "outlandish mischief"...which Sully did not commit...against the house of a "d___ rebel!" which he "[broke into]"...by climbing through a window - because the door was locked. We're told, with no source cited, that Sully did not mean to protect the house, but used it only for his own comfort. O'Reilly tries to add some "humor" by relating the story of Sam, a house "servant" (the term slave is virtually absent from the book), who jokes along with hooting, "grinning onlookers", in an Amos-and-Andy accent, at Sully's entering through the window.
Along similar lines, O'Reilly slants his abundant, and frequently grotesque, descriptions of battlefield death shamelessly. Consider these typical descriptions of northern deaths, taken from a desultory re-reading of Chapter 10: "one shell struck a man in the back, cut him in two, and sent his entrails flying" (page 303), "Blood and brains were scattered everywhere" (page 309), "A shell had eviscerated a Union soldier, `and...set fire to his clothing...his corpse lay slowly cooking'" (page 312). Contrast these with a southern death that O'Reilly chooses to detail, that of General Maxcy Gregg (page 443). He "struggled in silent agony" as fellow officers and a distant kinsman prayed and kept a vigil. Gregg, we learn, passed away after a touching reconciliation with a magnanimous and spiritual Stonewall. He "looked very handsome" in death.
George Romero deaths for northerners. Edmond Rostand deaths for southerners. Invariably? No. But overwhelmingly, as if the author delighted in the overwhelming northern carnage.
However this heavy-handed southern sympathizing is merely annoying. What makes the book incomparably dreary is O'Reilly's un-integrated, virtually interminable, cataloguing of particular troop movements. Good books of this genre, e.g. those by Sears, present a cogent account of the battle or campaign as a whole, spiced with significant anecdotes and enriched with telling accounts of the experiences of individual soldiers or regiments. O'Reilly, by contrast, seems simply to tell the story of each individual regiment in more-or-less chronological order, without attention to relevance for a thesis. And, after the first few dozen pages of this, one recognizes an odd narrative formalism into which these accounts are fit: commander initiates the attack, anecdote about the commander or the regiment, quirky banter about doom and duty among the soldiers, up and out of the millrace ravine or the unfinished railroad or wherever they'd been protected, the nightmare of entering the field of battle, details of one or two grisly deaths, attack failed. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat...
We are interested in the Civil War, having read at least twenty books on the topic over the past few years, so we're glad to have this resource on the details of the battle on the ground. But the recitation of such details does not constitute an integrated, coherent, lucid account of the Battle of Fredericksburg. O'Reilly has done a service by extracting these stories from letters, memoirs, regimental histories, and other sources. But they belong in a (long) appendix, or in a companion volume. We had to refer, repeatedly, back to Catton, MacPherson, and Foote to get a clear overview of the structure of this battle into which to integrate O'Reilly's overabundant details.
We're going back to Sears for Chancellorsville. Although we don't have a specific recommendation, we recommend looking elsewhere for a thoughtful account of the Battle of Fredericksburg.
William Dale
David S. Ross
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An excellent American Civil War Battle book |
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I'm in the middle of reading this work, but I can already highly recommend it for anyone interested in exploring the Battle of Fredericksburg in great detail (one of my great-great grandfathers was living there at the time). An outstanding author, Mr O'Reilly was recommended to me by a volunteer researcher working with the National Park Service in the area. I heartily second this recommendation. |
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A excellent, detailed account of the battle |
This book is an excellent and very detailed report of the battle of Fredericksburg. It is not a good book for someone who is interested in a simple overview of the battle, but to someone interested in the details of what happened at Fredericksburg and why the events unfolded as they did, it is an excellent reference. I believe that this will be the definitive book on Fredericksburg for many years.
I was very pleased how it shows that the plans of Burnside were not as myopic as a lot of current history buffs seem to think. Burnside actually achieved a number of positive accomplishments in the battle, including stealing a march on Lee and breaking Lee's lines in Jackson's front. The book makes clear that to a large degree that there is plenty of blame to go around for the defeat at Fredericksburg. People such as Halleck, Lincoln, Duane, Franklin, Smith and others all had a major hand in the defeat, and most of them had reasons to attempt to lay the entire blame at the feet of Burnsides. While no one can defend Burnside's later obsession with Maryes' Heights (which is covered in wonderful detail in the book), and in the final analysis the blame for the final result is with the general who planned the battle, which Burnsides freely shouldered, this book shows that at least in its initial conception his plans were not the ravings of a lunatic.
I believe it is only through looking at the details and accounts written at the time of the battle that a more true picture can be seen, and this is what I believe O'Reilly presents.
Burnside |
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Very nice |
It was a Christmas gift and the person we gave it to was very happy.
Thank you! |
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