CWL --- Elephants at Shiloh

Seeing the Elephant: Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh, Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves, 215 pp., paperbound, bibliography, index, chapter notes, citations in text, University of Illinois Press, 2003. $14.95

The authors have created a marvelous study of the 90,000 soldiers who saw combat on April 6th and 7th, 1862 in western Tennessee, a few miles north of Corinth, Mississippi. Like First Manassas, Shiloh taught the citizens of the Union and Confederacy something unexpected. First Masassas taught that the war would not end in 90 days. Shiloh taught that the war would be extremely bloody. With 23,000 in two days fighting, Shiloh ranks with Antietam as one of the costliest battles in the briefest amount of time.

The authors' Introduction sets the tone by immediately presenting three soldiers' view of their experience of combat: drama, trauma, and matter-of-fact. They offer seven categories for how a raw recruit is prepared to preceive combat. A soldier's moral is conditional upon: tactical preparation, political attitudes, logistics, leadership, espirit de corps, comradeship and officier competence. Also, the authors present a bibliographic review of other writings on 'seeing the elephant.'
Studies of heroic romanticism, training and leadership, and combat morale are briefly discussed and the literature in the field is outlined succinctly.

The method of reseach is described and impresses the reader. The authors used 450 diaries and letter collections from 160 regiments and batteries that had not seen combat until Shiloh. Of the 450 soldiers' papers, Reaves and Frank retained 381 soldiers' works that contained enough information to be placed in a data set. Of course, the material was inchoate, spread among letters, diaries and reminiences.
The authors approached this material with 76 questions. If answers to 10 of these questions were found in the soldiers' material, then the source documents were admitted to the data set. The vast majority of the material in the data set was created during the first year of the war.

At the very beginning, the authors set aside "one-dimensional approaches emphasizing, for example, a Victorian heroic ethos or a single factors such as comradship." Reaves, a National Park Ranger serving at Shiloh National Battlefield Park, and Frank, a academic historian, offer an exemplary work of history.

CWL --- Walking Gettysburg's Battlefield: East Cavalry Fields

Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff's Ridge and East Cavalry Field, Wittenberg, Eric J., 201 pp., softcover, index, bibliography, endnotes, appendices, Ironclad Publishing, 2002.

In print Brandy Station, Aldie, Middleburg, Upperville, Hanover and Hunterstown may one day get their due as important and crucial components in the Gettysburg Campaign. If so, then this reader hopes that it is Eric Wittenberg who give it to them. He has produced a clear, concise and probably complete picture of the cavalry battle on Brinkerhoff's Ridge and on the Rummel Farm. I doubt if Wittenberg is an armchair historian. His presentation of these two crucial battles is well grounded upon an understanding of the terrain. (Yes, that was a pun.)

Three and a half miles east from the main Gettsyburg battlefield park is another portion of the park, one that did not contain the huge number of casualites that the main park has. Neverless, the importance of these battles are recognized when the Baltimore Pike is less than three miles away. As many have begun to realize, the eastern portions of the battle: Culp's Hill, East Cemetery Hill, Brinkerhoff's Ridge, and the Rummel Farm may have been more crucial to the outcome of the battle than Pickett's Charge.

The fight on Brinkerhoff's Ridge was between a portion of the Stonewall Brigade of Johnson's Division (CSA) and McIntosh's Brigade of Gregg's Divison of Federal cavalry. This book furthers the agruement in favor of Ewell's decision to use a portion of his infantry on the evening of July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd to cover his left flank due to the constant rumor that Federal troops were coming up the Hanover Road that runs straight through the cavalry actions of July 3rd.

The fight on the Rummel Farm was between three brigades of CSA cavalry and parts of three brigades of Federal cavalry. Chambliss', Lee's, and Hampton's brigades were to be the rope in the snare set for the Federal cavalry. Fortunately for Gregg's division, the commander sniffed a trap, triggered the bait, and then attacked those CSA troops that were advance to capture the Union force.

In dramatic fashion, Wittenberg combines descriptions of personalities with strategy, of hand-to-hand combat with tactics, and of heroism with fighting. The author balances the human element and the tactical element on the battlefield. He uses the soldiers words to both advance the story and bring the action to the climax.
Wittenberg handles the Custer anecdotes even handedly with the Hampton stories, the Wolverines tales with the Palmetto heroics.

The last third of the book is a driving/walking tour of these two cavalry battlefields, illustrated by 20 modern photographs, the majority of which are well composed. There are those several that are covered in shadows and do not give a clear idea of the monument.

The maps are informative and clear; the captions under the portaits include unit in which the officer served. The appendices are the Federal and Confederate order of battle of those units that served on the field that day.

This book is a welcomed addition to the body of literature on the Battle of Gettysburg. Well written and easy to use as a guide, this book is both informative and entertaining.