Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1033059 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 607 pages

Customer Reviews

Cracking work on under-studied Civil War battle
This is a thorough and well-written account of the campaign and battle of Second Bull Run by a former historian at the Manassas National Battlefield site.

This battle is always considered a "signal victory" for the South, but is largely overlooked as it just followed the Seven Days, where Robert E Lee drove the Army of the Potomac from the gates of Richmond, and just preceded Sharpsburg, where Lee's subsequent invasion of Maryland was checked by McClennan. Both these battles/campaigns had longer term consequences on the conduct/future of the war.

But Second Manassas was, up to then, the bloodiest battle of the war and all the moves up to the final desperate fight on Henry Hill plateau are interestingly chronicled in this superb work. If you read a lot of Civil war books, you can soon tell the type of book that overloads the meaningless detail which shows how impressive the research is, but clutters the narrative so badly that the battle itself becomes incomprehensible. On the flip side of that coin, some wider strategic works are so cavalier on detail, that you get irritated with them. This book hits the middle path perfectly with a perfectly understandable build-up and the cool, systematic unpicking of many of the myths about the battle, such as Longstreet's alleged attack of the "slows" during the campaign.

The story of the 5th New York, slaughtered in 10 minutes, and of one union officer who, abandoned by his (rather sensible) men, continued to load and fire cannon on his own give a real flavour of the appalling waste of Union lives. Hennessy concludes that, yes, the Union commanding general - John Pope - was dim and kept making silly errors, but instead of the generalised scorn that is heaped on Pope, the general's political agenda is given a real exploration, particularly how that impacted on his general order to the army and his decision to offer battle at all on August 29th 1862.

Lastly the book has a great cover - one of the better Dan Troiani pictures that seem to adorn every Civil War book these days - and one of those spines that don't crack when you read it. Small thing, but I love it.

Buy this book if you have a passing interest in the War between the States or military history.