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Title: The Gettysburg Campaign : A Study in Command by Edwin B. Coddington ISBN: 0-684-84569-5 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.61 (31 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Gettysburg Campaign
Comment: The Gettysburg Campaign was published in 1960, before the era of social history, and is a product of the great man, great moment theory. This is both its weakness and strength. The book spends very little time with the actions of small units (small being anything under brigade size) and with their commanders. There is no mention of common soldiers and what they experienced. This leads to a very incomplete picture of the battle. We see the battle as faceless, the common soldiers are merely numbers. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, and in fact it was the approach of almost all history books before the late 1960s, it might strike today's reader as an abnormality. In today's era of social history the privates are given as much attention as the generals, with some books dedicated wholly to their experiences. Coddinton, however, chooses to look at the "great men." It is in his analysis of the various levels of command, from army to corps to divisional to brigade to, in a few cases, regimental, that Coddington shines. The book shows not only the decisions that were made, but what factors played into those decisions, whether they were good decisions or not, and what options where available. The book is structured differently than most on the campaign in that it spends nearly as much time on the prelude and aftermath as it does the three days of battle. This too adds greatly to the book, and makes it truly deserving of the title The Gettysburg Campaign. The emphasis on the whole campaign allows us to put the battle and the various decisions made by the commanders into their correct perspective. Also different than most historians, Coddington views the battle as being won by the Union, not as being lost by the Confederacy. He argues that Meade did a commendable job, and that the Army of the Potomac simply outfought the Army of Northern Virginia. The evidence he provides is solid, and should sway the reasonable reader to his point of view. The Gettysburg Campaign, while showing signs of the era in which it was written, is the best book on the battle, a must read for the serious student of the battle.
Rating: 4
Summary: Definitive history of Gettysburg
Comment: I'm fairly knowledgeable about the Civil War, but I found Coddington tough going. He has too many generals going in too many directions all at once and I had some trouble keeping up with him. Better maps would have helped. He has about a dozen in the book, but they are all as busy as a Jackson Pollack painting.
This is not a book for the casual reader but a long, meticulously researched study of command by Union and Confederate generals in the Gettysburg campaign. Coddington's conclusions are a bit murky and lost in 600 pages of densely written prose, but I think he gives higher marks to Meade, the Union commander, than most other chroniclers. My view had been that Robert E. Lee, the southern commander, lost the battle through over-confidence. Lee believed -- erroneously it turned out -- he could break the Union forces and they would run as they had on several previous occasions. Coddington would agree in part that Lee lost the battle, but he also gave Meade credit for good leadership and suggested that the Union generals were equal to the Southerners. Certainly, Meade deserves praise for occupying the best ground, holding shorter, interior lines, keeping his head, and avoiding the debacles of Generals Hooker, Burnside, et al.
One could read Coddington a second and a third time to gain understanding of the most important battle in American history - because if Lee had won at Gettysburg the South would probably have won its independence and Abraham Lincoln would have been about as well regarded a President as Millard Fillmore. I think, however, that I prefer more accessible accounts of Gettysburg, such as Shelby Foote's 170 page account of the campaign in his history of the Civil War. Coddington, I will admire from a distance, awed by his scholarship and consulting him on occasion - but unlikely to have the fortitude to reread his scholarly masterpiece.
Rating: 4
Summary: Truth In Advertising
Comment: The book's title emphasizes that it's a study in command of both the ANV and Army of the Potomoc, and that's exactly what it is.
Some books get more specific in the details of every action on the field (Pfanz's books). Some are more specific with primary accounts (Sears). Most books give more coverage to Ewell's attack on the night of July 2. This book was also the only one that didn't include some of the more well known anecdotes of the battle (Jennie Wade etc).
Where this book does shine is in critically analyzing the relationships, communications and misunderstandings between the North's corps commanders and the South's division commanders. This book is also the most meticulously researched of any Gettysburg book to date (as many other reviews note, there are 300 pages worth of notes alone).
Coddington doesn't hesitate to pull punches. Most of the criticism concerning the North falls on Sickles for advancing the III corps out of the battleline, and almost nobody in the high Southern command escapes criticism (ironically, one of the post-battle and post-war designated goats, Ewell, gets the least amount of it).
Coddington keeps the narrative from getting too dry by often offering his own opinion and analysis on the movements, the communications and the insubordinations.
In all, this is a critical book to read about the campaign. If you're looking for an easier read or a more human element in a book about the entire campaign, Sears's book is for you. If you want more specifics, Pfanz's books are for you. If you're looking to understand the chain of commands in both armies and some of the breakdowns that ultimately hampered the Confederacy's effectiveness at Gettysburg, this is the book.
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Title: Gettysburg: The Second Day by Harry W. Pfanz ISBN: 0807847305 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.54 |
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Title: Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears ISBN: 0395867614 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Gettysburg: The First Day by Harry W. Pfanz ISBN: 0807826243 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Gettysburg : A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau ISBN: 0060193638 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 18 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Gettysburg-Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill by Harry W. Pfanz ISBN: 0807821187 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: January, 1994 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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