Through movies, documentaries and books, some written by Shaara himself, the campaign that seesawed around the Commonwealth of Virginia, between a Rebel army commanded by Robert E. Lee and a Union army that went through commanders like a soldier went through musket balls, we are well aware of the events of Gettysburg, Antietam, Bull Run/Manassas and of Lee's eventual surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.
What Jeff Shaara has done here, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, is take us to the other campaign, where men like William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses Grant, Joe Johnston and others, rose to fame or infamy - depending on your point of view - and where battles just as bloody and, sometimes, more bloody, than Gettysburg and the other famous engagements further east, were fought, without the corps of newspaper reporters following the armies, like they followed armies further north. There are stories to be told here of valor and sacrifice, courage and defeat. And Shaara has brought many of these to light.
The Western Campaign, in Civil War terms, was a string of engagements originally fought in an area east of the Mississippi River and west of the Appalachian Mountains, though Union armies advanced southeast from Chattanooga, Tennessee later in the war, and so the Western Campaign now recognises those battles fought in Georgia and the Carolina's, too.
Part One in this trilogy, A Blaze of Glory, introduced a slew of characters, some well known - Sherman, Grant, Albert Sidney Johnston, Pierre Beauregard, Braxton Bragg - and others not so much, like the German-American soldier from Wisconsin, Private Fritz Bauer, real men whose movements in the campaigns, meticulously researched by the author, are brought to life as fiction.
A Blaze of Glory covered the slaughterhouse that was the Shiloh campaign. The middle entry in the trilogy - a better all-around work, by my reckoning - A Chain of Thunder picks up the struggle before the fateful siege of Vicksburg in Mississippi, where a Federal army under the command of Ulysses S. Grant surrounded a Confederate army helmed by the northern-born John C. Pemberton.
Pemberton, an obvious focal point for the story, as the Garrison commander, provided an interesting entry to Civil War history. He had decided to fight with the South after marrying a woman born there, but was never completely trusted by his colleagues, and much of the Pemberton narrative deals with his continued efforts to gain respect and to lead his army, whilst coming to terms with the fact that there is little hope for salvation. His eventual surrender of the town was seen by some ardent Southerners as a betrayal, a gift-wrapped rebel stronghold, given over to Federal forces on July 4, Independence Day. This, of course, could not be any further from the truth. Yet it is a suggestion that Pemberton struggles with, and you can feel his torment.
The siege progresses, and Shaara paints a brutal picture of death and decay on both sides, but particuarly amongst the southerners, who are at the mercy of the Union guns, with food fast running out. For the first time, Shaara tells the story of a civilian, Lucy Spence, a young Vicksburg native who spends much of the siege tending to the wounded and dying rebel soldiers. The things she does, the things she sees are masterfully brought to life by Shaara. He can portray the horrors of a field hospital as well as the horrors of a battlefield, and it is uncomfortable reading as you consider the things Spence, a girl barely into her twenties, has to do in the name of the Southern cause.
Many pages are devoted to Grant and Sherman, as their relationship grows, and as they together seek not only to beat the enemy in front of them, but to deal with the newspaper reporters and politicians who are jockeying for favour and an inside scoop, and whose writings, skewed one way or the other, could result in Grant's recall to Washington, a new general put in place. The future President of the United States has enemies on his own side, and is dogged by allegations of being a drunk. Grant's struggle against Confederate armies is but half the battle he must fight, a fact well illustrated by Shaara.
In the end, though, the showpiece is the front line battle, in which Private Bauer and his Irish-American comrades are right in the middle of. Despite knowing how the engagement will end - even if you aren't up with the history of the Civil War, it is apparent early on that the Rebel position is hopeless - there is still great tension built up, as early attacks on Vicksburg fail horribly, resulting in a changing approach by Grant, even as Southerners hope that a nearby army will come to their rescue. A momentary truce to bury dead men gives Bauer and his colleagues a chance to come face to face with their enemy, exchanging cigarettes and the like for a few minutes before they go back to killing one another. The irony of that is not lost on the reader.
General Pemberton surrenders to General Grant as word reaches both armies of a fateful battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Vicksburg falls into Federal hands. Now, the focus of Shaara's story, in the third volume slated for May 2014, turns to Atlanta and the end of the war in the west...
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