Gettysburg.

Gettysburg. By Stephen W. Sears. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. Pp. xvi, 623. $30.00, ISBN 0-395-86761-4.)

In Gettysburg, Stephen W. Sears fully maintains the high standards for scholarship and vibrant literary style he set in his earlier works on the Peninsula campaign, the 1862 Maryland campaign, and, most recently, the battle of Chancellorsville.

Sears presents the first truly comprehensive history of the entire 1863 Pennsylvania campaign since the publication of Edwin B. Coddington's The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (New York, 1968). His narrative follows the victorious Army of Northern Virginia and defeated Union Army of the Potomac from the aftermath of Chancellorsville through the active operations in Maryland and Pennsylvania, ending when Robert E. Lee's defeated army returned to Virginia in mid-July, two weeks after Gettysburg. Rather than describe Lee's plan for a Pennsylvania offensive as evidence of his Virginia-centered mindset, Sears recasts it as part of a national Confederate military strategy. Lee's confidence in his army's ability--which Sears describes as arrogance or even contempt for his foe--convinced Jefferson Davis to approve the offensive with the hope that a major southern victory on northern soil might offset Vicksburg's likely surrender.

While the voices of individual soldiers in the ranks do not remain silent, Sears does not speak to their motivation or their individual life-and-death struggles on McPherson's Ridge or Little Round Top. Rather, with fairness and balance, he follows the commanders of both armies and their senior subordinates caught up in the chaos of battle.

In his evaluation of Confederate generalship, he places the ultimate responsibility for southern defeat squarely on Lee's shoulders, arguing that "it was Lee's inability to manage his generals that went to the heart of his failed campaign" (p. 504). Absent cavalry leader J. E. B. Stuart and inactive Third Corps commander A. P. Hill draw Sears's sharpest criticism. Deftly avoiding most traps set by Lost Cause apologists, he provides a critical but not hostile portrait of much-maligned First Corps commander James Longstreet, who opposed Lee's battle plans but generally executed them in good faith. He also offers a well-reasoned evaluation of Second Corps commander Richard S. Ewell, crediting him with acting forcefully during the advance into Pennsylvania but faulting him for multiple missteps on the battlefield. Ultimately, Lee also failed to make clear his intentions, and, through his personal inaction, he did not guarantee that his subordinates understood and acted on his orders. In short, Lee did more than fail as a manager; he failed as a commander.

Importantly, Sears devotes an equal amount of attention to General George G. Meade's contributions to Union victory. Even though Meade commanded his army for less than a week before Gettysburg and struggled with such uncooperative and unreliable subordinates as corps commanders Daniel E. Sickles and Oliver O. Howard, Sears concludes, "The fact of the matter is that George G. Meade, unexpectedly and against the odds, thoroughly outgeneraled Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg" (p. 506). To explain further the reasons for Meade's success, Sears examines a previously underexplored element of his leadership style: his excellent utilization of his army's capability to gather intelligence. Using an efficient signal system and the new Bureau of Military Information, Meade could learn much about Lee's strength and short-term intentions, improving dramatically his ability to plan his responses before crises limited his options. Sears also gives Meade high marks for commanding actively, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of his army's position, consulting formally and informally with his corps commanders, and--especially on July 2--directing reinforcements from all parts of his army to shore up weak spots on his left flank. Sears also offers a particularly thoughtful and reasonable explanation--but not quite absolution--for Meade's inability to pursue Lee's retreating army with the energy General Henry W. Halleck and Abraham Lincoln desired.

Readers seeking a steady stream of detailed tactical analyses on the small-unit level may be disappointed at first to find that Sears's fast-paced and elegant prose does not dwell for long on the stand of Buford's Union cavalry on the ridges west of town or on intense and confusing fighting on the Wheatfield, Culp's Hill, or other famous battlefield sites. Still, his sweeping chronicle has the effect of putting back into balanced historical perspective some of the battle's most evocative moments in memory and popular culture--the 20th Maine on Little Round Top or Pickett's Charge, for instance--and in so doing Sears renders an important contribution to scholarship.

Penn State University

CAROL REARDON