The Longest Night: a Military History of the Civil War.

By David J. Eicher. Foreword by James M. McPherson. Maps by Lee Vande Visse. (New York and other cities: Simon and Schuster, c. 2001. Pp. 990. $40.00, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.)

In his foreword to David J. Eicher's new book, James M. McPherson writes that it is "almost unique among Civil War books: it is both a narrative and a reference work" (p. 19). It is indeed a huge, encyclopedic, sprawling book that seems designed to cram everything known about the military operations of the war into a single volume. Like Ol' Man River, the text just keeps rolling along.

McPherson goes on to say that the reader will find here "engrossing accounts of all the battles, large and small, linked together in a manner so lucid and logical ... [that they] emerge with new clarity" (p. 19). Certainly, the book provides narratives of "all the battles, large and small." But despite my respect for McPherson, I am compelled to offer a demur to the remainder of his comment. The immense span of the volume and the dual function suggested in the foreword rob it of many of the qualities of synthesis, emphasis, and compression required for a new degree of "clarity." In these respects, Eicher's book falls decidedly short of Russell F. Weigley's recently published A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Bloomington, Ind., 2000).

In places, The Longest Night is loosely articulated. A prime example of this flaw is found in Eicher's treatment of Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign in relation to Lee's counteroffensive against McClellan on the peninsula. Eicher describes the two almost as if they were discrete operations, as if Lee were unaware of what Jackson was doing, whereas both were actually components of Lee's strategic plan for keeping his opponents divided while combining his own forces against a fraction of the enemy. Less striking but comparable weaknesses appear throughout the volume.

The chapter on Jackson's campaign also offers an excellent example of how the book's function as a reference work diminishes its qualities as an analytical narrative. The chapter begins with a seven-and-a-half-page catalog of Civil War heavy ordnance and arsenals. An even longer digression, on small arms and manufactories, occurs in the chapter on the battle of Stones River. These sections contain interesting and valuable information, but placed where they are, they constitute serious distractions from the flow of thought. An appendix would have been a much more appropriate location for them.

In discussing the characteristics of Civil War weapons, Eicher repeats the outworn accusation that military leaders of the time were so wedded to close-order Napoleonic tactics that they were unable to appreciate the deadly effect of the rifled musket and other firearms on the troops engaged in such tactics. He indicates no realization that the commanders employed close-order tactics because the means of battlefield communication had not kept pace with the development of weaponry, and that only after the advent of the field telephone and radio were open-order tactics feasible.

Notwithstanding the book's exhaustive scope, it is sadly ill-informed on the leadership displayed by the Confederacy's top field general at the beginning of the conflict, Albert Sidney Johnston. There is no recognition that Johnston clearly out-generaled Ulysses S. Grant in uniting the wings of his army almost within Grant's sight and striking him by complete surprise in the battle of Shiloh. Eicher erroneously credits Johnston's second-in-command, General P. G. T. Beauregard, with initiating the attack. Not only did Johnston order it in the first instance; he was obliged to overrule Beauregard on the eve of the attack and order it carried out when Beauregard lost his nerve and urged that it be called off. None of this appears in the book.

Eicher errs in writing that the Confederates at Shiloh planned to attack with the two corps of Generals William J. Hardee and Braxton Bragg stretched out into "one huge battle line" (p. 223). He also errs in saying that Johnston left Beauregard in command of the field because Johnston "made the foolish decision to ride forward and lead attacks himself ... " (p. 226). Actually, Johnston made every major tactical decision of the battle until he was killed early in the afternoon of the first day. Nor did he lead "attacks." Johnston led, or started at the front of, a single attack at what he considered to be the battle's point of culmination--a kind of behavior that many of the most renowned generals of history have engaged in at critical moments in the encounter.

In his introduction Eicher writes that his studies had convinced him that the Confederacy could not have won the conflict; that it was beyond the capacity of the South "to withstand the hardships of an extended war" (p. 22). True enough--but Eicher fails, in this reviewer's judgment, to recognize sufficiently the extraordinary effort put forth by the Confederates, an effort described by one of the most intelligent and best-informed citizens of the Union at the time of the war, managing editor Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times, as the greatest war effort in history by a society of such limited means.

Notwithstanding the above criticisms, this is a useful book if employed with care, especially as a reference work in which the Civil War scholar or interested lay reader can glean information on virtually any military aspect of the struggle.

CHARLES P. ROLAND
University of Kentucky