Southern Historical Association

The Bombardment of Charleston, 1863-1865 by W. Chris PhelpsReview by: Laylon Wayne JordanThe Journal of Southern History, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Nov., 2003), pp. 931-932Published by: Southern Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30040157 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

ers tracking the armies were doing. This form of organization seems to mimic the style of today's cable television news. As a result, one must already know a lot about the battle in order to keep one's bearings. Readers who need or desire a thoroughly sustained, coherent, analytical narrative will prefer a work that has been considered definitive on the subject for more than three decades: Edwin B. Coddington's The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (New York, 1968).

Broadly, Trudeau agrees with other students of the battle (albeit with various nuances of qualification) in his judgments regarding the decisions of the commanding generals and the effects of these decisions. Yet his analy- sis of Lee's reasons for waging the campaign is thin; Trudeau seems to ac- cept the explanation that Lee ventured northward for the sole purpose of seeking a battle of annihilation. Other scholars, however, have found different objectives.

The author correctly assigns responsibility for the Confederate defeat to Lee; unquestionably, this was his worst-fought battle. But Trudeau's state- ment that "July 2 laid bare the failings of Lee's command style and the dysfunctional nature of his army's operational culture" (p. 420) seems an overreach. It doubtless is true of July 2, but Trudeau's language here appears to indicate that dysfunction was inherent to Lee's style of command. One is entitled to ask: How would this apply to Lee's many victories? Yet Trudeau is not strongly critical of Lee's decision to attack as he did at Gettysburg. Instead, he thinks Lee's plan was well crafted, and if all its parts had worked as they were designed, Lee's "grand attack might very well have succeeded" (p. 527).

Trudeau rightly credits the Union commander George G. Meade with fighting the battle effectively, but he does not present Meade as a great general. Instead, he pictures Meade more like a supernumerary presiding over a group of associates than as an inspiring commanding officer. Meade, he concludes, "was not a dominating personality" (p. 527).

The above said, Trudeau tells the story of Gettysburg fully and excitingly, and by zooming his lens from one subordinate unit to another, he is able to offer a wealth of tactical and personal details that are lacking in most other studies. His narrative amply supports its subtitle, "a testing of courage," and Civil War readers will enjoy and profit from it.

University of Kentucky CHARLES P. ROLAND

The Bombardment of Charleston, 1863-1865. By W. Chris Phelps. (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002. Pp. 175. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 1-58980-028-1.)

"At first I thought a meteor had fallen," wrote British war correspondent Frank Vizetelly. "But another awful rush and whir right over the hotel, and another explosion beyond, settled any doubts I might have had: the city was being shelled" (p. 29). W. Chris Phelps's slender volume explores the source of Vizetelly's amazement: the Union army's cannonade against the Confederate metropolis of Charleston, South Carolina, during the Civil War. More generally, Phelps, a resident of Charleston, uses context and nontechnical

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THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY

language to illuminate the wartime interaction between technology, military forces, and noncombatants. He concludes that the siege of Charleston, while ultimately of little importance to the outcome of the first full-fledged "indus- trial war," served as a rehearsal for twentieth-century wars in which breaking the will of civilian populations would be a primary objective.

Beginning in the early hours of August 22, 1863, the bombardment of Charleston employed heavy rifled pieces like the 8-inch Parrot gun (dubbed "Swamp Angel" after its site in a muddy expanse of Morris Island, five miles away) to deliver some eleven thousand shells over a period of 545 days and nights. Never in the annals of war had artillery units thrown so many projec- tiles such a distance or for such an extended period of time. Small Confederate defense forces fought back, but mostly ineffectively. By the siege's end, the lower part of Charleston was wrecked and virtually depopulated, abandoned to tall grass and cows as people moved away from the city or crammed into whatever shelters were left uptown. In February 1865 Union soldiers occupied the silent and battered city that they considered to be the nursery of rebellion.

Phelps tells his story largely through the eyes and words of participants and witnesses who, as a group, provide details of the bombardment not found anywhere else. Louisiana-born general P. G. T. Beauregard, who served as commander of the city's defenses during much of the bombardment, and Augustine Thomas ["Gus"] Smythe, a local-born Confederate Signal Corps volunteer who kept an eye on Union movements and warned of incoming rounds from his lofty perch atop St. Michael's Church, are rendered as full characters. The military side of the Civil War is handled crisply and intelli- gently. However, the social and cultural context is comparatively neglected, and a potentially riveting human drama is thus not quite fully realized.

The book is attractive and includes rare and revealing old photographs. The index is spare, however, consisting only of proper names. Altogether, Phelps's book should appeal to a diverse readership both in style and content, for it makes accessible to general readers as well as historians an episode that is more significant than often credited.

College of Charleston LAYLON WAYNE JORDAN

War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitor. By David A. Mindell. (Baltimore, Md., and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, c. 2000. Pp. [xii], 187. Paper, $14.95, ISBN 0-8018-6250-7; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 0-8018-6249-3.)

Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Con- federate Submarine. By Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropf. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002. Pp. xvi, 301. $25.00, ISBN 0-345-44-771-9.)

These two books deal with the development, deployment, loss, and (in the second case) recovery of two remarkable warships: the USS Monitor, the first steam-powered, armored warship with a rotating gun turret; and the CSS H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel in combat.

David A. Mindell begins by placing the USS Monitor in context at the beginning of a revolution in naval architecture, if not warfare. He traces its

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