North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Winning and Losing in the Civil War: Essays and Stories by Albert CastelReview by: James E. JacobsonThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 73, No. 4 (OCTOBER 1996), pp. 501-502Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23521482 .

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Book Reviews 501

Written mainly in Holt's retirement, the memoirs span from Holt's birth to his 1865

homecoming. The antebellum vignettes provide insight into what life was like for young southerners as the sectional clash approached, and they establish the centrality of religion in Holt's life. But the memoirs are best when recalling Holt's wartime experiences. His

combat descriptions are more chilling and graphic than those of most other Civil War

memoirists. His poignant and disturbing account of the slaughter at Spotsylvania's Bloody

Angle ranks among the best available. Additionally, Holt's story captures the vulgar side of soldier life: hard marches on slim rations, the debilitation of fatigue and disease, the

drudgery of camp life, the omnipresence of "greybacks" (lice), and a host of other mun

dane elements. Despite the trauma and monotony of soldiering, Holt and his colleagues

somehow maintained their sanity. An unshakable faith in Providence helped many

cope, as did an irrepressible sense of humor. As Holt's reminiscences attest, he and the

rest of Company K offset the dehumanizing aspects of war with a great deal of tomfoolery.

Of the many Civil War combatants who committed their experiences to writing, Holt

is among the most articulate. Recognizing this fact, the editors of Holt's memoirs com

mendably refrain from cluttering or disrupting his captivating narrative with excessive

annotation. Thomas D. Cockrell and Michael B. Ballard provide clarification when

needed, but otherwise allow "Davie" Holt to tell his own story, a story that demolishes

notions that the recent proliferation of published Civil War diaries, journals, and memoirs

has rendered additional works of that genre superfluous and insignificant.

Eric Tscheschlok

Auburn University

Eric Tscheschlok

Winning and Losing in the Civil War: Essays and Stories. By Albert Castel. (Columbia: Univer

sity of South Carolina Press, 1996. Preface and acknowledgments, afterword. Pp. xii,

204. $29.95.)

Albert Castel has authored a number of well-received treatments of western theater

Civil War themes. He sallies forth in this small tome with a collection of fourteen

shorter writings, many of which are offered in the spirit of "setting the record straight." The writing of history he asserts is "not popularity-seeking," and he is a literalist and a

non-ideologist who insists that a historical revelation "is either a fact or it is not." Assum

ing the conscious position of a historical "king of the mountain," the author challenges

one and all to find fault with his findings, an in-your-face stance that is underscored by the book's dust jacket, which promises that "this volume is sure to spark controversy."

The resulting tone of most of the essays unfortunately makes the reader determined to

disprove or at least discount the author's points. Castel, perhaps reflecting his Kansas

roots, is not content to simply defeat but rather "rubs out" his foes. Typical is the author's

judgment of the accuracy of General Sherman's Memoirs (1875), which he found "filled

with exaggerations and dubious assertions, omissions, and distortions of facts and with

deliberate and sometimes malicious prevarications, fabrications, and falsifications."

The low point of the book is reached when the author declares that "Every word of this

[Sherman's] sentence is false." Another irritant is the author's willingness to mix contem

porary terms, assumptions, and other post-Civil War "facts" to interpret and explain the

Civil War period. Thus, he cites an action from the Boer War era to prove that "under

the laws and practices of war, whenever enemy civilians willingly assist guerrillas, then

VOLUME LXXIII • NUMBER 4 • OCTOBER 1996

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502 Book Reviews

they must expect to take the consequences" when he recounts the public reaction to

Federal General Order No. 11 in southwest Missouri. He employs Mao Tse-tung's

principles of guerrilla warfare in lieu of period standards to critique William Quantrill's Civil War operations. Lastly, he terms the controversial Dr. Mary Walker as both "a

liberated woman" and the holder of "feminist ideals," while he clearly indicates that he

poorly understands either term. A new meaning to "learning from history" results when

"then" and "now" are confused.

All but three of the pieces in the volume have been previously published, with two of those three being 1994 lectures. The writings span forty-five years, so some of the texts

are naturally rather dated. Despite this, the author presents a 1951/1958 writing on the

Fort Pillow massacre as "a fresh examination." Still, Castel takes the reader into several

areas of interest. He writes in a simple and direct manner, a style that the average reader

of history will most likely appreciate. Two of the most thought-provoking pieces—

"Could The North Not Have Won The Civil War?" and "The Atlanta Campaign And The Presidential Election of 1864"—appear first and will appeal to a broad range of Civil War readers. The other pieces will inform, challenge, frequently entertain, and, in two

cases, titillate the reader. Fortunately, copious endnotes are offered with Castel's most

contentious essays.

James E. Jacobson Des Moines, Iowa

James E. Jacobson

Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War. By James M. McPherson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Preface, provenance of contents, notes, index. Pp. xiv, 258.

$25.00.)

James M. McPherson is a familiar figure to all students of the American Civil War. His many writings related to that sectional conflict have earned him the respect of both

scholars and enthusiasts. His book Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989.

Now, Drawn with the Sword, a collection of essays written and previously published

by McPherson, brings together in one source some of his most thoughtful reflections

on the war. The book is organized into five sections. The first, which treats the origins of

the war, includes a discussion of the characteristics that made both the North and South

exceptional. It also explores the nature of slavery and demonstrates how southern aggres sion fueled events that led to the outbreak of hostilities in 1861.

The author devotes one essay in the second part of his book to an explanation of why the Civil War continues to hold such a powerful grip on the American imagination. In another essay in that segment he traces the development of a limited war into one that

"merits the label of total war." In "Race and Class in the Crucible of War," he offers an

opinion on the value of social history as a means of interpreting the conflict. McPherson concludes the section with an evaluation of the motion picture Glory, which he insists is "not only the first feature film to treat the role of black soldiers in the Civil War" but is "the most powerful movie about the war ever made."

Part three of Drawn with the Sword poses the perennial question, "Why did the Con

federacy lose?" or, from another perspective, "Why did the North Win?" McPherson maintains that the Confederate defeat was not inevitable, and he explains how certain

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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