Reviews for U. S. Medals and Roll of Honor Civil War

The average rating for U. S. Medals and Roll of Honor Civil War based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-05-11 00:00:00 James Bowman Antietam and Fredericksburg were exceptionally rough days for the Union Army of the Potomac, both its officers and its ordinary soldiers; and therefore it is good that a former Army of the Potomac officer who commanded hundreds of those ordinary soldiers set down his thoughts regarding those two bloody battles, as one-time lieutenant colonel Francis Palfrey of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment did when he wrote his book The Antietam and Fredericksburg in 1882. Palfrey, a Bostonian who graduated from both Harvard University and Harvard Law School, was one of the 20th Massachusetts' Harvard-trained officers who caused the unit to become known as "the Harvard Regiment." Palfrey rose to the rank of colonel during the war, and was brevetted a brigadier general after the war; and some of the strongest passages in The Antietam and Fredericksburg are those in which Palfrey draws directly upon his own first-hand experiences of the Battle of Antietam and its aftermath. Antietam (17 September 1862) remains the bloodiest single day in American history - a sanguinary tactical draw that, from the Union point of view, offered only two consolations. The first was that Confederate General Robert E. Lee's attempt to invade the North ended in failure, as Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was forced back across the Potomac into Virginia. The second was that Antietam, while a bloody and incomplete victory, was victory enough for U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, putting the Union war effort on an entirely new footing. From that time forward, the North was officially fighting not only to preserve the Union, but also to secure the freedom of four million enslaved African Americans. Palfrey does not mention the Emancipation Proclamation at all - Lincoln appears in this book only briefly, and then only as Commander-in-Chief, issuing orders and approving battle plans - and it's interesting to wonder why. Along with its jaunty "Harvard Regiment" nickname, the 20th Massaschusetts Infantry also had a much less flattering sobriquet: the "Copperhead Regiment," a reference to a supposed prevalence of anti-abolitionist sentiment within the unit. Whether Palfrey knew of Copperhead-ism within his regiment, and how he might have felt about it, is left outside the scope of this book. But Palfrey has a great deal to say about the strategic and tactical dimensions of the Battle of Antietam, and with good reason. His 20th Massachusetts was in one of the worst of all the many bad places on the Antietam battlefield that day. Union General Edwin Sumner, in command of the Union's Second Corps, ordered General John Sedgwick's division forward in an unsupported advance westward across the Hagerstown Turnpike, into what would be known forever after as the "West Woods." Palfrey and his soldiers no doubt knew of the trouble that they might face, as Sedgwick's brigades advanced in three long lines with no flank support; he remarks tartly, "Not a regiment was in column - there was absolutely no preparation for facing to the right or left in case either of their exposed flanks should be attacked. The total disregard of all ordinary military precaution in their swift and solitary advance was so manifest that it was observed and criticized as the devoted band moved on" (p. 84). Palfrey's regiment and the rest of Sedgwick's command soon found themselves under rebel attack from three sides; I noted how Palfrey switched from the objective historian's voice to the first-person plural when he wrote of Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart's artillery fire from Nicodemus Hill that "The swift shot were plainly seen as they came flying toward us" (p. 84). It is no wonder that Palfrey remembered this battle so vividly; as historian Stephen Sears explains in a helpful foreword, Palfrey was wounded and captured on this portion of the field. And while Palfrey was eventually paroled, and even briefly held the command of the regiment, his battle wounds were too serious for him to serve again, and he was discharged on disability in April of 1863, before Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. For this dedicated soldier, Antietam was his last battle. Palfrey also takes advantage of the opportunity to critique fellow Union generals' strategy and tactics. In the case of his commanding general at Antietam, George B. McClellan, Palfrey remarks that "Of McClellan's conduct of the battle there is little to be said in the way of praise beyond the fact that he did fight it voluntarily, without having it forced upon him" (p. 119). Palfrey criticizes the vagueness of McClellan's battle plan for Antietam, the slowness with which McClellan engaged Lee in battle, and the piecemeal manner in which McClellan deployed the Union Army's First, Second, and Twelfth Corps. Sumner's ill-fated attack on the West Woods, in which Palfrey's command had been so badly mauled, and in which Palfrey himself had been wounded and captured, comes in for particular censure. "By giving the charge of his main attack to Sumner," Palfrey writes, "[McClellan] placed the lives of tens of thousands and the destiny of a great day of battle, with all its far-reaching issues, in the hands of an…elderly man who eighteen months before had had no wider experience than that of a colonel of cavalry" (p. 120). Considering how Palfrey and his command suffered in the West Woods, the severity of Palfrey's strictures against McClellan and Sumner is understandable, and subsequent historians have found little reason to challenge his judgments. But if Palfrey's judgment of McClellan seems harsh, it is downright mild when compared with Palfrey's verdict regarding the performance of Union General Ambrose Burnside at the Battle of Fredericksburg on 11-15 December 1862. Burnside's failed attempt at a surprise attack across the Rappahannock River quickly devolved into a hopeless, slogging attempt by Union soldiers to fight their way uphill against well-armed Confederates in well-prepared entrenchments; it was one of the worst Union defeats of the Civil War. The suffering of the 20th Massachusetts as they carried out what was called a "suicidal" attack through the streets of Fredericksburg became legendary in the North. All of this understandably irked Palfrey, even if he was not on hand to witness the suffering of his soldiers. Accordingly, Palfrey writes of Burnside that "it would have been vastly better for the Army of the Potomac if he had not been there at all. He contributed nothing - ideas and example were alike wanting" (p. 165). Again, vagueness of orders and lack of coordination among the Union forces come in for harsh criticism; worse yet, Burnside shows an inability to learn from his mistakes as the battle progresses. Even the manner in which Burnside personally took responsibility for the Union defeat at Fredericksburg left Palfrey unmoved; as far as Palfrey is concerned, "General Burnside's 'generosity' and 'magnanimity' after the battle, though they imposed upon many of his easily deluded fellow-countrymen, were slight comfort to the homes that were darkened and the lives that were crippled by his insane attempt upon the heights of Fredericksburg" (p. 165). Again, his verdict -- while delivered with the emotion that he no doubt felt at so many unnecessary deaths and combat wounds among his beloved 20th Massachusetts, and indeed among the rest of the Army of the Potomac -- is one with which few later historians would disagree. I have always found the diaries and memoirs of participants to be a particularly helpful way of learning more about the American Civil War. In that regard, Palfrey's The Antietam and Fredericksburg provides important insights into two of the Civil War's most important campaigns.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-10-06 00:00:00 Stanley Ko This book is just what it says "on the tin"- a military analysis of McClellan's Peninsula Campaign and the Confederate counterattacks (Fair Oaks& the Seven Days). A very good book that gets four stars despite the fact it has absolutely abysmal maps.