Our Favorite Books: Sean Michael Chick’s Top 5 Books

The Inner Civil War by George M. Frederickson

The book is that rare bird: a well written and accessible intellectual history. It offers a compelling explanation of how the victory of abolition inadvertently destroyed the antebellum social reform movement. Slavery was ended by military means amid a rising tide of nationalism that looked at the reformers as idealists of the worst order. The war was therefore a much more conservative, perhaps even reactionary, moment than is commonly supposed. On the reactionary point it is debatable, but it is worth investigating. What makes The Inner Civil War doubly good is the book transcends the Lost Cause, Just Cause, and to a lesser degree the reconciliation memories and narratives of the war. The implications of the book have not been properly followed because it would tarnish the North’s triumph.

A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton

Bruce Catton paved the way for new military history with his seminal The Army of the Potomac trilogy. The trilogy traces the experience of that army from the days of George McClellan to Appomattox. It would be wrong to call The Army of the Potomac a work of social history, but its uniqueness for the time is undeniable. Generals do take up most of the pages, but it is the army private who is a character unto himself. Catton’s narrative arc is not so much the war or the changes in leadership, but the men who go from innocence lost under McClellan in Mr. Lincoln’s Army, to the humiliations of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, capped off with their victory at Gettysburg in Glory Road. They became a hard and savvy army that is destroyed in the Overland campaign, but persisted all the way to final victory in A Stillness at Appomattox, considered one of the best written Civil War books of all time. Catton led the way in the positive reappraisal of Ulysses S. Grant but never lost sight of the high cost of the fighting in the war’s last year in Virginia, at least in A Stillness at Appomattox. Catton’s later work was often just as well written, but he became more Olympian in his perspective, culminating in Grant Takes Command, the true starting point for the current rage for Grant hagiography.

Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee by Larry J. Daniel

If I had complaints about Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee, it is that Larry J. Daniel does not much discuss soldier motivation. The mystery as to why this army kept fighting, and fighting so hard, remains an open question, not answered here. That is all I can offer for complaints, though. Daniel’s writing is crisp and swift. As always, he relies heavily on the sources and is willing to offer contrary opinions, such as Braxton Bragg was not as unpopular or tyrannical as thought and Joseph E. Johnston was not as popular. The prose also provides the full range of experience, by turns funny, heroic, melancholy, etc. This is one of the few books that made me laugh out loud while reading it, and a few pages later I felt my heart break a little. If Catton’s work personified the Army of the Potomac’s dogged reliance, then Daniel shows an army of losers who never knew when to quit and seemingly never quite lost their sense of humor.

Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War by Ludwell H. Johnson

This is an underappreciated classic. Ludwell Johnson’s prose is solid, and he does not ignore the dramatic moments. This is doubly good since he does not ignore political, diplomatic, and economic factors, all of which usually get the short end in classic military history. His sly and caustic wit is in evidence throughout. In addition, Johnson shows that the men of the Civil War were motivated by not just patriotism, idealism, and cold military calculations, but often the narrow confines of partisan politics, petty rivalries, and greed. His preface alone is worth a read and still seems fresh, showing that his line of analysis has not been as thoroughly investigated. Much, like The Inner Civil War, I think it is because his line of analysis does not present the war in the heroic light we all crave. It is after all demoralizing to think of men dying and suffering just because of one man’s political ambitions. Americans prefer their wars as more Manichean affairs fought between mythologized giants unaffected by the grubby realities of money, ambition, and politics.

Damned Yankee : The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon by Christopher Phillips

I read this on a recommendation, and I was glad I did. This is currently my favorite Civil War biography. Nathaniel Lyon was a man of action, daring, and conviction. He was also inflexible, thought himself the instrument of God (but disdained organized religion), and was very violent. In California, he oversaw one of the US army’s greatest war crimes. His slaughter of the indigenous and heavy-handed ways in Missouri were ultimately condoned because his cruelty was directed at the kind of people the American government saw as enemies of progress. Lyon made the situation in Missouri worse, even if his drive down the Missouri River did great damage to the nascent Confederates. Then again, the ease with which he did it makes it clear that Missouri was in no great peril, and his actions arguably made the Confederates in Missouri stronger. Furthermore, his military judgment before and during Wilson’s Creek makes it clear that, combined with his rough personality, he would not have been a great commander of the conflict. He died at just the right time to have more admirers than he deserves, but like all extremists, he will remain eternally fascinating. As my brother Daniel says, we are drawn to the extremes of the human experience.

Part of a series.