In a prequel to Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, son Jeff takes us from pre-Civil War up the month before Gettysburg, focusing on four key leaders, two southern (Robert E. Lee & Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson) and two northern (Winfield Scott Hancock & Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain).
We forget that legends of the War had entirely separate lives before 1861, as if we thought they were grabbed out of an Emergency Soldier Kit ("In case of war, break glass") and returned to it in 1865. Shaara follows the leaders in their final pre-War posts, with Lee dealing with a frail wife at their home in Arlington, Virginia, and at a post in Texas, Jackson teaching at Virginia Military Institute, Hancock overseeing a weapons depot in Los Angeles and Chamberlain teaching at Bowdoin College in Maine.
Shaara�s methods take some getting used to; he applies flowery language that at times comes across too cute, and especially when he tries to deal with love stories it's mushy and awkward. Shaara overdoes some of the metaphor, such as a line describing Jackson leaving his home for War, he "started down the road at a quick pace. ... Behind him, in the west, the thick clouds rolled forward, the unstoppable flow of the coming storm."
This audience prefers actual conflict. Shaara is best amid warfare and soldiers, since the action of the battles is written more crisply and quick-paced.
I do appreciate his attention to details, though, seeing things in life beyond the legends. For instance, Shaaara describes the men of Chamberlain�s battalion given uniforms that are mostly one-size-fits-all, so �occasionally the taller boys or the shorter would self-consciously glance at their too-short pants legs or the sleeves that rode down over their hands.� Shaara later comically relates, �Chamberlain was holding his first cup of army coffee, was attacking it bravely, determined. It was his greatest challenge so far.�
Even still, Shaara leaves us hanging, outflanking the reader several times. Chamberlain is a civilian-turned-Colonel, but Shaara skips ahead even as I was curious as to how a civilian is trained as an officer in a mere two weeks. This is nothing, however, compared to the disappointment of Shaara virtually ignoring two of the most important moments of the young War.
Shaara follows the four main guys too closely and then not closely enough. For example, Shaara doesn�t follow Jackson at the first Battle of Bull Run, so we aren�t amidst the troops as he earns the Stonewall nickname. Sure, all Civil War buffs have heard the story and read the explanations, but it feels as if Shaara is opting out of the debate on the meaning (Was it a slur, or flattering? I accept the latter).
Later, we don�t get the nitty gritty, or even just the gritty, of Antietam, as Shaara stays with Chamberlain in the rear echelon, never seeing battle in one of the bloodiest days of the nation�s history. The battles that are waged on paper include Second Bull Run at Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
Before the war, Lee is told that his leaving with the Union means �the country has lost � perhaps its best commander.� Problem is, with Shaara�s writing, we�ve read nothing that would help us reach that conclusion. We see Lee bored in Texas at a post where supposedly nothing happens, and never have an idea besides what we�re told that Lee will become the Confederacy�s greatest leader, and even an American legend.
As much as I appreciate Shaara�s education on the deeper lives of our heroes, it is the back-story that proves to be the weakest part of the book. These first few chapters can be dull. Only Hancock's history was the least bit interesting, dealing with Mexican locals in southern California who don't recognize U.S. authority. We finally get into the meat and potatoes during Lee�s brief command at Harper's Ferry to nab John Brown, and soon after Jackson and his artillery students serve during Brown�s hanging.
Jackson stopped the horse, raised his hand, halting the group. He understood now, it could not go the way he had hoped. It would have to be in the morning. ...
He turned the horse, began to move quickly now, and the others followed. Now, below them, close in the thick brush, a man's voice. "Halt! Who is that?" and another voice, a sharp command, "It's cavalry! Fire!"
There was a quick sheet of flame, and behind him, Jackson heard the cry of horses and men falling.
One of the aides rode toward the troops, shouted, "No, stop firing ... you're firing on your own men!"
Then came a strong hard voice, the voice of a veteran who has seen cunning and deceit, and who understands that his men are the front of the line, and that before them is only the enemy. "It's a lie! Pour it to them!"
The second volley was better aimed, the moonlight silhouetting the men on horseback. Jackson spun around, tried to reach the shelter of trees beyond the trail, and he felt a hard tug at his hand, a hard, hot punch in his shoulder. The horse lunged, terrified, began to run away from the noise, jumped and jerked, and now it was Morrison, beside him, grabbing the reins that Jackson had dropped. He felt himself sliding, tried to reach for the saddle, could not grab with his hand, slid down the side of the horse and fell hard to the cold ground.
"Gods and Generals," p. 440
The guts of the book fit with the title, since so many of the leaders were men of strong religious conviction, and the thought of war amongst their own countrymen is enough to challenge any of those beliefs. Although none turn away from God, it must be difficult to realize that He may or may not have a side, that He might smile on you one day, then slaughter your army the next.
Shaara seems to direct the reader more to the point of Hancock, �It is not God who will assemble us on the battlefield, nor position our troops, nor place the cannon, and it is not God who will aim the musket.� Shaara highlights that men are invoking His name for their own selfish purposes. Earlier, VMI president, Dr. Junkin, leaving in support of the U.S., tells Jackson that �this country is God�s model, God�s message to the rest of the world. � God will damn all those who fight to destroy this country.�
Still, the belief is resolute, and if you do so strongly, how much must it hurt to know that He was against you? Before the war, Lee asks, "will God allow this to happen?" Yep, and you must lose. Quite a change, I�m sure, from �God is smiling on this army� as the rebels rout the Feds over and over again. For one thing, God had to be watching over the U.S. for them to find a copy of Special Order 191, detailing Lee�s plans to advance on the North, leading the Union to cut him off and drive the Rebels back at Antietam.
Shaara doesn�t deal with slavery head-on, but in a properly awkward missive about Southerners' misdirected understanding of equality � they may not have been fighting for the preservation of slavery alone, but the Rebels deserved to be beaten in the War of Northern Aggression for that reason alone.
With Lee, Shaara has it seem that the General wants to free his slaves, but worries about how they'll get by on their own, and he can't pay freedmen for their labor if they stayed.
We read that Jackson "earns a reputation in local circles as a man of fiery religious conviction.� Jackson even �violates the law by establishing a Sunday school for slave children in Lexington, and justifies it by claiming it is the right of all God's creatures to hear the Word." Yet, he fights for a people and government set up to protect a system of human bondage. Is this hypocrisy or just misguided reading of Scripture?
Jackson isn�t just God-fearing, he�s terrified. While it makes him extremely disciplined, it also causes him to distress when he�s happy, thinking God will even it out with a horrible event if he�s not thankful enough: �Today he sat off to the side of the road in the shadows of a tall pine tree, and (his soldiers) did not know he had cried, talking quietly to God. He sat upright in the saddle, stiff, feeling the sharp burning in his side, knowing it was sent there by God, a lesson in the pain of his men.�
Meanwhile, the Northerners have different ideas of what the War is about, chiefly preserving the Union. At first it's clearly not about freeing the slaves. Chamberlain is painted as a do-good teacher who abhors the killing of anything, through a hunting trip where he doesn't bag a deer. He leaves his teaching career to join the war on principle, surprisingly given a command position based on his smarts and recommendations.
As in Killer Angels, Jeff Shaara finds plenty of gut-wrenching material in the friendship of Hancock and Lewis Armistead, as they part ways in California as war begins. Hancock is set to fight with the Union, not understanding why anyone in the U.S. military would commit the treason of fighting against their sworn allegiance. Armistead, though, is a Virginian, and fights for the C.S.A., explaining that he �could not go to war against (his) home.�
There are actually several discussions along this path before the war, with Southerners denouncing �a government that illegally inserts itself into the private, constitutionally protected affairs of the states,� and Northerners railing that �what is going on in the South is a threat to our country.� Then others are like the na�ve Lee, almost pleading that �I cannot believe that any of us will be called on to fire upon any state. I would never allow myself to bring violence upon my home of Virginia, and I believe there are enough men of reason in this country who feel the same way.� (Many Southerners considered their states to be a country)
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"Because of the slow start, and the hit and miss nature of the time before Fredericksburg, I will have to give this book a thumbs down review. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the hardest core Civil War buff. I just don't think it�s a good book. I questioned many of Shaara's decisions, including spending so much time at the beginning going over personal lives that didn't produce any tension or pay off in any way down the road. And he spent so little time on the battle of Antietam it was laughable, and then when he did cover the battle it was from Chamberlain's perspective, who was in reserve." |
Gen. George McClellan backs away continually despite possessing overwhelming numbers, �escaping from demons that Lee did not command.� Yet Lee is beloved as immortal, despite the few supplies and food, because he wins.
Jackson�s death will surely occupy much of the movie - a truly dreadful moment for the South - and the bastards of the Eighteenth North Carolina who accidentally gave the General his fatal wound �will carry this with them for the rest of their lives.�
As Stonewall goes, so does the Confederacy. As we see in Gettysburg, it is all downhill from there. Will that be the message, sort of like the use of Doolittle�s Raid at the end of Pearl Harbor?
Next: The Last Full Measure, as Jeff Shaara completes the Civil War trilogy begun by his father.
p.s.: Just thinking: Maybe someone could pen a compatible series in the Western theater, maybe following Grant at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Sherman and the Atlanta campaign and March to the Sea, even further west to Pea Ridge and Missouri, or Kentucky, such as Perryville.
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