Lee and Jackson: Confederate chieftains - Hardcover

Paul D Casdorph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155778535X ISBN 13: 9781557785350

Publisher: Paragon House, 1992

Synopsis

An exciting dual biography reveals how a special chemistry between "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee allowed them to forge an unbeatable team that regularly routed numerically superior Union armies during the Civil War.

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Reviews

In an engrossing but largely unpersuasive dual biography, Casdorph (History/Virginia State) argues that the ``close connection between Lee and Jackson started long before their glory days upon the fields of northern Virginia''; that ``it was an association, however sporadic, that enabled each man to test the other's mettle''; and that this ``interconnectiveness'' led the two soldiers to their military triumphs. The difficulty with Casdorph's thesis is that, while it is well known that Lee and Jackson were cordial acquaintances before the war and served together in Mexico, the author presents little evidence of a particularly close relationship between the two prior to the Civil War. Lee and Jackson were separated by 17 years (Lee was born in 1807, Jackson in 1824) and, although Captain Lee apparently conducted an examination of Cadet Jackson at West Point in the summer of 1844, there is no indication that either man particularly remarked the other. Casdorph presents no proof of a substantial prewar correspondence between the two; in fact, there is no record before the Civil War of a profound admiration of either man for the other. Indeed, when Jackson applied for a professorship at the Univ. of Virginia, Lee supplied Jackson with a character reference that Casdorph admits was ``not particularly enthusiastic.'' The real relationship between the two began when, as a professor at Virginia Military Institute at war's outbreak, Jackson joined his VMI cadets with Lee's army in April 1861. Casdorph gives over the bulk of his account to a superb narrative of the pair's dazzling victories--First Manassas, Seven Days, Fredericksburg--which ended when Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville in May 1863. The author is undoubtedly correct when he argues that the ``military loss to Lee and the Confederacy'' occasioned by Jackson's death ``almost defies analysis.'' Casdorph presents an excellent account of the war, as well as serviceable biographies of the two warriors, but offers little evidence to support his emphasis on the ``interconnectiveness'' of Lee and Jackson. (Illustrations, maps--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The symbiosis of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson made the Army of Northern Virginia virtually invincible. Only with Jackson's death at Chancellorsville did the Confederacy's long twilight begin. Casdorph ( Let the Good Times Roll ) argues that his protagonists were "interconnected": they had established a basis for mutual trust before the war. Yet the text shows only that Lee and Jackson were aware of each other--hardly a phenomenon given their common matrices as Virginians, soldiers and educators. More serious is the work's lack of analysis. Casdorph relies heavily on memoirs and histories written after Lee and Jackson were already legendary figures. These reconstructions follow the myth; Casdorph follows the reconstructions; and the result is a tautology. Lee and Jackson appear in these pages as "marble men" who perform heroically because they are heroes. And what might have been a significant study of a key Civil War command relationship becomes instead just another narrative of the "gunpowder and magnolias" variety. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This dual biography, the latest addition to the substantial store of books on the two most famous rebel generals, emphasizes the "interconnectiveness" of their lives and careers. Like many other generals on both sides, Lee and Jackson crossed paths before the Civil War. It's doubtful, however, that these contacts contributed greatly to their fruitful relationship during 1862-63, despite arguments to that effect here by popular historian Casdorph ( Let the Good Times Roll: Life at Home in America During World War II , LJ 10/15/89). Nonetheless, this narrative, based on a wide variety of printed sources, graphically details their lives and extraordinary mutual success. Together the two leaders were invincible: while Lee could count on his lieutenant's unwavering obedience, Jackson tempered his chief's innate aggressiveness. A useful supplement to full biographies for both specialists and general readers.
- Thomas E. Schott, Office of History, 17th Air Force, Sembach, Germany
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Paragon House
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 155778535X
• ISBN 13: 9781557785350
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 498