Nothing But Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865 By Steven E. Woodworth
The best book I have found covering the Army of the Tennessee from its first battles of the Civil War to the end at Bentonville. Very well done summary of the army’s strategic and political trials. Battle accounts have minimal detail but are loaded with personal accounts which so well reveal the soldiers’ and officers’ experiences. A great history! Hardcover 4.5 stars, rounded up Hardcover Picked this book up at the Battles of Chattanooga museum recently, not what I expected, but still quite good. Kind of thought it would be a local history of the Civil War, but instead it was the UNION Army of the Tennessee, which was fine, because this is the army who gets the shaft in the history books despite the volumes of amazing work they performed during the war. Woodworth really shines their star, and it's a great learning experience for those of us who's knowledge of the Civil War is a little coast biased... Hardcover I liked being able to follow some army other than the army of the Potomac and only from one side's point of view. Would have liked some maps though. Hardcover This book gave outstanding views of the Union side of the battles of Vicksburg and Atlanta. It was worth reading just for that. The book overall was informative on many aspects of 1st Grant's and then Sherman's command. Very good read and never tedious despite its length. Hardcover
In this first full consideration of the remarkable Union army that effectively won the Civil War, historian Steven Woodworth tells the engrossing story of its victory by drawing on letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts of the time.
The Army of the Tennessee operated in the Mississippi River Valley through the first half of the Civil War, winning major victories at the Confederate strongholds of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg. The army was created at Cairo, Illinois, in the summer of 1861 and took shape under the firm hand of Ulysses S. Grant, who molded it into a hard-hitting, self-reliant fighting machine. Woodworth takes us to its winter 1863 encampment in the Louisiana swamps, where the soldiers suffered disease, hardship, and thousands of deaths. And we see how the force emerged from that experience even tougher and more aggressive than before. With the decisive victory at Vicksburg, the Army of the Tennessee had taken control of the Mississippi away from the Confederates and could swing east to aid other Union troops in a grand rolling up of Rebel defenses. It did so with a confidence born of repeated success, even against numerical odds, leading one of its soldiers to remark that he and his comrades expected “nothing but victory.”
The Army of the Tennessee contributed to the Union triumph at Chattanooga in the fall of 1863 and then became part of William Tecumseh Sherman’s combined force in the following summer’s march to Atlanta. In the complicated maneuvering of that campaign, Sherman referred to the army as his whiplash and used it whenever fast marching and arduous fighting were especially needed. Just outside Atlanta, it absorbed the Confederacy’s heaviest counterblow and experienced its hardest single day of combat. Thereafter, it continued as part of Sherman’s corps in his March to the Sea and his campaign through the Carolinas.
The story of this army is one of perseverance in the face of difficulty, courage amid severe trials, resolute lessons in fighting taught by equally courageous foes, and the determination of a generation of young men to see a righteous cause all the way through to victory.
Nothing but Victory is an important addition to the literature of the Civil War. Nothing But Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865
An absorbing historical narrative, in the best traditions of Catton, Foote and Nevins, of the trials, tribulations, battles and campaigns of the Army of the Tennessee. Professor Woodworth takes us from the raising of the individual companies and regiments, and to their first deployment along the Ohio River, where they were fortunate enough to be commanded by a then-obscure general named Grant. The battles of this great army are a roll-call of honor: Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, the marches through Georgia and the Carolinas; the Army of the Tennessee was fortunate in its commanders as well, good generals all: Grant, Sherman, McPherson and Howard, and the book also examines the generally competent regimental, brigade, division and corps commanders as well. My only complaint here is that there is only a single map of the Southern states, and that's it! No battle or campaign maps, it's simply unbelievable that a military history book could be published thusly nowadays. Hence only 4 stars, but still a great read and a fine addition to your Civil War bookshelf. Hardcover A well-written and enjoyable history of the Army of the Tennessee, which had a stunning record of victory against the Confederates. Woodworth gives comprehensive treatment to the campaigns and gives us a well-balanced look from both the soldiers and the army’s notable commanders, although the work is more about the army’s leaders and soldiers than its campaigns and battles. Woodworth argues that its success came from its “cohesiveness”; soldiers trusted their commanders, and commanders utilized a good balance of aggression and coordination.
Among the most notable of these commanders, of course, was Grant and Sherman, and Woodworth shows how they operated with an effective working relationship and trusted each other with their lives. Woodworth also describes the exceptions to an otherwise workable command structure, such as General McClernand, a prime example of the Union’s many “political generals.” Another element of the army’s success was Grant’s grasp of strategy and his aggressive pressing of the advantage, which proved decisive and was a stark contrast to such dithering eastern commanders like McClellan. Woodworth also explores the army’s ability to operate far from it supply lines and its use of foraging, a unique aspect of the Army of the Tennessee. Woodworth shows how big of a role Grant played in the army’s success, and how he overcame such obstacles as Halleck’s ambivalence, the politicking of McClernand, and the unstoppable rumors about his drinking problem.
Curiously, the book suffers from a lack of maps. Still, a well-researched, vivid, and richly detailed study of the Army of the Tennessee, its commanders, its soldiers, and its campaigns. Hardcover I like this Woodworth. He’s a big right-wing Christian, an orientation undetectable in this book but for the genteel censorship of quoted correspondence (“We had one h--- of a battle.” “That --- McClernand!”) and the quiet recurrence of “providentially” as a shyly favored adverb. Still, the man can write. He has a command of the foot solider diaries that repose, by the thousands, in our historical societies; the book has a novelistic texture, a density of memorable stories--also, quite a few magnificent set-pieces (the running of the guns at Vicksburg by unarmed riverboats, the drunken carnival-torching of Columbia, SC). Large-unit movements, a challenge to the historian who would write pictorially, trouble Woodworth not at all: whenever you read “Logan’s corps moved into position for the attack,” you always know Woodworth has a few guys down front, privates whose letters and diaries he’s memorized; the thrust of an abstract arrow across a map thus becomes the communal thrill and athletic rush of the attackers, and their fear and confusion and blood. Woodworth is funny too, casting a cold apothegmatic eye on high politics and on the psychologies of successful and would-be warlords.
The Army of the Tennessee was, as Woodworth says, the victorious field army in the decisive theaters of the war, the trans-Mississippi Valley and Georgia breadbasket of the Confederacy, where under Grant and Sherman it gutted the slaveholders’ revolt. The army was called after the Tennessee River: Grant’s force was water-supplied and frequently water-borne, using troop-carrying steamboats and squat, broad-bottomed ironclads called “mud turtles” to blast apart Rebel river bastions and force a way into the heart of the Deep South. Grant honed this mass of Midwestern regiments from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota into a superb fighting force; it was a tad rougher than the spit-and-polish but hard-luck eastern armies, whose French-style kepi was crowed over as a “little cap” by Grant’s men, who wore broad-brimmed headgear we would think of as cowboy hats. When Grant went east to face Robert E. Lee, the army, in somewhat reduced form, passed to Sherman, who employed it as his hard marching, hard fighting “whiplash” on the Atlanta Campaign and on the March to the Sea. Sherman then turned his men north into South Carolina and scourged a path through the birthplace of secession to North Carolina, where he received the surrender of the last remaining rebel field army.
The army’s major campaigns in the Mississippi Delta and the mountainous country of northern Georgia were long and difficult, presenting every kind of physical and managerial challenge; how fortunate (how providential, Woodworth coughs) that among the superb topographers, bridge-builders, logisticians, railroad makers and breakers pumped out by West Point there were a few like Grant and Sherman, engineers with a vengeance as Melville's whaleship captains are Quakers with a vengeance, men who possessed both the brains and the aggression needed to harness the country’s industrial power as a weapon. As Sherman wrote a secessionist colleague at war's commence: You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You will fail.
Woodworth loves Grant; and I fail see how he is short of the greatest Americans; and lo, the merciless Nast-style lampoon of Grant in The Education of Henry Adams, though superbly written (Adams is only interesting when talking about others) and politically understandable (Grant’s presidential administration was spectacularly corrupt), becomes yet another reason for me to grimace whenever I handle a copy of that insufferable, piss-damp blanket of a book. I never went on a high school trip to Washington DC, so I only just got around to visiting the city a couple years ago. I like that the Civil War monuments are so dominant. I was especially impressed by the equestrian Grant statue positioned Savior-of-the-Republic-style right in front of the Capitol, the supposed temple to the popular will whose giant imperial dome Lincoln continued work on during the War, as a national morale booster. It’s appropriate that the hatted, ponchoed Grant effigy isn’t rearing like a cavalier or cantering into Valhalla (for that, see Sherman in Central Park), but looks as if he could be perched in the saddle at a muddy Mississippi cross-roads, a cold cigar butt clamped at one side of his beard-trimmed mouth, muttering encouragement to passing troops under a cold rain. Grant’s homely grandeur, his common-man personal carriage throughout the conflict (except when performing Mongol feats of horsemanship), seem truly captured. From the Personal Memoirs his friend Mark Twain urged him to write:
General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia; at all events, it was an entirely different sword from the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.
Hardcover This book is 750 freaking pages and I finished the whole thing in two days. Woodworth knows how to craft an engaging, fast-paced narrative out of the many, many primary sources he used for his analysis. He dispenses with a lot of pernicious mythology, and he is more than capable of using said sources to prove the flimsiness of this mythology with clarity and effect. He also has an eye for detail without losing sight of the bigger picture -- during his accounts of the battles we frequently zoom in on the men on the ground, before pulling back to outline various strategic decisions and politicking of the commanders. You start noticing recurring names and become invested in what happens to them. By this point I've read quite a few versions of the Vicksburg campaign and this is one of my favorites. Highly highly recommended. Hardcover Steven E Woodworth's 2005 tome Nothing But Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865, was one of the very first books I bought about the American Civil War. I have been most interested in tracking the movements of the 9th Iowa, which was brought into the Army of the Tennessee as William T Sherman passed south on the Mississippi River from Memphis in December 1862, collecting several regiments up at Helena, Arkansas, just in time to participate in the miserable fight at Chickasaw Bayou in the swamps northwest of Vicksburg. The 9th Iowa remained in the Army of the Tennessee for the rest of the war, and I spent a number of years picking through the Woodworth book as I traced out the routes taken by the regiment through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas. It was only a few months ago that I decided it was time to actually read the book in its entirety, start to finish.
In part I was slow to tackle the whole book because it is so daunting: all the exploits of the famous Army of the Tennessee ― under the leadership of such titanic personalities as, first, Ulysses Grant and, second, William T Sherman ― in a single volume. I marvel that any author would conceive of taking on such a stupendous and gigantic subject. But as I got a few pages into the book I marveled even more to discover that this book is, well, great.
In recent years it's become fashionable for Civil War writers to intercut the accounts of marches and battles with excerpts from soldier letters and diaries and contemporaneous newspaper articles. It's a noble effort, but few if any of them do it as smoothly as Woodworth did here. A number of Civil War books will provide regiment-level detail of battlefield action which is fine, although sometimes it leaves the reader's eyes reddening and drooping as he strains to recall and juggle the names of all the accruing lieutenants and colonels and the brigade organization and which terrain features the various companies of all are crouching behind at any given moment. We find the shifting focus here evenly distributed between division commanders and privates and civilians, but somehow Woodworth's storytelling always remains perfectly balanced and seamless. He successfully achieves a grand and yet coherent story through-line. The effect is a rarity in the Civil War history genre: an engrossing and compelling book that is hard to put down.
Besides Woodworth's obvious very impressive storytelling skills, over and over I was amazed with his accounts of battlefield action. His reportage is incredibly detailed without ever getting bogged down in minutiae. Without fail I learned new information I'd never before encountered at every turn. This is rather incredible, as every single one of these battles easily could, and has, taken up entire books by itself. Honestly, I can't understand how Woodworth packed so much information within the covers of this book and wrote it in such an engaging manner that goes down so smoothly.
I don't often write such a glowing review, but this book is special.
The subject of maps is always a touchy one in Civil War books, and very often readers are dissatisfied for reasons reasonable and irrational. Nothing But Victory is striking in that it contains a single map: a general one that covers the states I mentioned earlier and small portions of a few more. A number of reviewers slight Woodworth for this, which is preposterous, given the sheer scale of the book's vast staging ground and the dozens of maps that would be required to do justice to all the battles and campaigns covered. Besides, we live in the Internet Era, people: maps are easy to find.
I do have a few problems with this book, however. One is that Woodworth sometimes lets his own biases about certain characters leak through. Most often this involves those who are presented as minor characters intruding from outside on the main thrust of his narrative. One example that comes to mind is Woodworth's characterization of Secretary of War Edwin M Stanton, in the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination, as a man: . . . who was always very excitable, not to say unstable . . . (page 636). I don't think Stanton was unstable, but regardless, such comments are unnecessary and make one wonder what other subjective biases are tucked into the book. This is only one example of a kind of false note that rings out in the book, fortunately with limited frequency, except with one notable exception: it is quite clear that Woodworth is a much bigger fan of Ulysses Grant than he is of William T Sherman.
This leads to what I perceive to be the bigger problem in the book. After Chattanooga, Grant of course departed for Virginia, and Sherman afterward commanded multiple armies ― including the Army of the Tennessee ― that advanced to Atlanta, then to Savannah, then north through the Carolinas. This leaves Woodworth with three problems, as after the hinge-point of Chattanooga the story of the Army of the Tennessee pivots into the second half of the story. First, Sherman is now in charge, and as he is clearly not Woodworth's favorite, the author's attention is bound to waver. It does. Second, with a few important exceptions, the large and dramatic battles about which Woodworth writes so vividly are now a thing of the past. The exciting story of the Army of the Tennessee does not diminish, but it does change significantly, especially in the aftermath of Atlanta. Unfortunately, Woodworth seems less able to adapt to and embrace this altered kind of storyline with the same vigor he showed in the first half of the book. Third, with Sherman commanding multiple armies for the rest of the war, the Georgia and Carolina story gets distributed among them all, but Woodworth for the most part limits himself to the actions of the army of the book's title. While appropriate for a book about a specific army, the effect is a distortion of the significance of the action that is unfolding.
So if I had my way, this book would have been divided into two volumes reflecting the commands of Grant and Sherman, and the second volume would have been brought up to par with the first half through expansion and a better appreciation of Sherman as a personality and better coverage of what was being accomplished on a wider scale than simply marching from one battlefield to the next. But we can't judge books we'd prefer had been written rather than the ones we actually hold in our hands or read on our electronic devices. Despite the problems I've mentioned, this remains a great book. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a solid 9. But when we can only rate books with a smaller handful of stars, this one deserves all it can get.
Hardcover
