What Should You Do When Your Life is Under Attack?
Lee's Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman
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What ought one do if one’s way of life is under attack?
What ought one do if one’s people are under attack?
Such were the questions faced by the Virginians in 1861.
In some ways they remained prosperous. They had begun the transition to semi-mechanized grain production, in some cases with great success, and away from cash crops.1 They were the bastion still of the old American gentry, and were, as such, a land full of old families, old country houses, and centuries of investment. And their state retained the prestige long attached to The Old Dominion.
But decline was starting to sap away the vitality of the state.2 Its soil was, in large part, exhausted by nearly three centuries of slave-raised cash crops. Its old families and established planters were no longer America’s seat of power. Whereas the four of the first five presidents were Virginians and quite able to set the nation’s direction, it took decades for the next Virginians to reach the White House — Harrison, Tyler, and Taylor — and they mattered little compared to the Founders; Yankees, Westerners, and South Carolinians now set America’s path. Whereas Virginia was once the wealthiest state in America and a center of economic power, that had moved decisively to New York by the mid-19th century.
It was, in short, a land that was great but quickly becoming one of lesser sons of greater sires rather than a dynamic, vital state looking toward a bright future.
Such was the situation in Virginia when the firebrands in Charleston fired upon Fort Sumter. The Old Dominion was largely opposed to secession, but being steeped in the views and traditions of the Founders, its sons saw both its sovereignty as inviolate and secession as legitimate. So, when Mr. Lincoln’s legions marched South, a dramatic change was foisted upon them: honor, justice, and tradition demanded they fight back. Or, at least, that’s how they saw it. It’s what their spiritual successor, Prince Rupert,3 did when Parliament marched on the King, and it’s what they saw themselves as being honor-bound to do when the Puritans once again marched on the Cavaliers.
Lee’s Lieutenants
It is about the resulting effort that the Old Dominion’s greatest historian — Douglas Southall Freeman — writes in Lee’s Lieutenants, a ~2400-page, three-volume history of the main generals who served in the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the war.
All the main characters from the war in Virginia — men such as JEB Stuart, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, James Longstreet, AP Hill, etc. — are discussed in depth, and the supporting characters, such as John Bell Hood and James Gordon, are far more fleshed out than in most general histories of the war. Their characters, their developing (and degrading) capabilities as the war ground on, their ability (or inability) to see the larger strategic picture, and their eccentricities are all discussed in depth by Freeman throughout the volumes.
The Good
In some ways, that is fabulous.
Reading about Jubal Early’s rise to fame in the early war and collapse as a capable general in 1864 is interesting and something about which I knew little before reading Lee’s Lieutenants, and Stuart’s pestering of Lee for accolades after nearly every action, large or small, is an indication of his vanity that most of his biographies downplay.
Similarly, learning more about how Lee’s subordinates acted makes disasters like Gettysburg and lost chances like the Peninsular Campaign far more understandable.
For example, seeing how Gen. Ewell seemed unable to act in Lee’s shadow during the campaigns of 1863, despite his brilliance when left to his own devices, makes his reticence (and thus failure) to take Cemetary Hill on the first day of Gettysburg vastly more understandable; the added context obviates the usual fog of war history.
Further, Freeman’s masterful skill as a historical writer pairs well with the diverse cast of characters about whom he writes. No one else could have described Stonewall Jackson’s brilliance in the Valley Campaign and tranquility at Moss Neck, two vastly different situations, in such engaging terms. No one else could show so well the character of a man who acted like an Old Testament prophet at Fredericksburg and then lived in halcyonic country bliss with his officers, all while around a young family, mere weeks later.
And while Jackson might be the subject of Freeman’s best writing, the same is generally true of the rest of the semi-biographies that compose Lee’s Lieutenants. The strange, often disparate characters that composed Lee’s fellow officers are brought to light and dissected in fascinating fashion, with some entertaining anecdotes and tales of their personal quirks adding to the story of their battlefield performance.
Finally, Freeman manages to near-perfectly balance the fine line of near-nostalgic care for the Antebellum Old Dominion with a dedication to telling the truth and noting the various faults of the men involved, from the vain Stuart to taciturn Jackson.
The Bad
The problem with the three-volume set is the one implied by its hefty length and extensive scope of the work: it’s a bit too much, and Freeman gets lost in the details.
This is a problem that’s not the case in his biographies of George Washington and Robert E. Lee, both of which are without peer. Though extensive, both are about the men themselves, not a mammoth cast of characters, and so the focus is on a story rather than on trivia.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said, at times, of Lee’s Lieutenants. While superb in many ways, there’s just slightly too heavy a dose of trivia and extraneous detail poured into it, something best exemplified by Freeman’s, at times, heavy reliance on dispatches, reports, and quotes. While occasionally interesting, generally, these block quotes mar his narrative and would have been better utilized if attached in appendices while concisely paraphrased in the narrative itself.
This isn’t a problem Freeman alone has. While Sir Winston Churchill’s books are generally excellent, with his four-volume biography of the 1st Duke of Marlborough being one of the greatest biographies written, with only Freeman’s biographies of Lee and Washington in the running, they suffer from a far more severe case of the same problem. Like Freeman in Lee’s Lieutenants, Churchill in his The World Crisis (a history of WW1) and The Second World War relies far too heavily on telegrams, letters, and dispatches…the result is total tedium for pages at a time, interspersed with bits of excellently written narrative. Freeman’s fault in that regard is far less severe, and mars his work near-inconsequentially compared to Churchill’s, but is still noticeable.
So, unlike in most cases, an abridged version of Lee’s Lieutenants might be best, as such tedium is typically cut out in abridged works, and near-nothing would be lost with the dispatches cut out and relegated to an appendix, given the skill of Freeman’s storytelling and beauty of his language.
Is It Relevant?
Unlike Hillbilly Elegy, which I reviewed previously,4 Lee’s Lieutenants isn’t immediately relevant from a policy perspective. Understanding how Wade Hampton turned his raising of a private legion in 1861 into a premier cavalry command by the late war is interesting, and helpful from the perspective of thinking and character development, but, at first glance, lacks the immediate relevance of seeing how globalization has hammered the Rust Belt.
But that cursory glance at Lee’s Lieutenants’ relevance is only somewhat correct.
The basic fact of life for many red Americans is that our way of life has been under attack for generations. Up until now, egalitarian policy5 and free trade6 have been used to hollow out the real economy, bash functional communities into multi-cultural wrecks, and generally inflict indignities upon those who think God is real and men can’t be women.
So, what ought one do when the enemies inflicting that change and those indignities are a leviathan, as the federal government circa 1861 turned out to be?
A few lessons are clear.
The first is that advantages in morale matter, but less than even somewhat sober-minded leaders might think. As the Confederates learned and Freeman writes about, Stuart’s Prince Rupert-like flair for raids and the blood-chilling rebel yell could give smaller Confederate armies a step up on somewhat larger Union armies, but in the end the North’s advantage in food production, weapons production, and logistics told. So, if one expects an advantage to come from “knowing how to shoot,” “having all the guns,” or “being more motivated,” the excellently led, high morale, but still defeated Army of Northern Virginia shows that to be an unrealistic expectation.
The second is that honor is rewarded by history, but not in the moment. When Lee invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1862 and 63, he enforced strict orders not to pillage or steal. That temperance toward the civilian population of the country invading his own wasn’t rewarded. Instead, as Freeman tells in quite a stomach-churning fashion, Sheridan’s troops devastated the Shenandoah, Burnside’s troops intentionally looted and wrecked civilian homes in Fredericksburg, to the point of wantonly smashing mirrors and burning libraries, and Southern civilians and troops generally suffered depredations despite behaving with restraint when presented with the opportunity to act otherwise. So, though the Army of Northern Virginia never went to the depths it could, and indeed its enemies did, the civilians it protected still suffered those indignities; the enemy largely lacked the mercy it exhibited. The question then becomes whether one is fighting to win or for history, a question that it was hard for the cavaliers to answer in the moment, as their belief in being gentlemen compelled them to act with potentially imprudent mercy.
The third is that men are constantly changing, often for the worse, as conditions get worse. This is one of the central lessons of Freeman’s mini-biographies: Jackson was one of the few generals in the Army of Northern Virginia who continued improving as a leader after 1862, and he died in 1863. Perhaps Hampton did as well, but he only ever led half the cavalry. Nearly all the others, whether from exhaustion, being promoted beyond their abilities, or otherwise, started degrading in capability as the war continued. Stuart kept vainly chasing glory, Longstreet became a ditherer in critical situations, Early and Ewell became nearly incompetent, and AP Hill was promoted far over his head. That is quite the opposite of what we expect: the Union generals improved, as did American leaders during WWII, which is what we remember. But they only did so under near-ideal logistic conditions and with immense amounts of time at their disposal. The Confederates lacked that luxury, and other than Lee, Jackson, Hampton, and Forrest, even the best of them, those who composed the Army of Northern Virginia, declined and degraded as the war ground on and exhaustion took its toll.
Finally, the overarching lesson is that had foresight ruled rather than honor, Virginia probably would have stayed out of the war and would have found itself in a far better position afterward. The South would have lost far more quickly, and thus probably would have been in a better position as well. So, sometimes prudence is the better part of valor, and the chess board ought be considered so that victory can be won rather than just honor defended.
Most of those lessons aren’t what readers of Freeman want to hear. But, for the work to be at all relevant, it’s important. Stress can be a forge, but it can also lead to irreparable cracks. Honor and mercy are important, but if you lose your statues will eventually be torn down, however honorable you may be, as is now happening to the statues of Lee and his lieutenants. And if the outcome of a fight is a tossup, it’s much better to build strength while keeping it peaceful and political than to roll the dice, a the consequences of a bad roll are disastrous.
So, I do think Lee’s Lieutenants is quite an important read, as many of the lessons are, in an abstract way, relevant to our situation. Further, it is a wonderful, beautifully written book that is, despite its length and some tedium, quite enjoyable.
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This is oft-forgotten, but discussed in depth by James Huston in The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America
This decline is discussed in depth by Susan Dunn in Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia
