I suspect that as a Brit I'm about to put my head into a hornet's nest by reviewing it...

The book covers the period from when Lee took command at the Battle of Seven Pines through to the surrender at Appomattox. It also covers briefly Lee's actions to ensure the reintegration of the South into the USA after the end of the war.

The broad thrust of Alexander's argument is that although Lee was a bold and decisive commander, his instinct was to meet the opposition head on, using the 'Napoleonic' infantry tactics that had become a standard over the previous thirty years. Unfortunately, changing military technology had made these tactics obsolete and costly by the time Lee took command. In particular the introduction of the rifled musket had quadrupled the lethal range of massed defensive fire, making charges against the enemy's strength near suicidal.

Lee was not alone in his error - virtually all the military commanders of his time held the same beliefs. In fact, military commanders were still repeating the same blunders fifty years later in the First World War. It is perhaps, then, an irony that two of the people who did understand the new realities and developed new tactics to cope with the changes were Lee's chief lieutenants, Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet.

In spite of this flaw, Lee was a truly outstanding commander who embodied the spirit of his army. He was bold where Union commanders were timid, decisive where they were indecisive, and unorthordox where they stuck to conventional wisdom. He was able to spot where Lincoln's exasperated prodding had made the Union commanders foolhardy, and punish them for their temerity. He was always seeking the decisive engagement. It was these traits that managed to hold off the Union armies with their superior equipment and manpower for so long. Indeed, several times he came close to defeating them.

In order to back his arguments Alexander looks in some detail at the battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee's command. Alexander makes the point that whenever Lee had a chance to make a direct assault on the enemy army he had a tendency to abandon his strategic plans and meet them head on.

The classic example of this is, of course, Gettysburg. The strategic plan was to draw the Union Army of the Potomac after the invading Confederates, and then to manoeuvre so that the Army of Northern Virginia could take up strong defensive positions between the Army of the Potomac and Washington - which it was supposed to be defending. Because of the politics of the situation, the Union forces would have no option but to assault the Confederate positions and destroy themselves on its defences.

In the event, as soon as the lead elements of the two armies made contact at Gettysburg, Lee ignored his earlier plans and poured his army into a direct confrontation with the enemy. Note that Lee's doubts about the battle at Gettysburg were to do with his lack of information about the enemy dispositions, not at the abandoning of his strategic plans. As Alexander points out this was not an out of character, maverick, move - it entirely fitted in with the way he had fought previous battles.

It is perhaps unfortunate that the US Civil War is so neglected by Europeans, overshadowed as it is by the bloodletting of the First World War. Quite apart from its political consequences, militarily it stands at a watershed of military technology and the accompanying change of strategy and tactics. It represents a decisive swing from the primacy of the offensive to that of the defensive, a swing which was not reversed until the introduction of blitzkrieg weapons and tactics in 1940.

Robert E. Lee is an American folk hero and rightly so. His achievements should not be belittled, but neither should what he did be looked at uncritically. Bevin Alexander's book perhaps does something to restore that balance.

I think this is well worth reading if you have any interest in the American Civil War.

Alan Lenton 22 August, 1998

'Robert E. Lee's Civil War' by Bevin Alexander, Adams Media Corp. ISBM 1-55850-849-X $24.95 HB

Order this book from Amazon.com
(for only$17.47 - 30% discount).

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