Mount TBR #35

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War - James M. McPherson

This collects 16 essays, most of which were originally published as pieces for the New York Review of Books. The topics range from relatable such as the common soldier’s love of reading newspapers to huge topics such as the Confederate strategy of “the best defense is a good offense.” Along the way, he makes interesting points such as:

[L]ee’s counteroffensive in the Seven Days battles and other major victories during the next year ensured a prolongation of the war, opening the way to the emergence of Grant and Sherman to top Union commands, the abolition of slavery, the ‘directed severity’ of Union policy in 1864-65, and the Gotterdammerung of the Old South. Here was the irony of Robert E. Lee: His success produced the destruction of everything he fought for.

McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize for his history Battle Cry of Freedom so obviously he can write for both the expert and lay audience. But I think this book would mainly appeal to the non-expert, with historians hankering for a little more heft. I enjoyed it because I had not read about the conflict in a long time and it’s one of those topics, along with Eastasia and the history of popular entertainment, that holds endless fascination for me.

As Gertrude Stein wrote in her distinctive way, “So I was interested in being in Richmond and in Virginia and I was interested in hearing what they were all saying and I was interested, after all there never will be anything more interesting in America than the Civil War never.”