Of
all the content featured in War Upon the
Land by Lisa Brady, chapter four really stood out for me. This chapter caught my eye mostly due to the
fact that I have become something of an expert on William T. Sherman and the
Savannah Campaign. As far as content,
its informative to a certain degree. One
thing that I had some trouble with was her use of the word “chevauchee.” Sherman’s campaign
resembled the chevauchee tactic, but
it was not an authentic chevauchee. Sherman did not wantonly kill civilians nor
did he authorize rape, which was very common in the chevauchees of the Hundred
Years War. Personally, I like the term “new
chevauchee”, a phrase used by Mark
Grimsley in his 1995 book The Hard Hand
of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865. Grimsley drew a clear line between the “old” chevauchee and the “new” chevauchee. A critical difference between the old and the
new is the attack on churches. During
the Hundred Years War, Edward III ordered churches to be burned while Sherman
explicitly had churches defended during his occupation of Atlanta. But I essence, Sherman did carry out a chevauchee, but for all indented
purposes, it is best to draw a line between the chevauchee of the Hundred Years War and the chevauchee of the March to the Sea.
I feel that Grimsley’s book would make a good supplement to Brady’s book
or even a good replacement book. In
terms of content, Grimsley was more interesting. The
Hard Hand of War reads like Oliver Stone presents War Upon the Land. I found
Brady’s book to portray the events of the March to the Sea to be boring. After months of mulling over primary sources
(mostly Sherman’s Memoirs and Marching With Sherman by Henry
Hitchcock) and especially Southern Storm:
Sherman’s March to the Sea by Noah Andrew Trudeau, the events of the
campaign was not that boring.
Personally, I found my sources to be very interesting and I lost 2-3
hours a day getting captivated by the events of the march. As a whole, I found this section to be
helpful for someone researching agricultural history, but in regards to
military and agricultural history I would recommend The Hard Hand of War by Mark Grimsley. As far as Sherman information in a secondary
source goes, Southern Storm is
probably one of the best you can get.
Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of
War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians,
1861-1865. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Trudeau, Noah Andrew. Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea.
New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2008.
I tend to agree with you in the "War upon the Land" seemed more like an agricultural history than a military one (Maybe a bit of engineering history, too). I have read "Southern Storm", and definitely liked what I read, but I also enjoyed "War...Land", as well. I enjoyed reading about the many examples showing that the concept of "total war" was/is by no means a modern one. I guess, usually, if I know what kind of book im going to be reading, the level of "boring" matters much less, as I can mentally prepare myself.
ReplyDeleteInteresting look at the use of the word chevauchee. I had no idea what that word meant before reading this, but it is certainly some loose use on the part of the author.
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