It may be that Confederate nationalism died so abruptly and so completely because it was never a true nationalism, that the fatal split in the confederate psyche prevented the national spirit from ever flowering fully enough to nourish a resolve that would have persevered in the contest after all the romance was gone. All the more tragic was a war fought with so much bloodshed around a flag whose opponents did not really want to pull it down.If the liberation of African Americans could have been achieved in no way except through war, then the Civil War calls for a rethinking of the attitude toward war that has become widespread, even predominant, in the United States since the Vietnam War: the belief that war is always futile, that its rewards never match its cost, that any conflict…show more content… A lifelong student of both strategy and tactics, he also brings to his accounts a deep understanding of the importance of individuals from generals to captains to privates. He can put the reader on the battlefield as well as anyone who has ever written about war, and he does it countless times in "A Great Civil War".From Fort Sumter to the early ill-organised clashes in the West and border states to the naval encounters in the East and on through the great and horrible battles whose names resound in American history - Shiloh, Corinth, Bull Run, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Appomattox - all the great battles and many lesser engagements are described and analysed. A brilliant narrator of battle action and historical events, Weigley is never content merely to tell a good story. Every student of war will find new insights and interpretations at the strategic and the tactical level. There are firm judgements throughout of the leaders on both sides of the conflict."A Great Civil War" also analyses the politics of both sides in relationship to battlefield situations.
