Judith Lee Hallock

General James Longstreet in the West: A Monumental Failure
Judith Lee Hallock

This very short (84 pages of text, 134 pages with Organizational Charts, Indices) book, which would have been much more honestly presented as a monograph, purports to recount Longstreet’s performance at Chickamauga, the Battle of Lookout Mountain (or part of it) and the engagements in the Knoxville campaign.

I say “purports”, because it is clear that Hallock has her long knives sharpened and out for Longstreet. If we believe her version of the story, Longstreet was simply lucky at Chickamauga (partly true) and was bumbling, incompetent, lazy, careless, add your own denigrating adjective. Her insistence that Longstreet was a failure in the Tennessee theater and that this was representative of his lack of talent and imagination as a commander is disturbing, because she makes statements in the course of the text tyhat are not backed up. I don’t know for whom this series (because this book is part of a series on Civil War commanders) is meant but if this book is an example it is an odd one. There are no reference notes, none--no citations to some of her more startling statements. The most bizarre is that Longstreet, just before Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, took himself off for a nap and left the order to start the charge up to Porter Alexander, his chief of artillery!

I have checked three reference sources that I have, including Alexander’s own memoirs; nowhere does this story of Longstreet taking a nap come up. Alexander and another source both state that Longstreet was sitting on a fence rail just before the attack and that Longstreet himself agreed to the start of the charge. It is well known that before the charge, Longstreet did try to put the responsibility on Alexander, but the latter, no fool, saw the trap and deftly returned the ball to Longstreet’s court. Longstreet himself gave the order.

The statement occurs on p. 23; after that, I reserved judgment on anything derogatory that Hallock had to say. It does seem to be true that Longstreet failed in his one and only experience at independent command, but that in itself does not stamp him as incompetent. it just simply is a fact that there are plenty of people who serve very well as second-in-command--whether in the military or a business or in a department--who simply are not capable of overall leadership. That doesn’t negate their usefulness as subordinates.

Longstreet’s corps was the finest in the Confederate Army--hard-hitting. Longstreet was not without fault--he was one of an innumerable horde of Confederate commanders who were ambitious, quarrelsome, and not easy to get along with. From Gettysburg on, Longstreet found himself at the center of the controversy as to who lost that battle, since no one would ever dream of blaming Lee. After the war, Longstreet was hated because he became a Republican and accepted a position from his good friend, President Ulysses Grant. He was considered a traitor and vilified. His reputation underwent a rebirth with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Killer Angels; the movie “Gettysburg” did a great deal for Longstreet due to the incredibly sympathetic portrayal by Tom Beringer. It’s well to remember not to confuse the two.

This book is too one-sided, caught out in who knows what petty, spiteful and apparently untrue anecdote about Longstreet at Gettysburg to generate much faith in an account that cites no sources. Hallock is practically venomous; it feels very much like a personal attack.

In addition, the maps are puzzling--they are almost relevant but not quite. It’s as if the cartographer never saw the text that he was illustrating. Plus, there is no distance scale on the maps--you’re left wondering just how distant important places were from each other.

This is a bad book. Period.… (altro)

Volume 2 of the biography of General Braxton Bragg starts after Bragg’s withdrawal from Tullahoma, Tennessee, to Chattanooga. Hallock describes in detail the most famous of Bragg’s battles--the victory at Chickamauga, where his old friend,George Thomas of the Union Army earned his sobriquet “The Rock of Chickamauga”--and his worst defeat--the loss of Missionary Ridge to Grant through an even-handed fate, since it was Thomas’ troops who broke the Confederate center.

Bragg was relieved of command shortly after and appointed as Jefferson Davis’ military advisor, in Richmond. Hallock is absolutely fascinating as she details Bragg’s performance in this post--it brought out both the best in his capabilities of administrator and organizer and the worst in his personality. One Richmond diarist called him “this element of discord, acrimony, and confusion.” Bragg seemed incapable of getting along with any of his colleagues. another ection describes that the lull in the two attacks on Fort Pickens, North Carolina, where he was in charge of the defenses “allowed Bragg an opportunity to indulge himself in his favorite pastimes--griping and carping”. It seemed as if Bragg never lost an opportunity to make an enemy, and he had plenty of opportunities. Vindictiveness just rounded out Bragg’s congenial disposition.

It is this failure in interpersonal relationships--vital if a commander is to get the best out of his subordinates--that turned much of the public and many of the Confederate officers against him, and contributed to a reputation for incompetence that was more than he deserved. But Bragg was a nasty piece of work, and most of his problems were self-created.

Hallock’s book is an eye-opener in the way she reveals the animosities and back-biting that permeated the Confederate high commands. She also is unsparing of Longstreet who, according to her viewpoint, failed at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Her description of Bragg’s contribution to and in the fatal removal of Joseph Johnston from the command of the Army of Tennessee and the subsequent appointment of Hood, who jockeyed shamelessly for the command, is revelatory; Bragg, who prided himself on his integrity, behaved like an ordinary sleazy county politician, pandering to Davis in the latter’s desire to get rid of Johnston; Bragg lied through his teeth later about his participation in a betrayal of a man who had stood up for Bragg when Bragg was under fire.

Hallock follows Bragg through the last days of the Confederacy and to the end of his life. True to form, he was unable to hold any position for very long in the post-war era due to his inability to co-exist at least neutrally with anyone in authority or his colleagues as well.

Hallock’s last chapter sums up Brag’s strength and weaknesses and how they contributed both to further the Confederate cause and to its defeat. She also makes some extrapolations of Bragg’s character to the Southern population in general. But what is the most interesting part in this chapter is her discussion of Bragg’s health. It was notoriously poor and probably psychosomatic, brought on by the stresses of responsibility and overwork. But the medical treatments of the day were horrific; Bragg practically lived on mercury compounds, widely prescribed by Southern doctors as a way to counteract what they termed was the “torpid” lives of Southern males. Calumel--mercury--was quite well accepted as a remedy in the mid-19th century. Today, of course, we know it’s debilitating effects. Not only that, but according to Hallock, opium was quite widely used as a tranquilizer and some of Bragg’s described behavior could very well have been due to an “opium fog:” According to Hallock--and she cites quite a few sources, the South had the highest rate of opium addiction in the country and possibly one of the highest in the world. It’s a fascinating conjecture.

Hallock’s writing is very engaging, very clear, and her attention to detail leads you right into the life of this unpleasant yet highly important Confederate general. The few maps the book has are adequate for the text and the story.

While Volume 2 can stand on its own, but is enhanced by reading Volume 1 by Grady McWhiney first. All in all, a very well written, very informative and even absorbing book.… (altro)