Return To Bull Run:  The Campaign And Battle of Second Manassas, by John J. Hennessy

This is a fine book about an often-neglected campaign, the short and (for the North at least) inglorious Second Bull Run campaign.  The book gives a very detailed account (with almost 500 pages of text) to the period from just before Cedar Mountain to that just after Chantilly.  [Note:  the reason why I read this book in the first place was its discussion of the Battle of Chantilly for an encyclopedia entry [1].]  The book as a whole shows a great attention to detail and primary source material on the part of Mr. Hennessy, who has clearly done his research and also clearly has a fiery prose style that is well suited to writing excellent works of history about the Civil War.  I shall have to make myself more familiar with his body of work.

Return To Bull Run is organized chronologically in a way that mostly alternates its focus between the main players.  Most of the writing, as is understandable, focuses on the Battle of Second Bull Run on August 29th and 30th, 1862, but substantial coverage as well is given to the maneuvers that allowed Jackson to place himself in the rear of Pope’s army after a classic flanking march as well as to cavalry raiding.  The Battle of Groveton on August 28th also receives substantial coverage.  One only wishes it had included more details about the Battle of Chantilly, which is dealt with in only a couple of short paragraphs.

Where the book particularly excels is its examination of a few elements.  The existing hagiography about Lee and Jackson in the pro-Confederate historiography makes his analysis of these cases interesting but hardly groundbreaking.  Where he does a more original and groundbreaking job is in his placing of Pope’s campaign as the start of the Union effort towards a harder war against the South (an unsuccessful first step, but clearly a sign of things to come with the likes of Sherman and Sheridan).  Additionally, this book shows that the Union war effort failed largely because of command bungling (Pope, McDowell, and McClellan come of very poorly) as well as the related problem of political infighting within the Army of Virginia and the Army of the Potomac.  Reading this book, and its excerpts from letters, shows that the political infighting between leaders of different camps on the Union side was a major element in the debacle of Second Bull Run, for which blame can be spread around liberally.

What is clear, though, is that the Second Bull Run campaign demonstrated that the bravery of men and even subordinate brigade commanders was not able not overcome or ruin the excellence or the incompetence of the top leadership.  Lee’s knowledge of the strengths of his chief subordinates and his putting each in a position to best exceed, the strategic excellence of Jackson in his marching (despite his tactical mediocrity), and Longstreet’s keen eye for defense and counterattack were all well-served in this campaign.  On the other hand, Pope’s willful ignorance, the blatant disobedience of numerous subordinate commanders to orders (including the near-treasonous actions of Kearny on August 29th), and the failure of McDowell to pass on critical information to Pope for 18 hours (along with his mysterious absence from his troops for nearly an entire day prior to this), speak to severe problems on the Union side.

The book therefore successfully handles two important but distinct elements–a keen grasp of the actual “plot” of the battle study that this book excels at in its limited focus, as well as a grasp of the personal and political factors that greatly influenced success and failure.  As a whole, the book succeeds in both its meaty historical content (detailed down to the unit level) as well as its elegant prose style.  For a reader interested in knowing more about Second Bull Run–either in search of praiseworthy actions on one side or rank incompetence by the other–this book is an excellent and worthy read in the very crowded field of Civil War historiography.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/a-walking-encyclopedia/