Courage Under Fire, Review

I wish I could say that Wiley J. Sword's latest book, Courage Under Fire: Profiles in Bravery From the Battlefields of the Civil War, is a welcome addition to the vast field of books on the Civil War, but I just cannot do so. Sword's objective is to provide numerous examples of the different types of courage displayed by both soldiers and civilians during the war, but, however, he falls short of this goal.

One of the themes that seems to be at the center of this book is that there were no real differences between Northern and Southern soldiers. They all shared, according to Sword, a common sense of duty and displayed similar courage. OK, but what does this add to our understanding of the war? Nothing at all. This book is a drums and bugle, highly romanticized view of the war.

Sword also has quite a romantic view of Robert E. Lee. Lee is portrayed as this man of great courage. How was he courageous? Well, he implemented a rather foolish battle plan on day 3 at Gettysburg and then accepted the blame for its failure. I guess its courageous to nearly destroy your army and seal the fate of your country as along as you say "my bad" once you've done so.
I have other problems with the book. For the first 150 or so pages, he centered each chapter around a certain theme and illustrated each theme through long block quotes from soldiers' letters. The excerpts from letters and diaries are extremely interesting, but Sword's analysis of these letters was fairly light. Though these excerpts were absorbing, Sword may have relied on them too much. There is an urge among historians to let documents do all the talking, but a good historian must step in help us make sense of the documents. Also, Sword abruptly stops relying on these excerpts about half way through the book. It is as though he realized that he was bogging down the text with these long block quotes. The second half of the book reads much better because the flow of the text is not constantly being interrupted.

For a better study of civil war courage I recommend Gerald Linderman's Embattled Courage.