Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1008939 in Books
• Published on: 1992-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 499 pages

From Library Journal
Sword has written a very descriptive narrative of the self-destruction of the last remnants of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Through a skillful interweaving of federal and Confederate strategies he leads the reader through the final battles as if from the shoulder of each commanding general. The vivid descriptions of each battle are supplemented by testimony from participants. Sword's criticisms of Generals Hood, Schofield, and Thomas are thoroughly grounded and make the reader wonder how either side finally won. Hood is pictured as a glory-seeking leader willing to sacrifice his troops no matter what the odds against him; Schofield was unwilling to make a decision unless forced to from above. This is one of the best historical accounts of the final battles of the Civil War in the Western theater. Public, academic, and specialized libraries should add it.
- W. Walter Wicker, Louisiana Tech Univ . , Ruston
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Just as commercial blight covers the once bloodstained battlefields of Franklin and Nashville, so have other Civil War battles obscured the significance of Rebel defeats there. Here, Sword (Shiloh, 1974) compellingly re-creates the heroism, missed chances, political backbiting, and flawed Rebel leadership underlying the outcome at these killing grounds. In the summer of 1864, desperate to halt Sherman's campaign through Georgia, Jefferson Davis named John Bell Hood to head the Army of the Tennessee, a force torn apart by quarreling generals. Wounded in love and war, Hood, with his melancholy mien and artificial leg, seemed to embody the Southern chevalier--yet a subordinate summed him up as having ``a lion's heart'' but ``a wooden head.'' Sword is equally uncharitable: ``a disabled personality prone to miscalculation and misperception...a fool with a license to kill his own men.'' In November and December, Hood's post-Atlanta dash into Tennessee (an attempt to threaten Sherman's supply lines and terrorize Union strongholds in the Ohio Valley) was catastrophic: miscommunication that foiled a chance to crumple up a Federal column at Spring Hill; an angry frontal attack against Union entrenchments the next day at Franklin, remembered as ``the Gettysburg of the West'' because of the desperate valor and needless sacrifice of the Confederate rank and file; a stinging lesson in strategy at the Battle of Nashville from Hood's former West Point instructor, the Union's methodical George G. Thomas; and the miserable attempt to escape the Federals in icy weather. The outcome was unprecedented: 23,500 casualties out of 38,000 Confederate troops--the only instance in the war when an entire army collapsed as a fighting force. A critical Civil War campaign, narrated with brisk attention to the nuances of strategy--and with measured solemnity over the waste of life in war. (Forty-six b&w photographs and 17 maps--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

The final glory of the Army of Tennessee
In short, this is possibly the finest book regarding Hood's Nashville campaign. While some reviewers have taken issue with Sword's opinion of Hood's leadership, it should be noted that Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman shared Sword's opinion of Hood's leadership qualities.

Read this book to learn more about Patrick Cleburne, a man of greater ability, integrity and possibly devotion to the Southern cause than the man who sent him to his death.

Read this book to learn about the greatest charge of the Confederacy. The charge(s) at Franklin were greater in size, scope and ferocity than the fabled charge of Pickett at Gettysburg. And in some ways, filled with a more poignant courage. At Gettysburg, there was a still a chance perhaps for victory....at Franklin, there was only the chance of regaining a measure of pride for men who gave all they had for the noblest ideas of Southern Independence.

One of the best on the cival war in the west.
The book covers Franklin and Nashville better than any other book of the war. It shows the weakness of the Southern cause by this stage of the war and the weakness of General Hood. The book also show the courage of the Southern soilder and the men who led them.

Tennessee-A Grave or a Free Home
Without a doubt the best contemporary, secondary source on the Middle Tennessee Campaign. Wiley Sword writes a splendid military history that reads like a novel.The book is written with excellent prose and an obvious love for the topic.Also of great use to the historian is that the book is well documented with the best use of primary material that one will find in a book of this genre. The use of manuscript material further embellishes this fine book. I highly recommend this book to all those interested in Civil War history!