Booknotes: Decisions of the Seven Days

New Arrival:
• Decisions of the Seven Days: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battles by Matt Spruill (UT Press, 2021).

From the description: "From June 25 to July 1, 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia engaged Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac in a series of battles at the end of the Peninsula Campaign that would collectively become known as the Seven Days Battles. Beginning with the fighting at the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek, Lee consistently maneuvered against and attacked McClellan’s Army of the Potomac as it retreated south across the Virginia Peninsula to the James River. At the conclusion of the Battle of Malvern Hill, Lee’s second most costly battle, where McClellan’s strong defensive position of infantry and artillery repelled multiple frontal assaults by Lee’s troops, the Federal army slipped from Lee’s grasp and brought the Seven Days to an end. The Seven Days was a clear Confederate victory that drove the Union army away from the capital at Richmond, began the ascendancy of Robert E. Lee, and commenced a change in the war in the Eastern Theater. It set the stage for the Second Manassas Campaign followed by the Maryland Campaign of 1862."

That critical week of fighting is now the subject of the latest volume in University of Tennessee Press's Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series. Authored by series developer Matt Spruill, Decisions of the Seven Days: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battles "explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders during the Seven Days Battles and how these decisions shaped the outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battles, Matt Spruill hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contests to provide a blueprint of the Seven Days at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battles to progress from knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events happened." If you're new to the series, you can examine any number of reviews on this website to get an impression of what's involved. To read my reviews of two other Spruill volumes go here and here.

Though the decision analysis format is pretty much set in stone, series authors have a great deal of freedom when it comes to organizational grouping and in identifying decision types that range among "strategy, operations, tactics, organization, logistical, and personnel" considerations. Spruill arranges his sixteen Seven Days decisions into four time frames: "Before the Battles" (6), "Mechanicsville and Gaines' Mill" (3), "White Oak Swamp and Glendale" (4), and "Malvern Hill and Retreat" (3). Three of these are strategic, four are operational, eight tactical, and one personnel related. As with the other volumes, there are numerous maps sprinkled throughout (mostly brigade and division scale here), and decision identification and analysis are accompanied by an extensive battlefield guide based upon them. Detailed orders of battle are also included.