Booknotes: The Second Manassas Campaign

New Arrival:

• The Second Manassas Campaign edited by Caroline E. Janney & Kathryn J. Shively (UNC Press, 2025).

The end is nigh. When UNC's venerable Military Campaigns of the Civil War series returned in 2015 after a decade-long hibernation (and under new stewardship), the plan was to conclude it by filling in the few remaining gaps in coverage. First up was that year's Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign. That was followed three years later by Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia. Now we have the penultimate volume in The Second Manassas Campaign, edited by Caroline Janney and Kathryn Shively.

From the description: "Waged from June 26 to September 1, 1862, the Second Manassas campaign pitted the US Armies of Virginia and the Potomac against the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and its new commander, Robert E. Lee. The campaign unfolded against a backdrop of momentous US political decisions regarding confiscation, emancipation, and Confederate civilians. These decisions dismayed and energized Confederates, sparking the debut of Lee’s offensive strategy. Weeks of strategic movements were punctuated by savage fighting that culminated in a climactic battle on August 28–30. Second Manassas destroyed the careers of US army commander John Pope and corps commander Fitz John Porter. Despite the dramatic impact of the campaign, it is often forgotten in the larger history of the Civil War, and sorely understudied."

Contributors to this volume include co-editors Janney and Shively as well as Keith Bohannon, Gary Gallagher, John Hennessy, Peter Luebke, James Marten, William Marvel, and Cecily Zander. Their essays "provide valuable attention to strategy, tactics, and logistics; the performances of key commanders on each side; the campaign’s political dimensions; the connections between home front and battlefield; and the memory of the campaign’s aftermath." In them, Shively studies logistical problems in Pope's Army of Virginia, Hennessy discusses how Pope's army confronted slavery, Gallagher offers the Confederate perspective of the campaign, Zander looks at Radical Republican intervention in the campaign, Peter Luebke reviews Confederate strategy during this period, James Marten examines the role of the 6th Wisconsin at Brawner's Farm, Keith Bohannon's essay is centered on John Bell Hood's part in the Confederate victory at Second Manassas, the Porter trial is revisited by William Marvel, and, finally, Janney investigates the struggle to preserve the battlefield's early monuments. That's a very interesting sounding collection.

This volume's publication leaves only First Manassas left to go. Looking forward to it...the topic not the end of the series!