July 4, 1863, was one of the moral and military turning points of the Civil War. On that day, the Army of Northern Virginia retreated from the death-grapple at Gettysburg, and on that day the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg surrendered to the forces of Ulysses S. Grant. The battle and the siege were entirely independent of each other, linked only in the broadest strategic sense. Yet for that very reason they foreshadowed an endgame whose details might be uncertain, but whose outcome was eventual Confederate defeat at the hands of a Union finally learning to use its superior force effectively. Despite their significance as a double event, however, the battles are seldom discussed together, as they are here by Schultz (The Dahlgren Affair).And despite an imbalance that strongly favors anecdotes and vignettes of Gettysburg at the expense of the less familiar, less glamorous siege on the Mississippi River, the work's main strength is its demonstration of the Civil War's common features in both places. In both its eastern and western theaters, the war was waged by citizen armies: civilians in uniform, commanded largely by officers with no more relevant experience than the enlisted men. The common soldiers paid in blood while their leaders learned the new ways of war brought about by steam engines and rifle-bored weapons. In both theaters as well, civilians were directly affected by the fighting to a degree frequently overlooked in standard military histories. Schultz's work shows that not only were farms and homes the settings for battle and bombardment, but that civilians fed the troops, nursed the wounded and, not least, buried the dead in a war that left little room for spectators. While specialists will find little new here, general readers should appreciate this eloquent presentation of the Civil War's human face. (Nov.)
