Afsi's Reviews > The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

Disappointed with the clear bias for The Confederacy through out all three volumes, but especially in this last one! Superlative adjectives describing Lee, Jackson, Beauregard, Bedford Forest and others became hard to take in volume 3. He doesn’t even mention the deliberate massacre of black union troops by Confederate armies.

Shelby Foote was a Southerner and his allegiances come through loud and clear. Also way too many details for each instance of Confederate victory while mocking and minimizing union generals like Grant, Sheridan, Sherman snd their successful strategies that ultimately destroyed the Confederacy. He glossed over Vicksburg, considered a brilliant battle won by Grant and the Union!

The Civil war was hideous as are all wars, Mr. Foote does a good job of describing the horror. He clearly did an enormous amount of research and is a good writer, but I found some of the battles told in a bewildering amount of detail that lost the full picture. I read Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of Grant and found that book a much more balanced and clear retelling of many of the same incidents and battles. The Union suffered from a lack of competent military leadership on the early years of the war, but once Grant and Sherman emerge as leaders of the union armies, Confederacy’s days were over! And they knew it.

I learned a lot about the Civil War from these 3 volumes but found some of the narrative painful and difficult to read. I ultimately came away disappointed with a retelling that is so clearly guided by the author’s personal awe and respect for Confederate generals. These people were slave holders and traitors to this country and prolonged a bloody terrible war to protect their rights to own other human beings! What could be a more despicable cause!!