Jeff Shaara. Gods and Generals. Ballantine, 1996.

I obtained a copy of Gods and Generals a few years ago, but never got around to reading it until now when I rediscovered it on a bookshelf. I have enjoyed the film based on the novel, but I can honestly say that reading the novel was a different experience—neither better nor worse, just different.

The film mostly focuses on two Civil War battles, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The film centers around Stonewall Jackson, though sharing some of the background of two of the other key characters in the story, Lee and Chamberlain. In the film, we see those three only at the beginning of the war with Jackson teaching at the Virginia Military Institute, Lee being recruited by both sides, and Chamberlain deciding to leave his teaching job and his family to join the army.

The book adds a fourth main character, Winfield Scott Hancock. The book also begins with the Mexican War, showing how Lee, Jackson, and Hancock served on the same side in that war. We then get some biography of each of the four between 1846 and 1861. We are reminded in the book that in 1859, while a colonel in the U.S. Army, led the troops that rescued the armory at Harper’s Ferry from John Brown and arrested Brown and his cohorts.

Shaara spends quite a bit of time in California, where Hancock was stationed when the war broke out. We see a contrast where Dvaid Twiggs, the officer in charge of all the troops in Texas, surrendered to the Confederacy and would join their army, turning over many important supplies. The officer in charge of the troops in California Albert Sidney Johnston, who also would join the Confederacy, let all his men make their own choices. Personal politics was involved as Twiggs hated Winfield Scott, the Commanding General of the Army at the beginning of the war.

There is a very moving scene, based on historical memoirs, of a farewell party in California where a number of the officers who had served together in Mexico and in the West are going their separate ways. The somewhat impromptu soiree is hosted by Hancock and his wife Almira and includes Johnston and Hancock’s best friend, Louis Armistead. Armistead, a Virginia native, would join the Confederacy, and the Pennsylvanian Hancock would join the Union army.

Hancock’s observation at the time secession begins perhaps sums up not only the problem in 1860 and 1861, but the problem whenever wars begin:

“There’s been too much loud talk, I think. Too many loud voices. If someone disagrees with you, you shout back a little louder, and so he does the same. The words get nastier, the threats grow…and that’s how wars start.” (88, cf. James 4:1-2 KJV)

Shaara presents Lee’s observation about the causes of war in a similar vein as he walks unrecognized through an elite hotel in Richmond where he was to meet the governor to offer his services after turning down Winfield Scott:

Lee walked slowly through the hurried clatter of the lobby, saw groups of men, some huddled in intense conversation, others waving big cigars, broad-chested men with loud voices, proclaiming their opinions with the mindless flourish of those who share no responsibility for the consequences of their grand ideas. Lee stopped briefly, listened to one such speech, felt uncomfortable and began to wonder what reckless policies and self-indulgent planning was going on elsewhere. (112-113)

While most men in the U. S. Army prior to 1861 would join the army of their home state, not all did. We meet, for example, George “Pap” Thomas a Virginia native who would stay with the United States. Gods and Generals does not tell much of his story in the war since he was in the Western theater in Kentucky and Tennessee for much of the time, and Gods and Generals tells about the Eastern theater, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia versus the Army of the Potomac. Of course, the leadership of that Union group changed a number of times. In God’s and Generals we read about McClellan, Hooker, and Burnside. Interestingly, we mostly see them from Hancock’s frustrated perspective, so we see the inability of all three to truly grasp their army’s situation.

We are well over a hundred pages before the fighting—other than Fort Sumter—begins. Since novels can cover a lot more material than movies, we get details of all the major battles in the East from 1862 to spring of 1863. We read then of First Bull Run (briefly), Williamsburg, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, with some descriptions of actions around Harper’s Ferry and Winchester, Virginia.

We note that all of these except for Williamsburg and Antietam were Confederate victories. The two that were not are probably best considered draws. As a result, some critics have claimed that Gods and Generals was pro-Confederacy and even promoting the “Lost Cause.” However, if one reads the book, that is hardly the case, it is simply that until Gettysburg in July 1863, the Confederate army in the East had the upper hand in the fighting. Its purpose is to get the reader to see the fighting and have a sense of what it was like to be a soldier in that war.

Especially as we see Hancock’s perspective, we see the tragedy of any civil war, sundering friendships and families. But we also see that the Army of the Potomac, at least until Meade took over, was cautious and hesitant, and missed some significant opportunities. It seemed that no commanding general of the Union army there understood the importance of ground, i.e., taking an advantageous and defensible position. In contrast, that was the strength of Lee and Jackson. In the case of Antietam, which did a lot of damage to the rebel troops, McClellan did take advantage of the fact that he had obtained a copy of Lee’s orders for deployment.

Gods and Generals does have a few fictional characters, but it is largely based on history. Even a lot of the dialogue is based on written accounts. (Heros von Borcke appears on three or four pages, for example.) There are some helpful maps, and the story really shares much of the strategy or lack thereof of the battles, focusing on the men involved. We are reminded that a civil war is the worst kind of war there is. I read The Killer Angels and The Last Full Measure many years ago, but reading this has perhaps tempted me to take another look at those. Shaara understands both people and war.