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The Seven Days

其他書名	The Emergence of Robert E. Lee
出版	Broadfoot, 1988
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=9mGBtwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋"In the smoky dusk outside Richmond on May 31, 1862, a general was knocked from his horse by a shell fragment and a stray minié ball. It was one of the rarities in the history of warfare for a general commanding an army to receive a wound during battle, and Joseph E Johnston was one of only two commanding generals to be wounded in action in the Civil War." Thus begins Clifford Dowdey's exciting narrative describing the emergence of Robert E Lee at Richmond in the 1862 campaign which Bruce Catton - in his review - called "the moment of crisis." The Seven Days Battle was the climax of McClellan's campaign for a military decision that would affect a settlement between the United States and the seceded states. Between Lee and McClellan occurred "a Classic Encounter." This encounter, by depriving McClellan of a military decision, destroyed the possibility of the restoration of the Union short of total war and, in addition, made the slavery issue one that had to be resolved by armed force. Because the whole nature of the conflict was changed by McClellan's defeat, the Seven Days was the most significant military engagement in the Civil War and one of the most momentous in American history. For the first time, Clifford Dowdey, long recognized as the expert on the battle, presents both the Federal and Confederate sides of the Battle of the Seven Days. Lee's military genius had not yet come to its full flower; his concepts of strategy were boldly new, but he had much to learn in the technique of command. In this book, the reader sees Lee groping, as in the early work of a master. In winning a great victory - lifting the siege of Richmond - he fell short of his intentions and opened the struggle into its ultimate and complete stage of war. Here, then, is the formative Army of Northern Virginia with its leaders - Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, A. P. Hill, D.H. Hill, and Hood - shown in their first actions together. There are many problems of organization and communication and glaring inadequacies in staff management. The fresh study of Jackson as a "man under stress" is thoroughly reported by historian Dowdey, with medical details to substantiate the evidence of Jackson's passivity. With encyclopedic knowledge heightened by novelist's eye for character and drama, Clifford Dowdey has written a provocative third volume in his story of the Civil War. -- Publisher.