Damage Them All You Can: Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia

by George Walsh

“Damage them all you can,” the patrician Lee exhorts, and his Southern army, ragtag in uniform and elite in spirit, responds ferociously in one battle after another against their Northern enemies—from the Seven Days and the Valley Campaign through Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania to the final siege of Richmond and Petersburg. Lee knows that the South’s five-and-a-half million white population will be worn down in any protracted struggle by the North’s twenty-two million. He is ever offensive-minded, ever seeking the victory that will destroy his enemies’ will to fight. He uses his much shorter interior lines to rush troops to trouble spots by forced marches and by rail. His cavalry rides on raids around the entire union army. Lee divides his own force time and again, defying military custom by bluffing one wing of the enemy while striking furiously elsewhere.

But this book is more than military history. Walsh’s narrative digs deeper, revealing the humanity of Lee and his lieutenants as never before—their nobility and their flaws, their chilling acceptance of death, their tender relations with wives and sweethearts in the midst of carnage.

Here we encounter in depth the men who still stir the imagination. The dutiful Robert E. Lee, haunted by his father’s failures; stern and unbending Stonewall Jackson, cut down at the moment of his greatest triumph; stolid James Longstreet, who came to believe he was Lee’s equal as a strategist, the enigmatic George Pickett.

These men and scores of others, enlisted men as well as officers, carry the ultimately tragic story of the Army of Northern Virginia forward with heart rending force and bloody impact.
As the war progresses we wonder above all else, had orders been strictly obeyed here or daylight lasted an extra hour there, what might have been. Only Appomattox brings an end to such speculation, when the tattered remnants of Lee’s army, both the still living and the shadowy dead, stack their arms at last.

Genres: Civil War, American Civil War, History, Civil War Eastern Theater, Nonfiction, Army Of Northern Virginia, American History

624 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Tripp · Rating 3 out of 5]

ne of my books for the Back to History Challenge is Damage Them All They Can, a history of the Army of Northern Virginia by George Walsh. The book is centered on the leaders of the Army, with particular but by no means exclusive focus on the likes of Lee, Jackson, the Johnstons, the Hills, Longstreet, Ewell and Early. There is some discussion of life in the Army and the experience of the soldiery, but this is of decidedly secondary importance to the book overall.

The focus on the leaders makes the book's chronological approach problematic. The development of each leader is of keen interest to Walsh, but it can get lost in the shifts of time. I think the book would have been stronger if the book had been thematically or biographically organized ( as I believe Lee's Lieutenants is actually organized.)

While I was reading the book, I was hoping for more of the approach of Rick Atkinson in his Liberation Trilogy or Eric Bergerud in his Touched with Fire. These books tell what happened in the wars they describe, but also provide some understanding of the experience of these wars. Those looking for a good introduction to the Civil War in Virginia will find a lot to learn here, but they may get lost in the detail of brigade commands.

[Avis Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although Walsh provides an okay overview of the Southern side of the war using mostly secondary research, this book has problems. First, Walsh blindly accepts just about every myth that exists about the Army of Northern Virginia, and second, Robert E. Lee can do no wrong in Walsh’s eye.

Distressing as it may be to Lee fans, modern battle research makes it plain that Lee made his share of mistakes, but you won’t find out about these from Walsh. The only general who comes in for any real criticism is Longstreet. Lastly, even though Walsh’s book contains more up-to-date information than Lee’s Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman, Freeman’s three-volume work still gives you a better, more detailed, and a more carefully considered overview of the various generals than Walsh does, even though Freeman wrote more than a half-century ago during the full cultural bloom of Lost Cause thinking. Therefore, if you want a battle history of the South in the eastern theater, it’s still better to go with Freeman.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was wavering between giving this book three stars and four stars. While it isn't badly written, it also spends a lot of time describing battles and campaigns that already have full length books written about them (often multiple books). It also fails to include any maps of the individual battles; the only map in the entire book is a general area map of Virginia and Maryland. Every so often, the author would review the army's order of battle but mostly it came off as a rapid listing of names. An odd feature of the book was an entire chapter devoted to the relationship between Lincoln and McClellan.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not necessarily an eye opening book that provides new revelations of Robert E. Lee's generalship in the Civil War. But it does provide nice detail of the battles engaged in by the Army of Northern Virginia under his leadership. The book begins by describing the fighting at the Eastern front before Lee took over command of the Army. We get thumbnail sketches of various Confederate generals. Then, the unfolding of battle after battle.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok so honestly I only got through Chancellorsville -- but let's be honest, it all goes down hill from there. I was pretty surprised about how readable this is. It's basically a narrative stitched together from primary source materials. Beware: if you aren't interested in whom commanded whom while they flanked so and so, this book probably isn't for you.

[Michael Wiggins · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Walsh, despite being an unapologetic Yankee, does an excellent job of objectively covering the strengths and weaknesses of the commanding officers in the Army of Northern Virginia. I enjoyed his perspective, which differs from the sometimes fawning adoration of Confederate generalship.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay. It was tedious to read and he didn't really make much of an argument either. He just rehashed the basic plots and subplots of the Civil War.