"Harsh & Woodworth" Topic

Looking for thoughts on Steven Woodworth and Joseph Harsh books. I have some from each and trying to decide which to read first.

I really liked Woodworth's Jefferson Davis and his Generals. Interesting takes on Bragg in particular. Sort of a Lee's Lieutenants for the West.

Been looking for something similar. Used to read a ton of ACW, read most of Rhea's Overland series, etc.

Suggestions?

Joseph Harsh's 3 books on the Antietam Campaign have set the standard for scholarship on the battle. He overturns some of the accepted wisdom about Antietam, but he is not light reading. I think Stephen Sears, A Landscape Turned Red is still the best account of that battle. Any book by him has both sound research and fine writing. His book on Gettysburg is a masterpiece.

How about Harsh's books on Lee?

Harsh's books are excellent--I believe they are most ground-breaking scholarship in Civil War military history. But they aren't intended as a general study of the Maryland campaign (Taken at the Flood and Sounding the Shallows) or the Eastern theater in '61-62 (Confederate Tide Rising).
Confederate Tide Rising is a specific studies of Lee's (and Davis') ongoing strategy from the beginning of the war. Harsh argues that Lee understood that the Confederacy's only means to gaining independence was through winning large battles that would drain Northern morale---this strategy trumps everything. After Lee takes command of the ANV, and wins victories at the Seven Days and 2nd Manassas he rides this wave of success to the invasion of Maryland. Harsh argues this is one fluid campaign that carries from the Chickahominy to the Rapidan/Rappahannock to the Potomac.
Taken at the Flood is a more in depth study of his strategy in the Maryland campaign and picks up where CTR left. Once again, Harsh argues that Lee's main reason for invading Maryland is to push this wave of success and to win perhaps one more victory on Northern soil to secure Southern independence. Harsh relies primarily on Lee's own correspondence with Davis and his subordinates to form his conclusions. And he takes you through the campaign day by day--while at the same time demonstrating Lee's ongoing strategy and reaction to the campaigns changing circumstances.
Harsh also comes to some pretty surprising conclusions. For instance, he argues persuasively that Lee never intended to invade Pennsylvania but wanted to fight the AOP somewhere west of South Mountain shortly after invading Maryland--he wanted to continue that wave of success. And there are numerous other provocative/thought-provoking ideas that he argues.
Finally, Sounding the Shallows simply contains a wealth of information of the campaign that Harsh gathered from his monumental study on the MD campaign. For instance, it includes information on the state itself (population, industry, slave population etc), the organization and combat experience of the ANV, weather throughout the campaign, and further research appendixes on the campaign. This book is an excellent companion to TATF as a resource who would use to look up specific information.
I hope this information helps, and wasn't too drawn out! But I highly recommend these books to anyone interested in the Eastern theater, or the Civil War in general. They have definitely changed the way that I looked at Lee's major campaign of '62. Just excellent books!

I haven't really been able to find Harsh's books for sale online – anyone know good sources?

Amazon

Ha, now they show up – before I could only get books that cited him on amazon.co.uk. Thanks for encouraging me to persevere.

Joseph Harsh's Maryland books were the final form of his old Masters Thesis. The great loss is that his projected five volume study of McClellan was never done.

His PhD Thesis is online here: link

Thanks much

Having been reading "Jefferson Davis and his Generals", I can report that Woodworth is a fine researcher and analyst with a frustratingly frigid style.

On Harsh, I've just transcribed an interview with him from 1995: link

They're an interesting pair – Woodworth aims (successfully I think) to vindicate Davis, Johnston, and Bragg; he's pretty even-handed with all three, but is successful at making them rounded characters. Harsh's hero worship of Little Mac is pretty surreal (as revealed in that interview). Both have an unfortunate habit of gliding over slavery – Woodworth much less so.

(Not, incidentally, that I want to go full on Social Studies; I'm really a military history buff myself anyway – but I point to Harsh's comments suggesting an earlier reconciliation would have been accomplished by McClellan, and implying that the upshot would have been much better…that upshot including, probably, continued slavery, because his argument requires full executive backing for McClellan at all points, thereby rendering a spring or summer 1862 victory, pre Proclamation, apparently plausible.)

67thtigers: Was not aware of the interview with Harsh before. Thanks for posting that. John Miller