I referred to this book in previous blogs. I mentioned before that I love studying the reasoning behind the Confederate defeat. Did Lee bleed his army? Did the Confederacy ignore the Western Theatre? I love it! In 1989 Richard M. McMurry published Two Great Rebel Armies and it is an excellent book. The essay explores several topics that compare the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of Tennessee. I discussed a few of these in this blog and this blog. One of McMurry's main arguments is that the Army of Northern Virginia had better trained, better experienced military officers than the Army of Tennessee. This included the officers at the Brigadier General level and the regimental level. He takes the time to explore the Union and Confederate influence on the comparison between the two Rebel armies. One of his final chapters discussess the two main contributers to the literature of both armies (Douglas Freeman and Thomas Connelly).
In the end McMurry's conclusions are based upon statistics and facts that make each of them work perfectly. I don't want to give away too much because I feel that I have already. However, his final conclusions borders between Thomas Connelly's and Gary Gallaghers opinions. The book is a bit dated but the arguments are still plausiable, they still work and if you are interested in this part of Civil War history then you have to read Two Great Rebel Armies.
Yes I know, this isn't much of a book review. However if you read my previous blogs on this book they will provide you with some details and not give away the main points of the text.
I am at 98 blogs so far. Just two more to go for 100!
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