Gaping Holes in the Coverage of the Civil War

I know that I have discussed this here in the past, but my work on William H. Boyd in the Gettysburg Campaign has pointed out yet another gaping hole in the coverage of the Civil War.

One of the most important aspects of the Gettysburg Campaign was the capture of Winchester by troops of Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps on June 14, 1863. Ewell captured most of Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy’s division, and took possession of the important town in only a single day. His well-designed and well-executed plan resembled the handiwork of the late Stonewall Jackson, and suggested that Ewell would be a worthy successor to the lamented Jackson. Ewell took only a few hundred casualties in capturing Winchester.

Unfortunately, there is a huge, gaping hole in the body of literature regarding Second Winchester. There have only been two monographs published that address the Second Battle of Winchester, and both were published by companies with reputations for publishing spotty work. The first, published in 1989, is Charles S. Grunder and Brandon H. Beck, The Second Battle of Winchester, June 12-15, 1863, published by the H. E. Howard Company of Lynchburg, Virginia. The second, Larry B. Maier’s Gateway to Gettysburg: The Second Battle of Winchester was published by White Mane’s imprint Burd Street Press in 2002.

The Howard company published two series of books. One was a series of histories–primarily rosters–of all Virginia units, and the other was its Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders Series. These books are of extremely uneven quality. None of the regimental histories has a single footnote, which limits their value for the researcher. The books in the Battles and Leaders Series are especially hit and miss. Some of them are quite good. Some are simply atrocious. The book on Second Winchester is solid, but its battle narrative is only about 85 pages long, meaning that there’s not a great deal of depth there.

The Maier book is a classic White Mane book: no editing to speak of, poor production values, poor quality materials, and apparently no peer review. I have often said that if faced with the option of never publishing another word, or being published by White Mane, I would choose to never publish another word. I intend to do a detailed review of this book later this week, so I will limit my comments for now.

Suffice it to say that neither of these books provides the level of detail that this action deserves. With all of the books published on the Gettysburg Campaign, the Second Battle of Winchester remains a vast, gaping hole in the coverage of the Civil War and of the Gettysburg Campaign in particular.

This is just one of a number of similar gaping holes in the coverage of the war, but it provides an excellent illustration of the problem faced. Instead of yet another book on Pickett’s Charge, I would really prefer to see a talented historian tackle this action and give it the definitive treatment that it deserves. We would all benefit from such a study.