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Summer Lightning: A Guide to the Second Battle of Manassas

By Matt Spruill III and Matt Spruill IV, University of Tennessee Press, 2014, $28.56

Some argue Chancellorsville was Robert E. Lee’s “masterpiece” battle during the Civil War. But I’ve always been most impressed with Second Manassas, which gets a deserved full-tour treatment in Summer Lightning, the latest entry in the University of Tennessee Press battlefield guidebook series from the team of Matt Spruill III and Matt Spruill IV.

The authors lay the groundwork for their study in the introduction by defining and describing the military concepts readers will encounter while touring the battlefield (e.g., types of offensive operations, forms of maneuver). The reader will be well served to pay attention to these decidedly unsexy details.

Chapter 1 sets the stage, following the intricate waltz the two Union armies and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia danced as they made their way toward Manassas, Va., the place where the romantic notions of war that prevailed both North and South had been ripped asunder a year earlier. Though I find the opening phases of the Second Manassas Campaign fascinating, I concede that the logistics and time involved in examining them do not lend themselves to a guidebook of this type. The Spruills limit the battle’s prelude to 19 pages and only one operational map.

The book’s detailed tours of the fighting begin with the action at Brawner’s Farm on August 28, 1862, and carry through to August 30 and the defeat and withdrawal of John Pope’s Army of Virginia, with an appendix describing the aftermath of the battle. Each segment features clear tactical maps and excerpts from after-action reports, supplemented with additional first-person accounts where necessary. The maps lack topographical markings; the guide is designed, however, for use in the field, where those features will be apparent.

There are 20 tour stops, some with multiple positions per stop, and the book offers photos and illustrations to help put faces to names. Summer Lightning is a steady and consistent, if conventional, guide to the battle.

 

Originally published in the July 2014 issue of America’s Civil War. To subscribe, click here.