January 2025
304 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback $39.95
ISBN 978-1-60635-489-6
ePub
ISBN 978-1-63101-563-2
ePDF
ISBN 978-1-63101-564-9
More Important Than Good Generals
Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee
Civil War Era, Civil War Soldiers and Strategies, Military History, Recent ReleasesJonathan Engel
More Important Than Good Generals is an in-depth study of the Army of the Tennessee’s junior officers—the company and field grade lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels. While many studies have examined generals and common soldiers, Civil War armies’ “middle management” has been largely ignored. Officers had a substantially different array of duties than the soldiers they commanded and the generals above them, resulting in a drastically different wartime experience. Moreover, it is not only Civil War officers who have been overlooked but also the army Grant and Sherman commanded—the Army of the Tennessee—despite the fact that it was one of the most victorious armies of the war.
Pushing back against the commonly accepted narrative of disillusionment among officers, Jonathan Engel concludes that the Army of the Tennessee’s company and field grade officers endured the war’s trials with their moral and political ideology intact. Further, rather than becoming indifferent to the Union cause, Engel argues that the reverse was often true: officers who started off racist or disinterested in the issue of enslavement became advocates of emancipation.
Engagingly written and meticulously researched, More Important Than Good Generals is a lasting work of scholarship that will appeal to Civil War historians and general readers alike.
Jonathan Engel is an independent Civil War historian. His work has been published in the Journal of East Tennessee History, Civil War History, and Journal of Military History, among other publications.
“While eastern Civil War armies have had numerous studies produced about almost every facet of their being, western armies have only just begun to catch up historiographically. Certainly, the Army of the Tennessee, the United States’ most successful and important army during the war, is well placed for a social study of its field-level officers. In More Important Than Good Generals, Jonathan Engel gives us a lively, provocative, enlightening, and enjoyable look into these mid-level officers who did so much to win the Civil War.”—Timothy B. Smith, author of Shiloh: Conquer or Perish
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“We have studies of Civil War commanders. We have studies of the Civil War common soldier. But we know much less than we should about the junior officers who were the indispensable link between the two. This is a much-needed, well-researched, and lucidly written contribution to Civil War scholarship.”—Mark Grimsley, associate professor of history, the Ohio State University
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“In this pioneering study of the company and field officers of the Army of the Tennessee, Jonathan Engel explores their responsibilities, examines their experiences, and argues that their faith in God, cause, and nation persisted throughout the conflict, while their encounters with slavery and the enslaved led them to embrace the destruction of slavery as necessary to preserve the republic. An insightful treatment of a key element contributing to the success of this most capable field army.”—Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University
