TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Taken At The Flood: Robert E. Lee & Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 by Joseph L. Harsh Chapter 1 “We cannot afford to be idle”, Lee’s Strategic Dilemma, September 2-3, 1862 Chapter 1 is all about decisions. Lee had driven the Union forces under John Pope back into the fortifications surrounding Washington, […]

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I was reading through one of Dimitri Rotov’s archived posts on South Mountain today when quite by accident I stumbled on a link to blogger Mitch Hagmaier’s excellent Blogfonte site. Dimitri had linked to Mitch’s post concerning South Mountain, but I also found a post from the same time frame giving Mitch’s thoughts on the […]

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Taken At The Flood: Robert E. Lee & Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 by Joseph L. Harsh Taken At The Flood picks up where Confederate Tide Rising left off. On September 2, 1862, Robert E. Lee had been in command of the Army of Northern Virginia for almost three months. In that […]

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Books On Civil War Strategy Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862. Joseph L. Harsh. Kent State University Press (January, 1998). 296 pp. 7 maps. This is a review and summary of Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862 by Joseph L. Harsh. […]

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Intermezzo, Appendices, and Final Thoughts In this final blog entry on Joseph Harsh’s Confederate Tide Rising, I will cover what Harsh calls “The Chantilly Fumble” in his Intermezzo between this book and Taken At The Flood, I will relay what information Harsh provides in six interesting appendices (sort of a forefrunner of the cornucopia of […]

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Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862 by Joseph L. Harsh “If we expect to reap advantage”: Lee Pursues Total Victory, August 27-31, 1862 Jackson’s famous flanking march around Pope’s army, his destruction of the massive number of Union stores at Manassas Junction, and the resulting Battle of Second […]

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Chapter Five of Joseph Harsh’s Confederate Tide Rising focuses on the strategic chess match between Robert E. Lee and John Pope from August 9 to August 26, 1862. In this chapter, Harsh repeatedly maintains that Lee never intended Jackson to bring on a major engagement after cutting Pope’s supply line at Bristoe Station. Instead, Harsh […]

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