Crossed Sabers: General George Armstrong Custer And The Shenandoah Valley Campaign

Rating:
Summary: Lots of potential, but much to be desired
Review: I recently acquired a copy of Adolfo Ovies's book _Crossed Sabers: General George Armstrong Custer and the Shenandoah Valley Campaign_. Ovies is apparently a cavalry re-enactor with a great interest in the Valley Campaign. He is to be commended for his enthusiasm and for tackling the enormous undertaking of writing a book.

Ovies admits that he wrote the book with a sympathetic bent toward Custer, but still claims it to be accurate. I'm not sure how that's possible, but he tries. The book, which appears to be the author's first, has a great deal of potential. The topic is interesting--Custer rose to division command in the 1864 Valley Campaign and really made his mark there--and the material is potentially terrific--filled with lots of interesting stories and actions. Sadly, the book does not deliver on its potential.

Initially, the author failed to do any primary source manuscript research at all and limited his research to only published sources. His survey of published sources leans overwhelmingly toward secondary sources and is limited to readily available, well-known published primary sources (such as James H. Kidd's classic _Personal Recollections of Cavalryman in Custer's Michigan Brigade_). This means that Ovies has missed a great deal of high quality material that should have been tapped. There are many more published primary sources that should have been tapped, and there are lots of extremely useful unpublished primary source materials out there that could have richly supplemented this work. As an illustration, there is a vast collection of primary source material pertaining to the Michigan Cavalry Brigade at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, but the author failed to utilize any of this material. By limiting himself to strictly published sources, he missed out on some of the best--and most reliable--primary source accounts of these events, which is too bad, and which greatly limits the usefulness of this work.

The book addresses some major actions: Front Royal (Aug. 10), Shepherdstown, Third Winchester (Sept. 19), Fisher's Hill and the Luray Valley (Sept. 20-23), Tom's Brook (Oct. 9), Cedar Creek (Oct. 19), and various actions that occurred afterward, including the decimation of the Loudoun Valley and the battle of Waynesboro (March 2, 1865). Given the number of actions covered, I was astounded to find not a single map in this volume. There is absolutely nothing for the reader to refer to in trying to understand the actions described. If I were not very familiar with these actions from my own studies and time spent on the ground, I would have been completely lost. For someone who does not have the benefit of this knowledge, this book is almost useless without maps.

The book likewise does not have a single illustration. There are no photos of the important persons described therein, and there was no use of the excellent illustrations of the Valley Campaign drawn by war correspondent James E. Taylor. Again, for the reader unfamiliar with these personalities and events, it is almost impossible to follow the narrative.

In short, this book had a world of potential to be an excellent study of Custer's important contributions to the 1864 Valley Campaign, but it falls well short of that target. The reader is better served in reading Gregory J. W. Urwin's fine book _Custer Victorious_, which covers these same events in far greater depth and provides maps and illustrations.