109 
THE STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA." 
BY | v7 Same . 
\ 
MAS OR “Hi SheM AY Reds VAR pala a 
eS 
THosE who read Mr. Ropes’s “Campaign of Waterloo” will eagerly 
take up another volume by the same author, and may yet do so with a 
certain apprehensive curiosity. For, great as was the merit of the 
former work, it is one thing to write a crisp narrative of the briefest 
and most dramatic of great campaigns, and quite another to condense 
into a concise story the weary records of a four years’ struggle. The 
talent which could achieve a brilliant success in one task might easily 
be found unequal to the other. We venture to think, however, that 
this last effort of our author’s will fully answer the expectations which 
the popularity of his other writings aroused. It is true we have 
as yet but one of the promised three parts before us, and that in 
it we are carried no further than the spring of 1862, but the same 
judicial temper, the same faculty for weighing and examining evidence 
impartially, the same lucidity of style, which distinguished his last 
volume, are again present in this, and, while the old manner charms 
us, the matter before us gives earnest of what is to follow. The 
method of adding notes and discussion to each chapter of narrative, 
which Chesney adopted in his “ Waterloo Lectures,” and which Mr. 
Ropes has followed so successfully before, is again made use of, and the 
book will therefore be of particular value to those who study military 
history closely with a prospect, in some cases, of having their know- 
ledge put to the test in a subsequent examination. But while soldiers 
can follow attentively the strategy of the war, and will find Mr. Ropes 
a valuable guide in doing so, to the casual reader these pages will by no 
means prove too technical or wearisome, but will, on the contrary, 
supply in a small compass a very clear and agreeable statement of the 
salient features of a war of which far too little is known in this country. 
Neither, because the bulk of the volume is not taken up with details, 
let the professional student fancy that its history is too general, and 
goes too little into minutix for his purposes. He need be under no 
apprehensions on that score. For the truth is that the American war 
affords only good ground for the study of strategy, and that but little 
-of value as to tactics on the battle-field itself is to be derived from it. 
The generals who distinguished themselves in that tremendous con- 
test had, as a rule, a keen appreciation of what has been termed “the 
1 The story of the Civil War. A concise account of the war in the United States of America 
between 1861 and 1865, by John Codman Ropes. Part I. G.P. Putnam & Sons, New York and 
London, 1894. 
Bh Wl SBaHi5 15 
