The Journal of the Civil War Era

Christian B. Keller positions Southern Strategies as the only Civil War anthology written by people "affiliated with the Department of Defense." [End Page 126] Each author is "either … an active-duty Army officer who attended the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has served as a professor there, or both." The authors represent military science, the study of current military culture, operational theory, strategic concepts, and other issues connected with military systems in contemporary times. Based on the assertion that "the nature of war, as each of the authors knows, is immutable and unchanging, regardless of time or place, even as its character constantly evolves," these authors primarily write about the Civil War by using a concept called DIME, an acronym that refers to the diplomatic, informational, morale, and economic aspects of war making. The primary purpose of the volume is to "offer professional historians and students of the war unaffiliated with the U.S. military a window into how we at the Army War College interpret it" (1–2).

Fortunately, none of the contributors is locked into the dogmatic idea that immutable laws have determined the history of war making. They recognize that chance and unique developments play important roles in military history. In a real sense this anthology compels a discussion of the relative value of science versus the humanities in understanding warfare. Military scientists use concepts that lend themselves to acronyms and often replace one with another after the former favorite has run its course. By using DIME, the contributors group the diplomatic, informational, morale, and economic aspects of war making together and assert that any government engaged in war not only has to succeed in each one, but also must coordinate all four to be successful. These are "instruments of power," in Keller's words. Confederate failure to succeed in them, and especially the southern failure to integrate them, is the key to explaining why the Confederacy lost the war according to the DIME model.

Keller starts the anthology with an essay on the relationship between Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson in the spring of 1862. He speculates on what might have happened if Lee had allowed Jackson to raid into Maryland and Pennsylvania that spring instead of bringing his Shenandoah Valley troops to help the Army of Northern Virginia defend Richmond. Eric Johnson follows with a survey of Confederate economic and fiscal policies as an exercise in failure to make DIME work. Kevin E. McCall then discusses Confederate intelligence work in Lee's Maryland campaign. Erik Anderson surveys failed Confederate diplomacy, while Chris Compton writes about Lee's raid into Pennsylvania. The anthology ends with an essay by Michael J. Forsyth on Confederate woes in the trans-Mississippi. Unfortunately, three of the six essays deal only with aspects of Lee's operations. Two others deal with very broad swaths of strategic-level [End Page 127] war management, and the last deals with Confederate fortunes in half the Confederacy. No one can expect full coverage of any topic in an anthology, but this one is too heavily weighted toward developments in the Virginia theater while completely ignoring the vital area between the Appalachian Highlands and the Mississippi River.

While Keller asserts that all his contributors use DIME, the truth is it tends to make a slim appearance in most of the essays. Although mentioned by everyone, the concept never really is subject to detailed examination beyond noting that it was important for the Confederacy to have done something it failed to do. I found McCall's essay to be the strongest, in part because it deals with a topic that is little covered by Civil War historians. While we have several good studies of Union intelligence operations, there is far too little on Confederate intelligence work in the literature. McCall does a good job of outlining modern ways of understanding military intelligence and comparing them to Confederate practices, and he tends to examine the DIME concept more than the other authors do. Keller notes that the contributors downplay discussion of DIME so as not to annoy Civil War readers, but it would have been better for each author to have discussed it more fully.

The value of this anthology will accrue more to the benefit of the military scientist than to the Civil War historian. After all, it has never been a secret to us that Confederate diplomacy, intelligence, morale, and economic policies were abject failures. Understanding that success in those areas had to be integrated to make a successful war is only a small step forward in our concept of southern war making. In short, dressing up Civil War issues in modern clothes does not really change anything for us. But it does validate the usefulness of DIME in the eyes of the military scientist in the sense that it shows how applicable the concept can be to conflicts other than the most recent ones, and it allows those who work for the U.S. Army to showcase their efforts.

This anthology is welcome as a study in cross-disciplinary reach, something of which we need more in the Civil War field. While crossing bridges between history and military science is probably less vital than between history and archaeology, geology, health care, psychology, and the social sciences, it plays a role in broadening our methodology. Civil War archaeologists are very open to influences from military science. Many of them have used the concept of KOCOA, an acronym encompassing key terrain features, obstacles, cover, observation, and avenues of approach. Taught at the army squad and platoon level, KOCOA deals with understanding terrain on battlefields.¹ [End Page 128]

The contributors to Keller's anthology have created the first significant publication to build a bridge between Civil War historians and military scientists. Hopefully, it will bear fruit.