University Press of Kansas Logo

Decision in the West

The Atlanta Campaign of 1864

Albert Castel

688 pages, 55 photographs, 18 maps, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Modern War Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-7006-0748-8, $19.95

WINNER OF THE LINCOLN PRIZE

Book Cover ImageFollowing a skirmish on June 28, 1864, a truce is called so the North can remove their dead and wounded. For two hours, Yankees and Rebels mingle, with some of the latter even assisting the former in their grisly work. Newspapers are exchanged. Northern coffee is swapped for Southern tobacco. Yanks crowd around two Rebel generals, soliciting and obtaining autographs.

As they part, a Confederate calls to a Yankee, "I hope to miss you, Yank, if I happen to shoot in your direction." "May I, never hit you Johnny if we fight again," comes the reply.

The reprieve is short. A couple of months, dozens of battles, and more than 30,000 casualties later, the North takes Atlanta.

One of the most dramatic and decisive episodes of the Civil War, the Atlanta Campaign was a military operation carried out on a grand scale across a spectacular landscape that pitted some of the war's best (and worst) general against each other.

In Decision in the West, Albert Castel provides the first detailed history of the Campaign published since Jacob D. Cox's version appeared in 1882. Unlike Cox, who was a general in Sherman's army, Castel provides an objective perspective and a comprehensive account based on primary and secondary sources that have become available in the past 110 years.

Castel gives a full and balanced treatment to the operations of both the Union and Confederate armies from the perspective of the common soldiers as well as the top generals. He offers new accounts and analyses of many of the major events of the campaign, and, in the process, corrects many long-standing myths, misconceptions, and mistakes. In particular, he challenges the standard view of Sherman's performance.

Written in present tense to give a sense of immediacy and greater realism, Decision in the West demonstrates more definitively than any previous book how the capture of Atlanta by Sherman's army occurred and why it assured Northern victory in the Civil War.

"One of the most important and original books on the Civil War published in the past decade. This book is richly detailed and massively researched. Its sharply revisionist interpretation of William T. Sherman is bound to arouse much controversy. All serious students of the Civil War will want to read it."--David Herbert Donald, author of Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War

"Almost everything in this book is new or in some way ground breaking. It will immediately become the standard study of the campaign. The research is impeccable. A magnificent effort."--William C. Davis, author of Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour and former editor of Civil War Times Illustrated

"This is the fullest and most intelligible study of the Atlanta campaign that we have or are likely ever to have. The writing is lively, the research exhaustive, the interpretations sometimes provocative but always perceptive. This is how military history should be written."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War

"Military history at its best by one of America's leading historians of the Civil War. With dramatic flair and authentic detail in a fast-paced and suspenseful narrative, Castel brings the Atlanta campaign to life, penetrating the minds of the commanders as well as the thoughts of the common soldiers."--Robert W. Johannsen, author of Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension

ALBERT CASTEL is widely recognized as one of our most respected historians of the Civil War. He is also the author of General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West, Civil War Kansas, and The Presidency of Andrew Johnson.