The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox: Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, and Their Brothers

Waugh, a former correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor , brings an original but ultimately unsatisfactory approach to this study of command in the Civil War. The West Point class of 1846 graduated 59 men: 10 of them, including Stonewall Jackson (1824-1863) became confederate generals; 12, including George McClellan (1826-1885), wore stars for the Union. Waugh is at his best describing the routines of West Point and the experiences of the Mexican War (1846-1848) that welded the class into a community. But when he addresses the Civil War, he focuses almost entirely on Jackson and McClellan while their classmates receive cursory and episodic treatment in a text that jumps abruptly from Gettysburg to Appomattox. Confederates like George Pickett, Cadmus Wilcox and A. P. Hill, and Union generals like John Gibbon and Darius Couch ('46ers all), invite comparative analysis in the context of their common professional experience. What Waugh offers instead is operational narrative, well-written but adding nothing to standard images of McClellan's failure and Jackson's genius. Photos not seen by PW . (Feb.)