Counter-Thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam

Great Campaigns of the Civil War

by Benjamin Franklin Cooling III

During the summer of 1862, a Confederate resurgence threatened to turn the tide of the Civil War. When the Union’s earlier multitheater thrust into the South proved to be a strategic overreach, the Confederacy saw its chance to reverse the loss of the Upper South through counteroffensives from the Chesapeake to the Mississippi. Benjamin Franklin Cooling tells this story in Counter-Thrust , recounting in harrowing detail Robert E. Lee’s flouting of his antagonist George B. McClellan’s drive to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond and describing the Confederate hero’s long-dreamt-of offensive to reclaim central and northern Virginia before crossing the Potomac.

 

Counter-Thrust also provides a window into the Union’s internal conflict at building a successful military leadership team during this defining period. Cooling shows us Lincoln’s administration in disarray, with relations between the president and field commander McClellan strained to the breaking point. He also shows how the fortunes of war shifted abruptly in the Union’s favor, climaxing at Antietam with the bloodiest single day in American history—and in Lincoln’s decision to announce a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Here in all its gritty detail and considerable depth is a critical moment in the unfolding of the Civil War and of American history.

Genres: Civil War, History, American Civil War

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Alternate names:
B. Franklin Cooling
Benjamin F. Cooling

Benjamin Franklin Cooling III served as Chief Historian and Research Director with the Department of Energy and as a historian with the Army, Air Force, and National Park Service, and elsewhere. He has taught at numerous universities and is currently a Professor of History at the National Defense University in Washington DC. Cooling has authored or edited 16 books on the Civil War and modern warfare and has written several hundred articles, essays and reviews on aspects of military, naval and other history.

Reviews

[Joseph]

A solid description of the war under McClellan, this book was definitely worth reading. Although I will say it was more a book for specialists than the general reader. I haven't focused much in my studies on the Peninsular campaign, but this book does a good job of summarizing that event. Overall, not a book for the neophyte; rather, an in depth look at one of the war's pivotal campaigns. A worthy effort.

[Mark Harden]

A solid account of the campaign but goes over the same ground many others have covered. Particularly Joseph Harsh, who is cited extensively. I have seen reviews extolling good political coverage but that comes with the territory when discussing the Lincoln/McClellan relationship. About the only thing new I learned was the discussion of politics in Maryland during the war. A well written narrative but not really essential for those with a thorough grounding in the campaign already.