They Aren't Lying! STRANGE BATTLES of the CIVIL WAR

With 10,000 battlefields, the Civil War was guaranteed to provide some bizarre situations.

That's the focus of this book as Webb Garrison Jr., completing his father's last book, draws attention to those wartime situations that produced the most unusual circumstances.

At Sabine Pass, 43 Confederate soldiers withstood an attempted Federal invasion of Texas by a 7,000 man assault force, largely due to faulty intelligence that failed to reveal such natural features as oyster beds and mud flats surrounding the target. With the war winding down, the Federals were hoping to sieze an advanced outpost near Mexico that would disuade Emperor Maximilian from taking advantage of the situation, but failed. At Petersburg, during the final protracted assault on Richmond's layered defense, the Civil War had settled into World War One-style trench warfare. Both sides had finally absorbed the idea that the accuracy of modern weapons made obsolete Napoleonic mass charges like the murderous Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. Trench warfare also, though, meant stalemate and to break the Petersburg stalemate, Pennsylvania coal miners dug a tunnel under the nearby Confederate lines, deposited gunpowder, then blew it. There was initial hesitation to follow up due to shock but the Union soldiers advanced down into the huge crater and up the other side. Unfortunately, it was all done so sluggishly that the Confederates were able to recover and repel the advance, which threatened to collapse their lines. Common sense suggests that the Federals should have been directed around the crater but Garrison doesn't address this.

Presumably, the terrain would've permitted it, but the issue, as I say, is not discussed. Grant, not an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, visited the site and realized the tremendous lost opportunity, and relieved the local commander responsible for its failure, General Ambrose Burnside.

At Chattanooga, the Federal army advanced to take the base of Missionary Ridge, but the soldiers were so caught up in their successful charge that they swept on without orders to capture Missonary Ridge itself.

The nature of the technology involved in two world-changing confrontations qualify those battles for inclusion - Virginia (Merrimac) vs.Monitor and the submarine H. L. Hunley vs. blockade ship USS Houstonic. Submarines waited until World War One to sink another ship in combat, but the instant the Virginia and Monitor opened fire on each other, their world changed.

Grierson's Raid into the Deep South (see John Wayne's fictional treatment, The Horse Soldiers) led to another raid on the South someone apparently decided would be better accomplished on mule-back instead of horseback. The planners of Sleight's Raid were in error.

Day One ended at Shiloh as a near-total failure for General Grant, but the second day saw the Federals reinforced and advancing to sweep the Confederates back and into retreat, producing an amazing reversal. As Grant observed once the lines were firmed up that first night with the Federals' back to the river the end of the first day, "We'll whip them tomorrow." And they did.

Unprepared armies fielded below Washington met at First Bull Run where the inability of either side to prevail in the short term was proven and the leadership on both sides came to realize this war would last some time.

These and other stories told in this book which more casual Civil War buffs will find entertaining although serious amateur historians will undoubtedly find old news repackaged.