The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War

by Edwin C. Fishel

Book Overview

Most histories of the Civil War explain victory and defeat in terms of the skill of commanders and their troops. Intelligence records disappeared after the war, and thus a critically important element... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395742811
• ISBN13: 9780395742815
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 734 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Confederate spymaster who also fought in Cuba

A Confederate spymaster who also fought in Cuba Fishel, Edwin C. 1996 The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York ISBN-10 0395742811, ISBN-13 978-0395742815 This is an excellent and interesting book, which provides novel material on intelligence activities during the US Civil War and places it in clear and applicable context. While seeking information on Thomas Jordan, who would be for a time the senior general in Cuba's 1868-1878 Ten Year's War, I found this book to be very useful. This work (pp. 59-76) not only tells of how General Jordan was once General Beauregard's adjutant at Manassas, but details with great care Jordan's role as a spy master and sage evaluator of secret intelligence prior to this battle. General Jordan, although not mentioned in the Fishel book went on to lead an important victory over Spanish Forces at Guaimaro in January 1870. Antonio Pirala's history of this war Anales de la Guerra en Cuba (Published in 1895, 1896 and 1874 by Felipe González Rojas, of Madrid) gives a detailed account of Jordan's war record in Cuban. However Fishel's book, again without mentioning Cuba, provokes the interesting and surely polemic question: Were Jordan's actions in Cuba free from an intelligence gathering role for the US? Interestingly enough General Thomas Jordan wasteful military tactics in Cuba during the Ten Year's War have been soundly condemned by Cuban Mambí Brigadier General Calixto (Garcia-Iñiguez) Enamorado Cabrera, a part Taíno son of Major General Calixto Garcia). Calixto Enamorado's narration thinly veiled as novel was published in 1917 as Tiempos Heroicos Persecución, by Rambla, Bauza and Company of Havana.

Excellent story on intelligence operations in the Civil War

Though covering 594 pages of material, I did not find the material as plodding or as painful to read as some of the other reviewers. I don't disagree that this is not a book for the common reader. It is for those individuals very specifically interested in the Civil War or perhaps the early development of America's intelligence operations. Fishel's book is very intriguing and I specifically find his treatment of General Joe Hooker very fascinating. Indeed, I now look at Hooker in a far different light, conceding that he was a much better general than I gave him credit for. I certainly agree with most assessments that he was not a great commander of the Army of the Potomac, but I do believe he was very effective at division and corps levels, positions where he could physically direct the action of his men. At higher responsibility levels, he simply couldn't not move the battle pieces around without seeing them. He needed to be on the battlefield to be effective. But, he was the first general, and is credited with, building the military's first concept at all-source intelligence reporting. He built the Military Bureau of Information so he could have an office that could collect intelligence from citizen-scouts, cavalry, prisoner interrogation, slaves, and spies and then synthesize the data into a collective strategic picture. No other commander, nor the War Department, had ever done this. It was this concept that allowed him to get his stolen march on Lee. Fishel points to evidence of the Union Signal Corps transmitting a fake message that was picked up by Lee's Signal Corps that resulted in Lee dispatching JEB Stuart on a ride to pursue a phantom force. Stuart's departure left the hole that Hooker used to get around to Lee's flank. How often is this discussed in books? It isn't. Hooker reorganized the cavalry, consolidating them into one corps, another logical and new concept. He rode in intelligence balloons, further showing his interest and understanding of the importance of intelligence gathering. No other general really understood the importance of intelligence gathering like he did. His work and understanding of it dwarfed all others. He would have done great service if an intelligence bureau at the War Department was created and he was placed in charge of it. This new dimension of Hooker is what Fishel brings forth in his work. Fishel documents his facts well; his footnotes cover 82 pages. There are also 25 maps. Fishel analyzes all forms of intelligence utilized in the war: cavalry, the signal corps, citizen-scouts, spies (women and men), slaves, freedmen, clandestine actions, deserters, POWs, and double-agents. His efforts span primarily the events from 1861 through the battle of Gettysburg. It is a remarkable work that a student of the Civil War should find most intriguing since it adds a new dimension to think about regarding the prosecution of the war's campaigns. I'm perplexed how one reader comments on the book's lac

Tough Going, but worth the effort.

Yes, Fischel does not give you the lightest and easiest narrative to go through in "The Secret War for the Union" but one has to consider what they as a reader will gain from this book. Quite simply, it is the ONLY single volume history of CW Military Intelligence in the East. This is it. From Bull Run to Mine Run you get the whole kit and the footnotes and sources are worth their weight in GOLD to the serious CW scholar or researcher. Fischel took a long time to write this book and if he is guilty of anything it is over-inclusion. However, given that nobody else except William Feiss has used his source material in a book-length study of CW Union Military Intelligence, I forgive him for this. If he had wanted, Fischel could have taken this enormous amount of material he had researched and broken this work into several books of lighter prose and still been a great success. Yes the prose is dense, but it's a fine book and if you want to understand why certain decisions were made by the commanders of the Army of the Potomac, you HAVE to at least read the portions that are pertinent to your research. Trust me on this one, I used that method to help with my own MA Thesis in History and Fischel saved me a lot of work in going through piles of material to locate items for my thesis. Because of that and its wealth of other data, I have no probelm saying, "It's a good book to have on the shelf."

Ponderous Pondering on the Potomac

I will praise this book first for a comprehensive coverage of what the author found. The story of Gen. McClellan's over-caution and Allen Pinkerton's overestimation is well known. And has been published before but not in such well noted detail. That said, the first third of the book could well have been published independently so that the reader would not get a sore chest from propping it up! On the other hand, the great virtue of this work is the thorough mining of later material concerning the period after the establishment of a military-led true intelligence organization. The other side of clandestine operations in this same period in this area has been covered in the excellent study [u]Come Retribution[/u] which appeared earlier. The history of operations in the Western Theatre is yet to be written. My greatest disappointment is the author's relegating of "lesson learned" to an appendix and his omission of modern tradecraft comparisons. As it was, the lessons we learned in the Civil War, when we fought essentially ourselves still had general relevence thirty some years later in the War With Spain and even later on the Mexican Border. (I wrote my thesis on the latter era.) The text, [u]Service of Security and Information[/u], written by Col. Wagner, which was used in the 1890s, at the Fort Leavenworth Service Schools, was based on the Army's experience in the Civil War. Slightly revised after the war with Spain, the work remained in use til the Great War. But, perhaps, pointing out this continuaton of military thought was not the author's intention. As to the unfortunate title, promisimg more than the book delivers, I place blame on the publishers. This book is so much better than the other recent book on Civil War spies which simply rehashes all the old tales about Crazy Betty, Belle Starr, et al. It's just a pity it's so hard to read. I never did finish it. I read the conclusions, and the appendices, and, frankly, there's just more here than I wanted to know.

A groundbreaking study of intelligence in the Civil War

Fishel's masterful study of Military Intelligence operations conducted by the Union's Army of the Potomac, focusing on the period from 1861 to 1863, is largely based upon files in the National Archives, records which had been virtually ignored previously by historians. The author meticulously chronicles the development of the Bureau of Military Intelligence under a succession of Army commanders until by 1863 it had become a "full service" intelligence organization, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information. Fishel corrects many myths, especially those of the "Southen belle" spies, but provides remarkable new details in how information was gathered and how that information was then used -- or misused. While by no means a "light" read, this book will be of great interest to anyone wishing to learn more about this much-neglected topic.