Unfortunately for the Confederates, the Federal forces in Tennessee and Kentucky learned and adapted to the ways of irregular warfare. John Hunt Morgan and Nathan Bedford Forrest operated early and with great success. These successes also raised great hopes for the cavalry raiders. Unfortunately, the bad will between Morgan and Forrest, and the increasingly sophisticated defenses by the Federal forces wore down the raiders and forced them to return to regular cavalry service. LTC Mackey takes great care to show how the Federal forces adapted and learned from experience and won the fight in Tennessee and Kentucky.

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LTC Mackey’s analysis of the irregular warfare in the upper south convincingly proved that all three types of irregular warfare were failures. Except for the President of the Confederacy, almost all the other leaders had studied the results and had no confidence in irregular warfare. So the reason the Confederates did not employ irregular warfare more could be summed up in two reasons:

1) It did not work.

2) It burdened the civilian population more than the enemy.

Technically speaking, the book is nearly flawless. I encountered only one major typographical error, and the book is free of any grammatical errors as well. The writing is a technical analysis rather than popular history, and therefore discusses the issues with a scientific manner rather than a more entertaining style. The book is a good read, despite the occasional redundancy or bogging down once or twice in the theoretical discussions of irregular warfare. The only problem in the writing is that, as the author admits, the manuscript went from a 500 page doorstop to the final 288 pages and, in my opinion, the condensing of the material lead to the redundancies. Based on a research paper for the United States Army School of Advanced Military Studies, the book is well supported by sources both from official records as well as popular histories and first-person sources. The illustrations are chosen to best highlight the subjects being illustrated, and one map in particular brought home the true nature of the Anaconda Plan. This book is what I like to call a ‘two bookmark book’. One bookmark to keep your place in your reading, and the second to mark your place in the end-notes where some very good information is hiding that is relative to the discussion. Listed at $34.95, The UNcivil War is a mid-range priced book, but is good value for anybody seeking a technical analysis of why the Confederate States of American failed in it’s usage of irregular warfare. Highly recommended for any student of the American Civil War.

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