Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807129586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
In this collection, Civil War historian Gary W. Gallagher examines Robert E. Lee, his principal subordinates, the treatment they have received in the literature on Confederate military history, and the continuing influence of Lost Cause arguments in the late-twentieth-century United States. Historical images of Lee and his lieutenants were shaped to a remarkable degree by the reminiscences and other writings of ex-Confederates who formulated what became known as the Lost Cause interpretation of the conflict. Lost Cause advocates usually portrayed Lee as a perfect Christian warrior and Stonewall Jackson as his peerless "right arm" and often explained Lee's failings as the result of inept performances by other generals. Many historians throughout the twentieth century have approached Lee and other Confederate military figures within an analytical framework heavily influenced by the Lost Cause school. The twelve pieces in Lee and His Generals in War and Memory explore the effect of Lost Cause arguments on popular perceptions of Lee and his lieutenants. Part I offers four essays on Lee, followed in Part II by five essays that scrutinize several of Lee's most famous subordinates, including Stonewall Jackson, John Bankhead Magruder, James Longstreet, A.P. Hill, Richard S. Ewell, and Jubal Early. Taken together, these pieces not only consider how Lost Cause writings enhanced or diminished Confederate military reputations but also illuminate the various ways post--Civil War writers have interpreted the actions and impacts of these commanders. Part III contains two articles that shift the focus to the writings of Jubal Early and LaSalle Corbell Pickett, both of whom succeeded in advancing the notion of gallant Lost Cause warriors. The final two essays, which contemplate the current debate over the Civil War's meaning for modern Americans, focus on Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War and on the issue of battlefield preservation. Gallagher adeptly highlights the chasm that often separates academic and popular perceptions of the Civil War and discusses some of the ways in which the Lost Cause continues to resonate. Lee and His Generals in War and Memory will certainly attract those interested in Lee and his campaigns, the Army of Northern Virginia, the establishment of popular images of the Confederate military, and the manner in which historical memory is created and perpetuated.
Author: Grady McWhiney
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817302298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
A Selection of the History Book Club. "A controversial book that answers why the Confederates suffered such staggering human losses". -- History Book Club Review
Author: Samuel J. Martin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786461942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 537
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Book Description
General Braxton Bragg is often described as a despicable, friendless man, the most hated general of the Confederacy. Historians have denigrated Bragg by accepting without challenge the self-serving accusations of prominent, disgruntled subordinates, each of whom sought to explain their own failures by assigning them to Bragg. This biography, without dodging Bragg's deficiencies, refutes much of this false testimony. The result is a balanced view of this controversial general, from his early rise to power in the Western theater to his subsequent fall from grace in the latter years of the Civil War.
Author:
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820313962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 630
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Book Description
Offers a chronological account of the Civil War, reexamines theories for the South's defeat, and analyzes Confederate and Union military strategy
Author: Joseph Wheelan
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306823616
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Dramatic developments unfolded during the first months of 1865 that brought America's bloody Civil War to a swift climax. As the Confederacy crumbled under the Union army's relentless "hammering," Federal armies marched on the Rebels' remaining bastions in Alabama, the Carolinas, and Virginia. General William T. Sherman's battle-hardened army conducted a punitive campaign against the seat of the Rebellion, South Carolina, while General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant sought to break the months-long siege at Petersburg, defended by Robert E. Lee's starving Army of Northern Virginia. In Richmond, Confederate President Jefferson Davis struggled to hold together his unraveling nation while simultaneously sanctioning diplomatic overtures to bid for peace. Meanwhile, President Abraham Lincoln took steps to end slavery in the United States forever. Their Last Full Measure relates these thrilling events, which followed one on the heels of another, from the battles ending the Petersburg siege and forcing Lee's surrender at Appomattox to the destruction of South Carolina's capital, the assassination of Lincoln, and the intensive manhunt for his killer. The fast-paced narrative braids the disparate events into a compelling account that includes powerful armies; leaders civil and military, flawed and splendid; and ordinary people, black and white, struggling to survive in the war's wreckage.
Author: Brian Steel Wills
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806146044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
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Book Description
The battlefield reputation of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, long recognized as a formidable warrior, has been shaped by one infamous wartime incident. At Fort Pillow in 1864, the attack by Confederate forces under Forrest’s command left many of the Tennessee Unionists and black soldiers garrisoned there dead in a confrontation widely labeled as a “massacre.” In The River Was Dyed with Blood, best-selling Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills argues that although atrocities did occur after the fall of the fort, Forrest did not order or intend a systematic execution of its defenders. Rather, the general’s great failing was losing control of his troops. A prewar slave trader and owner, Forrest was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime. Because the attack on Fort Pillow—which, as Forrest wrote, left the nearby waters “dyed with blood”—occurred in an election year, Republicans used him as a convenient Confederate scapegoat to marshal support for the war. After the war he also became closely associated with the spread of the Ku Klux Klan. Consequently, the man himself, and the truth about Fort Pillow, has remained buried beneath myths, legends, popular depictions, and disputes about the events themselves. Wills sets what took place at Fort Pillow in the context of other wartime excesses from the American Revolution to World War II and Vietnam, as well as the cultural transformations brought on by the Civil War. Confederates viewed black Union soldiers as the embodiment of slave rebellion and reacted accordingly. Nevertheless, Wills concludes that the engagement was neither a massacre carried out deliberately by Forrest, as charged by a congressional committee, nor solely a northern fabrication meant to discredit him and the Confederate States of America, as pro-Southern apologists have suggested. The battle-scarred fighter with his homespun aphorisms was neither an infallible warrior nor a heartless butcher, but a product of his time and his heritage.
Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807821930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
'It is well this is so terrible! We should grow too fond of it,' said General Robert E. Lee as he watched his troops repulse the Union attack at Fredericksburg on 13 December 1863. This collection of seven original essays by leading Civil War historian
Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469625342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
Between the end of May and the beginning of August 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee oversaw the transition between the Overland campaign—a remarkable saga of maneuvering and brutal combat—and what became a grueling siege of Petersburg that many months later compelled Confederates to abandon Richmond. Although many historians have marked Grant's crossing of the James River on June 12–15 as the close of the Overland campaign, this volume interprets the fighting from Cold Harbor on June 1–3 through the battle of the Crater on July 30 as the last phase of an operation that could have ended without a prolonged siege. The contributors assess the campaign from a variety of perspectives, examining strategy and tactics, the performances of key commanders on each side, the centrality of field fortifications, political repercussions in the United States and the Confederacy, the experiences of civilians caught in the path of the armies, and how the famous battle of the Crater has resonated in historical memory. As a group, the essays highlight the important connections between the home front and the battlefield, showing some of the ways in which military and nonmilitary affairs played off and influenced one another. Contributors include Keith S. Bohannon, Stephen Cushman, M. Keith Harris, Robert E. L. Krick, Kevin M. Levin, Kathryn Shively Meier, Gordon C. Rhea, and Joan Waugh.
Author: Jefferson Davis
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807129098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 770
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Book Description
During the last nine months of the Civil War, virtually all of the news reports and President Jefferson Davis’s correspondence confirmed the imminent demise of the Confederate States, the nation Davis had striven to uphold since 1861. But despite defeat after defeat on the battlefield, a recalcitrant Congress, nay-sayers in the press, disastrous financial conditions, failures in foreign policy and peace efforts, and plummeting national morale, Davis remained in office and tried to maintain the government—even after the fall of Richmond on April 2—until his capture by Union forces on May 10, 1865. The eleventh volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis follows these tumultuous last months of the Confederacy and illuminates Davis’s policies, feelings, ideas, and relationships, as well as the viewpoints of hundreds of southerners—critics and supporters—who asked favors, pointed out abuses, and offered advice on myriad topics. Printed here for the first time are many speeches and a number of new letters and telegrams. In the course of the volume, Robert E. Lee officially becomes general in chief, Joseph E. Johnston is given a final command, legislation is enacted to place slaves in the army as soldiers, and peace negotiations are opened at the highest levels. The closing pages chronicle Davis’s dramatic flight from Richmond, including emotional correspondence with his wife as the two endeavor to find each other en route and make plans for the future in the wreckage of their lives. The holdings of seventy different manuscript repositories and private collections in addition to numerous published sources contribute to Volume 11, the fifth in the Civil War period.
Author: William C. Davis
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813173558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
The fourth book in the Virginia at War series casts a special light on vital home front matters in Virginia during 1864. Following a year in which only one major battle was fought on Virginia soil, 1864 brought military campaigning to the Old Dominion. For the first time during the Civil War, the majority of Virginia's forces fought inside the state's borders. Yet soldiers were a distinct minority among the Virginians affected by the war. In Virginia at War, 1864, scholars explore various aspects of the civilian experience in Virginia including transportation and communication, wartime literature, politics and the press, higher education, patriotic celebrations, and early efforts at reconstruction in Union-occupied Virginia. The volume focuses on the effects of war on the civilian infrastructure as well as efforts to maintain the Confederacy. As in previous volumes, the book concludes with an edited and annotated excerpt of the Judith Brockenbrough McGuire diary.
