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Author: Adam Petty
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807172146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
In this highly revisionist study, historian Adam H. Petty tracks how veterans and historians of the Civil War created and perpetuated myths about the Wilderness, a forest in Virginia that served as the backdrop for three of the war’s most interesting campaigns. This forest had a fearsome reputation among soldiers, especially those from Union armies; many believed it to be an exceptional landscape with a menacing mystique that created favorable combat conditions for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. According to Petty, the mythology surrounding the campaigns in the Wilderness began to take shape during the war but truly blossomed in the postwar years, continuing into the present. Those myths, he suggests, confounded accurate understandings of how the physical environment influenced combat and military operations. While the Wilderness did create difficult combat conditions, Petty refutes claims that it was unique and favored the Confederates. Unlike previous studies of the Wilderness, this work does not focus on a single battle or campaign. Instead, Petty explores all the major clashes there—Chancellorsville, Mine Run, and the battle of the Wilderness—which allows Petty to observe changes over time, especially regarding the attitudes and actions of generals and soldiers. Yet Petty’s study is not a narrative history of the campaigns. Instead, he reconsiders traditional interpretations surrounding the nature of the Wilderness and how it affected military operations and combat. His work analyzes not only the interaction between military campaigns and environment but also how the memory of that interaction evolved into the myth we know today.
Author: Adam Petty
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807172146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this highly revisionist study, historian Adam H. Petty tracks how veterans and historians of the Civil War created and perpetuated myths about the Wilderness, a forest in Virginia that served as the backdrop for three of the war’s most interesting campaigns. This forest had a fearsome reputation among soldiers, especially those from Union armies; many believed it to be an exceptional landscape with a menacing mystique that created favorable combat conditions for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. According to Petty, the mythology surrounding the campaigns in the Wilderness began to take shape during the war but truly blossomed in the postwar years, continuing into the present. Those myths, he suggests, confounded accurate understandings of how the physical environment influenced combat and military operations. While the Wilderness did create difficult combat conditions, Petty refutes claims that it was unique and favored the Confederates. Unlike previous studies of the Wilderness, this work does not focus on a single battle or campaign. Instead, Petty explores all the major clashes there—Chancellorsville, Mine Run, and the battle of the Wilderness—which allows Petty to observe changes over time, especially regarding the attitudes and actions of generals and soldiers. Yet Petty’s study is not a narrative history of the campaigns. Instead, he reconsiders traditional interpretations surrounding the nature of the Wilderness and how it affected military operations and combat. His work analyzes not only the interaction between military campaigns and environment but also how the memory of that interaction evolved into the myth we know today.
Author: Stephen Cushman
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813920412
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
On 5 and 6 May 1864, the Union and Confederate armies met near an unfinished railroad in central Virginia, with Lee outmanned and outgunned, hoping to force Grant to fight in the woods. The name of the battle--Wilderness--suggests the horror of combat at close quarters and an inability to see the whole field of engagement, even from a distance. Indeed, the battle is remembered for its brutality and ultimate futility for Lee: even with 26,000 casualties on both sides, the Wilderness only briefly stemmed Grant's advance. Stephen Cushman lives fifty miles south of this battlefield. A poet and professor of American literature, he wrote Bloody Promenade to confront the fractured legacy of a battle that haunts him through its very proximity to his everyday life. Cushman's personal narrative is not another history of the battle. "If this book is a history of anything," he writes, "it's the history of verbal and visual images of a single, particularly awful moment in the American Civil War." Reflecting on that moment can begin in the present, with the latest film or reenactment, but it leads Cushman back to materials from the past. Writing in an informal, first-person style, he traces his own fascination with the conflict to a single book, a pictorial history he read as a boy. His abiding interest and poetic sensibility yield a fresh perspective on the war's continuing grip on Americans--how it pervades our lives through films and songs; novels such as The Red Badge of Courage, The Killer Angels, and Cold Mountain; Whitman's poetry and Winslow Homer's painting; or the pull of the abstract idea of the triumph of freedom. With maps and a brief discussion of the Battle of the Wilderness for those not familiar with the landscape and actors, Bloody Promenade provides a personal tour of one of the most savage engagements of the Civil War, then offers a lively discussion of its aftermath.
Author: Joseph Frederick Stoltz (III)
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423022
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Introduction: "a correct remembrance of great events"--"By the eternal, they shall not sleep on our soil:" the New Orleans Campaign -- "Half a horse and half an alligator:" the Battle of New Orleans in the Era of Good Feelings -- "Under the command of a plain Republican--an American Cincinnatus:" the Battle of New Orleans in the Age of Jefferson -- "The union must and shall be preserved:" the Battle of New Orleans and the American Civil War -- "True daughters of the war:" the Battle of New Orleans at 100 -- "Not pirate ... privateer:" the Battle of New Orleans and mid-20th century popular culture -- "Tourism whetted by the celebration:" the Battle of New Orleans in the 20th century -- A "rustic and factual" appearance: the Battle of New Orleans at 200 -- Closing: "what is past is prologue
Author: Robert Penn Warren
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803299273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 83
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Book Description
In this elegant book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human (six hundred thousand men killed) and economic (beyond reckoning) but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets "grows in our consciousness," arousing complex emotions and leaving "a gallery of great human images for our contemplation."
Author: Lorien Foote
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190903058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 697
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Book Description
Assembles contributions from thirty-nine leading historians of the American Civil War into a coherent attempt to assess the war's impact on American society
Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399015923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
A global history of the geography of war from antiquity to modern and contemporary conflict illustrated and brought to life by histories of inter-state war, geopolitical rivalry, 'hot' and 'cold' war and terrorism. Geography is a basic element in all stages of war including preparation, planning, onset of conflict, waging wars, assessment of results, post-conflict negotiations, analysis and preparation for future conflict. Geography is the vital element in strategy and tactics, and in the spatial context, on land, water and space. It is central to all historical activities from human and animal transport to wind power, coal, seam, oil, jet propulsion atomic weaponry and the threat of cyber conflict. This is essentially a 'modern geography', and not only physical, but political social, economic, cultural and 'human', with emphasis on personal experience. And technical mapping is included - the author's particular expertise - and accessible to specialist and general readers. A global history of the geographies of war in the context of great power geopolitics to local conflicts.
Author: Edward Caudill
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742550285
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating "March to the Sea" in 1864 burned a swath through the cities and countryside of Georgia and into the history of the American Civil War. As they moved from Atlanta to Savannah--destroying homes, buildings, and crops; killing livestock; and consuming supplies--Sherman and the Union army ignited not only southern property, but also imaginations, in both the North and the South. By the time of the general's death in 1891, when one said "The March," no explanation was required. That remains true today. Legends and myths about Sherman began forming during the March itself, and took more definitive shape in the industrial age in the late-nineteenth century. Sherman's March in Myth and Memory examines the emergence of various myths surrounding one of the most enduring campaigns in the annals of military history. Edward Caudill and Paul Ashdown provide a brief overview of Sherman's life and his March, but their focus is on how these myths came about--such as one description of a "60-mile wide path of destruction"--and how legends about Sherman and his campaign have served a variety of interests. Caudill and Ashdown argue that these myths have been employed by groups as disparate as those endorsing the Old South aristocracy and its "Lost Cause," and by others who saw the March as evidence of the superiority of industrialism in modern America over a retreating agrarianism. Sherman's March in Myth and Memory looks at the general's treatment in the press, among historians, on stage and screen, and in literature, from the time of the March to the present day. The authors show us the many ways in which Sherman has been portrayed in the media and popular culture, and how his devastating March has been stamped into our collective memory.
Author: Lesley J. Gordon
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807173746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A panoramic collection of essays written by both established and emerging scholars, American Discord examines critical aspects of the Civil War era, including rhetoric and nationalism, politics and violence, gender, race, and religion. Beginning with an overview of the political culture of the 1860s, the collection reveals that most Americans entered the decade opposed to political compromise. Essays from Megan L. Bever, Glenn David Brasher, Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr., and Christian McWhirter discuss the rancorous political climate of the day and the sense of racial superiority woven into the political fabric of the era. Shifting focus to the actual war, Rachel K. Deale, Lindsay Rae Privette, Adam H. Petty, and A. Wilson Greene contribute essays on internal conflict, lack of compromise, and commitment to white supremacy. Here, contributors adopt a broad understanding of “battle,” considering environmental effects and the impact of the war after the battles were over. Essays by Laura Mammina and Charity Rakestraw and Kristopher A. Teters reveal that while the war blurred the boundaries, it ultimately prompted Americans to grasp for the familiar established hierarchies of gender and race. Examinations of chaos and internal division suggest that the political culture of Reconstruction was every bit as contentious as the war itself. Former Confederates decried the barbarity of their Yankee conquerors, while Republicans portrayed Democrats as backward rubes in need of civilizing. Essays by Kevin L. Hughes, Daniel J. Burge, T. Robert Hart, John F. Marszalek, and T. Michael Parrish highlight Americans’ continued reliance on hyperbolic rhetoric. American Discord embraces a multifaceted view of the Civil War and its aftermath, attempting to capture the complicated human experiences of the men and women caught in the conflict. These essays acknowledge that ordinary people and their experiences matter, and the dynamics among family members, friends, and enemies have far-reaching consequences.
Author: Michael Daigh
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786496177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
John Brown's father on the day of his birth, May 9, 1800, wrote "John was born one hundred years after his great grandfather. Nothing else very uncommon." Many years later came the 1856 Pottawatomie Massacre, where his uncommon convictions led him and his band of abolitionists to kill five pro-slavery settlers in Franklin County, Kansas. Three years later, Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and his subsequent trial and execution helped push an already divided nation inexorably toward civil war. This is the story of John Brown, the age he embodied and the myth he became, and how the tragic gravity of his actions transformed America's past and future. Through biographical narrative, his life and legacy are discussed as a study in metaphor and power and the nature of historical memory.
Author: Frye Gaillard
Publisher: NewSouth Books
ISBN: 1603063617
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
On the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War, award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflects on the war—and the way we remember it—through letters written by his family, including his great-great grandfather and his two sons, both of whom were Confederate officers. As Gaillard explains in his introductory essay, he came of age in a Southern generation that viewed the war as a glorious lost cause. But as he read through letters collected by members of his family, he confronted a far more sobering truth. “Oh, this terrible war,” wrote his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Gaillard. “Who can measure the troubles—the affliction—it has brought upon us all?” To this real-time anguish in voices from the past, Gaillard offers a personal remembrance of the shadow of war and its place in the haunted identity of the South. “My own generation,” he writes, “was, perhaps, the last that was raised on stories of gallantry and courage . . . Oddly, mine was also the one of the first generations to view the Civil War through the lens of civil rights—to see . . . connections and flaws in Southern history that earlier generations couldn’t bear to face.”
