The Bloody Crucible of Courage

The Bloody Crucible of Courage PDF Author: Brent Nosworthy
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
ISBN: 9780786715633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 752

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Book Description
A noted military historian takes a close-up look at the fighting methods, tactics, and weaponry on both sides of the American Civil War in a thorough analysis of Civil War military practices that chronicles the evolution of warfare from the early days of the war, through the famous battles at Gettysburg and Antietam, to the final surrender of the Confederate forces. Reprint.

The Bloody Crucible of Courage

The Bloody Crucible of Courage PDF Author: Brent Nosworthy
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
ISBN: 9780786715633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 752

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Book Description
A noted military historian takes a close-up look at the fighting methods, tactics, and weaponry on both sides of the American Civil War in a thorough analysis of Civil War military practices that chronicles the evolution of warfare from the early days of the war, through the famous battles at Gettysburg and Antietam, to the final surrender of the Confederate forces. Reprint.

Battle Tactics of the Civil War

Battle Tactics of the Civil War PDF Author: Paddy Griffith
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300084610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Military expert Paddy Griffith argues that despite the use of new weapons and of trench warfare techniques, the Civil War was in reality the last Napoleonic-style war. Illustrations.

Roll Call to Destiny

Roll Call to Destiny PDF Author: Brent Nosworthy
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Pieces together small units' engagements in a variety of battles, drawn from firsthand accounts of those who fought.

The Soul of Armies

The Soul of Armies PDF Author: Austin Long
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703900
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
For both the United States and United Kingdom counterinsurgency was a serious component of security policy during the Cold War and, along with counterterrorism, has been the greatest security challenge after September 11, 2001. In The Soul of Armies Austin Long compares and contrasts counterinsurgency operations during the Cold War and in recent years by three organizations: the US Army, the US Marine Corps, and the British Army.Long argues that the formative experiences of these three organizations as they professionalized in the nineteenth century has produced distinctive organizational cultures that shape operations. Combining archival research on counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Kenya with the author's personal experience as a civilian advisor to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Soul of Armies demonstrates that the US Army has persistently conducted counterinsurgency operations in a very different way from either the US Marine Corps or the British Army. These differences in conduct have serious consequences, affecting the likelihood of success, the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, and the ability to effectively support host nation governments. Long concludes counterinsurgency operations are at best only a partial explanation for success or failure.

All for the King's Shilling

All for the King's Shilling PDF Author: Edward J. Coss
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806146168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
The British troops who fought so successfully under the Duke of Wellington during his Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon have long been branded by the duke’s own words—“scum of the earth”—and assumed to have been society’s ne’er-do-wells or criminals who enlisted to escape justice. Now Edward J. Coss shows to the contrary that most of these redcoats were respectable laborers and tradesmen and that it was mainly their working-class status that prompted the duke’s derision. Driven into the army by unemployment in the wake of Britain’s industrial revolution, they confronted wartime hardship with ethical values and became formidable soldiers in the bargain These men depended on the king’s shilling for survival, yet pay was erratic and provisions were scant. Fed worse even than sixteenth-century Spanish galley slaves, they often marched for days without adequate food; and if during the campaign they did steal from Portuguese and Spanish civilians, the theft was attributable not to any criminal leanings but to hunger and the paltry rations provided by the army. Coss draws on a comprehensive database on British soldiers as well as first-person accounts of Peninsular War participants to offer a better understanding of their backgrounds and daily lives. He describes how these neglected and abused soldiers came to rely increasingly on the emotional and physical support of comrades and developed their own moral and behavioral code. Their cohesiveness, Coss argues, was a major factor in their legendary triumphs over Napoleon’s battle-hardened troops. The first work to closely examine the social composition of Wellington’s rank and file through the lens of military psychology, All for the King’s Shilling transcends the Napoleonic battlefield to help explain the motivation and behavior of all soldiers under the stress of combat.

America's Unending Civil War

America's Unending Civil War PDF Author: William Nester
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1399081195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
The Civil War fascinates Americans like no other war in their history. Many Americans are still fighting some of the war’s issues in an Odyssey that stretches back to the first settlement and will persist until the end of time. The war itself was an Iliad of brilliant generals like Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan for the Union, or Lee, Jackson, and Forrest for the Confederacy; epic battles like Gettysburg and Chickamauga; epic sieges like Vicksburg and Petersburg; and epic naval combats such as Monitor versus Merrimack, or Kearsarge versus Alabama. It was America’s most horrific war, with more dead than all others combined. Around 625,000 soldiers and 125,000 civilians died from various causes, bringing the total to 750,000 people. Of 31 million Americans, 2.1 million northerners and 880,000 southerners donned uniforms. Why did eleven states eventually ban together to rebel against the United States? President Jefferson Davis began an answer when he said: ‘If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, Died of a Theory.’ That theory justified the enslavement of blacks by whites as a natural right and duty of a superior race over an inferior race; a theory, it was believed, that morally and economically elevated both races. Although slavery was the Civil War’s core cause, there were related chronic conflicts over the nature of government, citizenship, liberty, property, equality, wealth, race, identity, justice, crime, voting, power, and history – some of which issues have never entirely gone away. America’s Unending Civil War is unique among thousands of books on the subject. None before has explored the Civil War’s related and enduring conflicts of ideas and principles through four centuries of a nation’s history.

Gateway to the Confederacy

Gateway to the Confederacy PDF Author: Evan C. Jones
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807155101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A collection of ten new essays from some of our finest Civil War historians working today, Gateway to the Confederacy offers a reexamination of the campaigns fought to gain possession of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Each essay addresses how Americans have misconstrued the legacy of these struggles and why scholars feel it necessary to reconsider one of the most critical turning points of the American Civil War. The first academic analysis that delineates all three Civil War campaigns fought from 1862 to 1863 for control of Chattanooga -- the trans-portation hub of the Confederacy and gateway to the Deep South -- this book deals not only with military operations but also with the campaigns' origins and consequences. The essays also explore the far-reaching social and political implications of the battles and bring into sharp focus their impact on postwar literature and commemoration. Several chapters revise the traditional portraits of both famous and con-troversial figures including Ambrose Bierce and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Others investigate some of the more salient moments of these cam-paigns such as the circumstances that allowed for the Confederate breakthrough assault at Chickamauga. Gateway to the Confederacy reassesses these pivotal battles, long in need of reappraisal, and breaks new ground as each scholar re-shapes a particular aspect of this momentous part of the Civil War. CONTRIBUTORS Russell S. Bonds Stephen Cushman Caroline E. Janney Evan C. Jones David A. Powell Gerald J. Prokopowicz William Glenn Robertson Wiley Sword Craig L. Symonds

The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege

The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege PDF Author: Mark Michael Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199759987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Historical accounts of major events have almost always relied upon what those who were there witnessed. Nowhere is this truer than in the nerve-shattering chaos of warfare, where sight seems to confer objective truth and acts as the basis of reconstruction. In The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege, historian Mark M. Smith considers how all five senses, including sight, shaped the experience of the Civil War and thus its memory, exploring its full sensory impact on everyone from the soldiers on the field to the civilians waiting at home. From the eardrum-shattering barrage of shells announcing the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter; to the stench produced by the corpses lying in the mid-summer sun at Gettysburg; to the siege of Vicksburg, once a center of Southern culinary aesthetics and starved into submission, Smith recreates how Civil War was felt and lived. Relying on first-hand accounts, Smith focuses on specific senses, one for each event, offering a wholly new perspective. At Bull Run, the similarities between the colors of the Union and Confederate uniforms created concern over what later would be called friendly fire and helped decide the outcome of the first major battle, simply because no one was quite sure they could believe their eyes. He evokes what it might have felt like to be in the HL Hunley submarine, in which eight men worked cheek by jowl in near-total darkness in a space 48 inches high, 42 inches wide. Often argued to be the first total war, the Civil War overwhelmed the senses because of its unprecedented nature and scope, rendering sight less reliable and, Smith shows, forcefully engaging the nonvisual senses. Sherman's March was little less than a full-blown assault on Southern sense and sensibility, leaving nothing untouched and no one unaffected. Unique, compelling, and fascinating, The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege, offers readers way to experience the Civil War with fresh eyes.

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War PDF Author: Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118802950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1223

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Book Description
A Companion to the U.S. Civil War presents a comprehensive historiographical collection of essays covering all major military, political, social, and economic aspects of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Represents the most comprehensive coverage available relating to all aspects of the U.S. Civil War Features contributions from dozens of experts in Civil War scholarship Covers major campaigns and battles, and military and political figures, as well as non-military aspects of the conflict such as gender, emancipation, literature, ethnicity, slavery, and memory

Understanding Ancient Battle

Understanding Ancient Battle PDF Author: Hugh Elton
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526754002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Traditional military history of battles focussed on the strategies of great leaders, though in modern times many scholars have discussed the ‘face of battle’, describing the personal experience of the ordinary soldier. But in between, there still lies a major gap in our understanding of ancient combat: the officer’s battle. This focuses on how units actually fought and manoeuvred in battle. Hugh Elton seeks to redress this through analysis of the interaction of equipment, morale, leadership, and terrain. After discussing source material and the general model of warfare the author follows, this book outlines by major periods what we know of equipment, organization and tactics, then shows how battle worked in a series of case studies including include Marathon, Issus, Cannae, Cynoscephalae, Mons Graupius, and Adrianople. A total of twenty-four battles are analyzed between the fifth-century BCE and the sixth century CE, covering the wars described by the great historians between Herodotus and Procopius, including accounts written by the soldiers Xenophon, Julius Caesar, and Ammianus Marcellinus.