Such Troops as These

Such Troops as These PDF Author: Bevin Alexander
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425271307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander offers a provocative analysis of Stonewall Jackson’s military genius and reveals how the Civil War might have ended differently if Jackson’s strategies had been adopted. The Civil War pitted the industrial North against the agricultural South, and remains one of the most catastrophic conflicts in American history. With triple the population and eleven times the industry, the Union had a decided advantage over the Confederacy. But one general had a vision that could win the War for the South—Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Jackson believed invading the eastern states from Baltimore to Maine could divide and cripple the Union, forcing surrender, but failed to convince Confederate president Jefferson Davis or General Robert E. Lee. In Such Troops as These, Bevin Alexander presents a compelling case for Jackson as the greatest general in American history. Fiercely dedicated to the cause of Southern independence, Jackson would not live to see the end of the War. But his military legacy lives on and finds fitting tribute in this book.

Such Troops as These

Such Troops as These PDF Author: Bevin Alexander
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425271307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
Acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander offers a provocative analysis of Stonewall Jackson’s military genius and reveals how the Civil War might have ended differently if Jackson’s strategies had been adopted. The Civil War pitted the industrial North against the agricultural South, and remains one of the most catastrophic conflicts in American history. With triple the population and eleven times the industry, the Union had a decided advantage over the Confederacy. But one general had a vision that could win the War for the South—Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Jackson believed invading the eastern states from Baltimore to Maine could divide and cripple the Union, forcing surrender, but failed to convince Confederate president Jefferson Davis or General Robert E. Lee. In Such Troops as These, Bevin Alexander presents a compelling case for Jackson as the greatest general in American history. Fiercely dedicated to the cause of Southern independence, Jackson would not live to see the end of the War. But his military legacy lives on and finds fitting tribute in this book.

Searching for George Gordon Meade

Searching for George Gordon Meade PDF Author: Tom Huntington
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811708136
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
A historian's investigation of the life and times of Gen. George Gordon Meade to discover why the hero of Gettysburg has failed to achieve the status accorded to other generals of the conflict.

Baptized in Blood

Baptized in Blood PDF Author: Charles Reagan Wilson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820306819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. “Civil religion” has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South’s relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause. While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson’s timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches. In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South’s tragic experience.

John Bankhead Magruder

John Bankhead Magruder PDF Author: Thomas Settles
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807149624
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Of all the major figures of the Civil War era, Confederate general John Bankhead Magruder is perhaps the least understood. The third-ranking officer in Virginia's forces behind Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, Magruder left no diary, no completed memoirs, no will, not even a family Bible. There are no genealogical records and very few surviving personal papers. Unsurprisingly, then, much existing literature about Magruder contains incorrect information. In John Bankhead Magruder, an exhaustive biography that reflects more than thirty years of painstaking archival research, Thomas M. Settles remedies the many factual inaccuracies surrounding this enigmatic man and his military career. Settles traces Magruder's family back to its seventeenth-century British American origins, describes his educational endeavors at the University of Virginia and West Point, and details his early military career and his leading role as an artillerist in the war with Mexico. Tall, handsome, and flamboyant, Magruder earned the nickname "Prince John" from his army friends and was known for his impeccable manners and social brilliance. When Virginia seceded in April of 1861, Prince John resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and offered his services to the Confederacy. Magruder won the opening battle of the Civil War at Big Bethel. Later, in spite of severe shortages of weapons and supplies and a lack of support from Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, Samuel Cooper, and Joseph E. Johnston, Prince John, with just 13,600 men, held his position on the Peninsula for a month against George B. McClellan's 105,000-man Federal army. This successful stand, at a time when Richmond was exceedingly vulnerable, provided, according to Settles, John Magruder's greatest contribution to the Confederacy. Following the Seven Days' battles, however, his commanders harshly criticized Magruder for being too slow at Savage Station, then too rash at Malvern Hill and they transferred him to command the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In Texas, he skillfully recaptured the port of Galveston in early 1863 and held it for the Confederacy until the end of the war. After the war, he joined the Confederate exodus to Mexico but eventually returned to the United States, living in New York City and New Orleans before settling in Houston, where he died on February 18, 1871. John Bankhead Magruder offers fresh insight into many aspects of the general's life and legacy, including his alleged excesses, his family relationships, and the period between Magruder's death and his memorialization into the canon of Lost Cause mythology. With engaging prose and impressive research, Settles brings this vibrant Civil War figure to life.

From Manassas to Appomattox

From Manassas to Appomattox PDF Author: James Longstreet
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 804

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Book Description


The Jewish Confederates

The Jewish Confederates PDF Author: Robert N. Rosen
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570033636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Reveals the breadth of Jewish participation in the American Civil War on the Confederate side. Rosen describes the Jewish communities in the South and explains their reasons for supporting the South. He relates the experiences of officers, enlisted men, politicians, rabbis and doctors.

Enduring Legacy

Enduring Legacy PDF Author: W. Stuart Towns
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081731752X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Explores the crucial role of rhetoric and oratory in creating and propagating a “Lost Cause” public memory of the American South Enduring Legacy explores the vital place of ceremonial oratory in the oral tradition in the South and analyses how rituals such as Confederate Memorial Day, Confederate veteran reunions, and dedication of Confederate monuments have contributed to creating and sustaining a Lost Cause paradigm for Southern identity. Towns studies in detail secessionist and Civil War speeches and how they laid the groundwork for future generations, including Southern responses to the civil rights movement, and beyond. The Lost Cause orators that came after the Civil War, Towns argues, helped to shape a lasting mythology of the brave Confederate martyr, and the Southern positions for why the Confederacy lost and who was to blame. Innumerable words were spent—in commemorative speeches, newspaper editorials, and statehouse oratory—condemning the evils of Reconstruction, redemption, reconciliation, and the new and future South. Towns concludes with an analysis of how Lost Cause myths still influence Southern and national perceptions of the region today, as evidenced in debates over the continued deployment of the Confederate flag and the popularity of Civil War reenactments.

Confederate Emancipation

Confederate Emancipation PDF Author: Bruce Levine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195147626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Levine sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South.

The Battle of Seven Pines

The Battle of Seven Pines PDF Author: Gustavus Woodson Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fair Oaks, Battle of, Va., 1862
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description


The Summer of ’63 Gettysburg

The Summer of ’63 Gettysburg PDF Author: Chris Mackowski
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1954547048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
“An outstanding read for anyone interested in the Civil War and Gettysburg in particular . . . innovative and thoughtful ideas on seemingly well-covered events.” —The NYMAS Review The largest land battle on the North American continent has maintained an unshakable grip on the American imagination. Building on momentum from a string of victories that stretched back into the summer of 1862, Robert E. Lee launched his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on an invasion of the North meant to shake Union resolve and fundamentally shift the dynamic of the war. His counterpart with the Federal Army of the Potomac, George Meade, elevated to command just days before the fighting, found himself defending his home state in a high-stakes battle that could have put Confederates at the very gates of the nation’s capital. The public historians writing for the popular Emerging Civil War blog, speaking on its podcast, or delivering talks at the annual Emerging Civil War Symposium at Stevenson Ridge in Virginia always present their work in ways that engage and animate audiences. Their efforts entertain, challenge, and sometimes provoke readers with fresh perspectives and insights born from years of working on battlefields, guiding tours, presenting talks, and writing for the wider Civil War community. The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg is a compilation of some of their favorites, anthologized, revised, and updated, together with several original pieces. Each entry includes original and helpful illustrations. Along with its companion volume The Summer of ’63: Vicksburg and Tullahoma, this important study contextualizes the major 1863 campaigns in what was arguably the Civil War’s turning-point summer.