The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood

The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood PDF Author: Stephen M. Hood
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611211832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Scholars hail the find as “the most important discovery in Civil War scholarship in the last half century.” The invaluable cache of Confederate General John Bell Hood’s personal papers includes wartime and postwar letters from comrades, subordinates, former enemies and friends, exhaustive medical reports relating to Hood’s two major wounds, and dozens of touching letters exchanged between Hood and his wife, Anna. This treasure trove of information is being made available for the first time for both professional and amateur Civil War historians in Stephen “Sam” Hood’s The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood. The historical community long believed General Hood’s papers were lost or destroyed, and numerous books and articles were written about him without the benefit of these invaluable documents. In fact, the papers were carefully held for generations by a succession of Hood’s descendants, and in the autumn of 2012 transcribed by collateral descendent Sam Hood as part of his research for his book John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General (Savas Beatie, 2013.) This collection offers more than 200 documents. While each is a valuable piece of history, some shed important light on some of the war’s lingering mysteries and controversies. For example, several letters from multiple Confederate officers may finally explain the Confederate failure to capture or destroy Schofield’s Union army at Spring Hill, Tennessee, on the night of November 29, 1864. Another letter by Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee goes a long way toward explaining Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne’s gallant but reckless conduct that resulted in his death at Franklin. Lee also lodges serious allegations against Confederate Maj. Gen. William Bate. While these and others offer a military perspective of Hood the general, the revealing letters between he and his beloved and devoted wife, Anna, help us better understand Hood the man and husband. Historians and other writers have spent generations speculating about Hood’s motives, beliefs, and objectives, and the result has not always been flattering or even fully honest. Now, long-believed “lost” firsthand accounts previously unavailable offer insights into the character, personality, and military operations of John Bell Hood the general, husband, and father.

The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood

The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood PDF Author: Stephen M. Hood
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611211832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Scholars hail the find as “the most important discovery in Civil War scholarship in the last half century.” The invaluable cache of Confederate General John Bell Hood’s personal papers includes wartime and postwar letters from comrades, subordinates, former enemies and friends, exhaustive medical reports relating to Hood’s two major wounds, and dozens of touching letters exchanged between Hood and his wife, Anna. This treasure trove of information is being made available for the first time for both professional and amateur Civil War historians in Stephen “Sam” Hood’s The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood. The historical community long believed General Hood’s papers were lost or destroyed, and numerous books and articles were written about him without the benefit of these invaluable documents. In fact, the papers were carefully held for generations by a succession of Hood’s descendants, and in the autumn of 2012 transcribed by collateral descendent Sam Hood as part of his research for his book John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General (Savas Beatie, 2013.) This collection offers more than 200 documents. While each is a valuable piece of history, some shed important light on some of the war’s lingering mysteries and controversies. For example, several letters from multiple Confederate officers may finally explain the Confederate failure to capture or destroy Schofield’s Union army at Spring Hill, Tennessee, on the night of November 29, 1864. Another letter by Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee goes a long way toward explaining Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne’s gallant but reckless conduct that resulted in his death at Franklin. Lee also lodges serious allegations against Confederate Maj. Gen. William Bate. While these and others offer a military perspective of Hood the general, the revealing letters between he and his beloved and devoted wife, Anna, help us better understand Hood the man and husband. Historians and other writers have spent generations speculating about Hood’s motives, beliefs, and objectives, and the result has not always been flattering or even fully honest. Now, long-believed “lost” firsthand accounts previously unavailable offer insights into the character, personality, and military operations of John Bell Hood the general, husband, and father.

Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood

Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood PDF Author: Stephen Hood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781322974620
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood

The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood PDF Author: Stephen Hood
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611211824
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Scholars hail the find as Òthe most important discovery in Civil War scholarship in the last half century.Ó The invaluable cache of Confederate General John Bell HoodÕs personal papers includes wartime and postwar letters from comrades, subordinates, former enemies and friends, exhaustive medical reports relating to HoodÕs two major wounds, and dozens of touching letters exchanged between Hood and his wife, Anna. This treasure trove of information is being made available for the first time for both professional and amateur Civil War historians in Stephen ÒSamÓ HoodÕs The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood. The historical community long believed General HoodÕs papers were lost or destroyed, and numerous books and articles were written about him without the benefit of these invaluable documents. In fact, the papers were carefully held for generations by a succession of HoodÕs descendants, and in the autumn of 2012 transcribed by collateral descendent Sam Hood as part of his research for his book John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General (Savas Beatie, 2013.) This collection offers more than 200 documents. While each is a valuable piece of history, some shed important light on some of the warÕs lingering mysteries and controversies. For example, several letters from multiple Confederate officers may finally explain the Confederate failure to capture or destroy SchofieldÕs Union army at Spring Hill, Tennessee, on the night of November 29, 1864. Another letter by Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee goes a long way toward explaining Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick CleburneÕs gallant but reckless conduct that resulted in his death at Franklin. Lee also lodges serious allegations against Confederate Maj. Gen. William Bate. While these and others offer a military perspective of Hood the general, the revealing letters between he and his beloved and devoted wife, Anna, help us better understand Hood the man and husband. Historians and other writers have spent generations speculating about HoodÕs motives, beliefs, and objectives, and the result has not always been flattering or even fully honest. Now, long-believed ÒlostÓ firsthand accounts previously unavailable offer insights into the character, personality, and military operations of John Bell Hood the general, husband, and father.

John Bell Hood

John Bell Hood PDF Author: Stephen M. Hood
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611211417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
An award-winning biography of one of the Confederacy’s most successful—and most criticized—generals. Winner of the 2014 Albert Castel Book Award and the 2014 Walt Whitman Award John Bell Hood died at forty-eight after a brief illness in August 1879, leaving behind the first draft of his memoirs, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies. Published posthumously the following year, the memoirs immediately became as controversial as their author. A careful and balanced examination of these controversies, however, coupled with the recent discovery of Hood’s personal papers—which were long considered lost—finally sets the record straight in this book. Hood’s published version of many of the major events and controversies of his Confederate military career were met with scorn and skepticism. Some described his memoirs as merely a polemic against his arch-rival Joseph E. Johnston. These opinions persisted through the decades and reached their nadir in 1992, when an influential author described Hood’s memoirs as a bitter, misleading, and highly biased treatise replete with distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications. Without any personal papers to contradict them, many writers portrayed Hood as an inept, dishonest opium addict and a conniving, vindictive cripple of a man. One went so far as to brand him a fool with a license to kill his own men. What most readers don’t know is that nearly all of these authors misused sources, ignored contrary evidence, and/or suppressed facts sympathetic to Hood. Stephen M. Hood, a distant relative of the general, embarked on a meticulous forensic study of the common perceptions and controversies of his famous kinsman. His careful examination of the original sources utilized to create the broadly accepted facts about John Bell Hood uncovered startlingly poor scholarship by some of the most well-known and influential historians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These discoveries, coupled with his access to a large cache of recently discovered Hood papers, many penned by generals and other officers who served with Hood, confirm Hood’s account that originally appeared in his memoir and resolve, for the first time, some of the most controversial aspects of Hood’s long career.

Detour to Disaster

Detour to Disaster PDF Author: Noel Carpenter
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611216729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In October of 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood set out through Alabama on what would be the final campaign of the Army of Tennessee. One event in particular, overlooked and misunderstood for generations, portended what was to follow and is the subject of Noel Carpenter’s Detour to Disaster: General John Bell Hood’s “Slight Demonstration” at Decatur and the Unravelling of the Tennessee Campaign. In this fascinating and meticulously detailed and documented account—the first book-length study of the weighty decision to march to Decatur and the combat that followed there—Carpenter investigates the circumstances surrounding these matters and how they overwhelmed the controversial young army commander and potentially doomed his daring invasion. Detour to Disaster is required reading for everyone interested in the Western Theater, and especially the doomed Tennessee Campaign.

Decisions at Franklin

Decisions at Franklin PDF Author: Andrew S. Bledsoe
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 162190766X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
"The Battle of Franklin pitted beleaguered Confederate general John Bell Hood against US general John Schofield and his Army of the Ohio. The Army of Tennessee had nearly twenty thousand men when they began assaulting the US's fortified positions around Franklin. While Hood forced the Army of the Ohio to retreat to Nashville, his losses were considerable, and he would face a fortified Army of the Ohio yet again. Hood's defeat in the subsequent battle of Nashville shrunk the Army of Tennessee to less than ten thousand men and effectively neutralized the army for the remainder of the Civil War. Intended for the Command Decisions in America's Civil War series, this book examines the decisions that shaped the way the Battle of Franklin unfolded. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Bledsoe focuses on the critical decisions, those decisions that had a major impact on both Federal and Confederate forces in shaping the progression of the battle as we know it today"--

Let Us Die Like Men

Let Us Die Like Men PDF Author: William Lee White
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1611212979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The Army of Tennessee’s grueling and costly victory against a fortified Union encampment is expertly recounted in this engaging Civil War history. In the fall of 1864, as William T. Sherman led Federal forces on his March to the Sea, Confederate General John Bell Hood chose to strike northward into Tennessee. There, he hoped to cripple the Federal supply infrastructure and strike the Army of the Cumberland under George Thomas. By defeating Thomas’s army in detail, Hood hoped to force Sherman to come northward to the rescue. On November 30, in a small country town called Franklin, Hood caught part of Thomas’s army outside of its stronghold of Nashville. But what began as a promising opportunity soon turned grim. When subordinates voiced their concerns, Hood’s response was unflinching. “If we are to die,” said the Confederate officer, “let us die like men.” As wave after murderous wave crashed against the Federal fortifications, Hood’s Army of Tennessee shattered itself. It eventually found victory—but at a cost so bloody and so chilling, the name “Franklin” would ever after be synonymous with disaster. Historian William Lee White, whose devotion to the Army of Tennessee has taken him from the dense forests of northwest Georgia to the gates of Atlanta and back into Tennessee, now pens the penultimate chapter in the army’s storied history in Let Us Die Like Men.

Muskets and Applejack

Muskets and Applejack PDF Author: Mark Will-Weber
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621575594
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
"I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals." - President Abraham Lincoln, when confronted about General Ulysses Grant's excessive drinking. Blood, gunfire, and whiskey: they are the three things that defined Civil War battlefields. In this fascinating, booze-drenched history of the war that almost tore America apart, historian Mark Will-Weber (author of Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt) weaves together lighthearted stories of drunken generals and out-of-control soldiers with the gritty reality of battlefields where whiskey was the only medicine-and sometimes the only food. Muskets and Applejack paints a full, complex picture of the surprisingly large role alcohol played in the Civil War: how it helped heal physical and emotional wounds, form friendships, and cause strife. Interspersed between stories from the battlefield are authentic recipes of soldiers' favorite drinks-from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

The Great Partnership

The Great Partnership PDF Author: Christian B Keller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643131737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Why were Generals Lee and Jackson so successful in their partner- ship in trying to win the war for the South? What was it about their styles, friendship, even their faith, that cemented them together into a fighting machine that consistently won despite often overwhelming odds against them?The Great Partnership has the power to change how we think about Confederate strategic decision-making and the value of personal relationships among senior leaders responsible for organizational survival. Those relationships in the Confederate high command were particularly critical for victory, especially the one that existed between the two great Army of Northern Virginia generals.It has been over two decades since any author attempted a joint study of the two generals. At the very least, the book will inspire a very lively debate among the thousands of students of Civil War his- tory. At best, it will significantly revise how we evaluate Confederate strategy during the height the war and our understanding of why, in the end, the South lost.

Slaughter at the Chapel

Slaughter at the Chapel PDF Author: Gary Ecelbarger
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806156473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The Battle of Ezra Church was one of the deadliest engagements in the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War and continues to be one of the least understood. Both official and unofficial reports failed to illuminate the true bloodshed of the conflict: one of every three engaged Confederates was killed or wounded, including four generals. Nor do those reports acknowledge the flaws—let alone the ultimate failure—of Confederate commander John Bell Hood’s plan to thwart Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s southward advance. In an account that refutes and improves upon all other interpretations of the Battle of Ezra Church, noted battle historian Gary Ecelbarger consults extensive records, reports, and personal accounts to deliver a nuanced hour-by-hour overview of how the battle actually unfolded. His narrative fills in significant facts and facets of the battle that have long gone unexamined, correcting numerous conclusions that historians have reached about key officers’ intentions and actions before, during, and after this critical contest. Eleven troop movement maps by leading Civil War cartographer Hal Jespersen complement Ecelbarger’s analysis, detailing terrain and battle maneuvers to give the reader an on-the-ground perspective of the conflict. With new revelations based on solid primary-source documentation, Slaughter at the Chapel is the most comprehensive treatment of the Battle of Ezra Church yet written, as powerful in its implications as it is compelling in its moment-to-moment details.