Civil War America

"Was Robert E. Lee a gifted soldier whose only weaknesses lay in the depth of his loyalty to his troops, affection for his lieutenants, and dedication to the cause of the Confederacy? Or was he an ineffective leader and poor tactician whose reputation was drastically inflated by early biographers and Lost Cause apologists? These divergent characterizations represent the poles between which scholarly opinion on Lee has swung over time. Here, renowned Civil War historian Gary Gallagher proffers his own refined thinking on the figure who has loomed so large in our understanding of America's great national crisis. In eight essays, Gallagher explores the relationship between Lee's operations and Confederate morale, the quality and nature of Lee's generalship, and the question of how best to handle Lee's legacy in light of the many distortions that grew out of Lost Cause historiography.". "Relying on contemporary evidence, rather than on hindsight, Gallagher draws on letters, diaries, newspapers, and other wartime sources to capture a fuller sense of how Lee was viewed during and immediately after the war and underscore the remarkable faith that soldiers and citizens maintained in Lee's leadership even after his army's fortunes had begun to erode. He also engages various dimensions of the Lee myth - not just from the perspective of revisionist historians who have attacked what they consider a hagiographic literature, but also with an eye toward admirers who have insisted that their hero's faults as a general represented exaggerations of his personal virtues."--BOOK JACKET.

"Best known as the hero of Little Round Top at Gettysburg and the commanding officer of the troops who accepted the Confederates' surrender at Appomattox, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914) has become one of the most famous and most studied figures of Civil War history. After the war, he went on to serve as governor of Maine and president of Bowdoin College. The first collection of his postwar letters, this book offers an important resource for understanding Chamberlain's later years and his place in chronicling the war." "The letters included here reveal Chamberlain's perspective on military events at Gettysburg, Five Forks, and Appomattox, and on the planning of ceremonies to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Gettysburg. As Jeremiah Goulka points out in his introduction, the letters also shed light on Chamberlain's views on politics, race relations, and education, and they expose some of the personal difficulties he faced late in life. On a broader scale, Chamberlain's correspondence contributes to a better understanding of the influence of Civil War veterans on American life and the impact of the war on veterans themselves. It also says much about state and national politics (including the politics of pensions), family roles and relationships, and ideas of masculinity in Victorian America."--BOOK JACKET.

xxiv, 265 pages : 25 cm

While fighting his way toward Atlanta, William T. Sherman encountered his biggest roadblock at Kennesaw Mountain, where Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee held a heavily fortified position. The opposing armies confronted each other from June 19 to July 3, 1864. Hess explains how this battle, with its combination of maneuver and combat, severely tried the patience and endurance of the common soldier and why Johnston's strategy might have been the Confederates' best chance to halt the Federal drive toward Atlanta.

"The Pettigrew-Kirkland-MacRae Brigade was one of North Carolina's best-known and most successful units during the Civil War. Formed in the summer of 1862, the brigade spent many months protecting supply lines in its home state before it was thrust into its first major combat at Gettysburg. There, James Johnston Pettigrew's men pushed back the Union's famed Iron Brigade in vicious fighting on July 1 and played a key role in Pickett's Charge on July 3, in the process earning a reputation as one of the hardest-fighting units in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.". "Lee's Tar Heels tells the story of the men who made up the Pettigrew-Kirkland-MacRae Brigade, which included the 11th, 26th, 44th, and 52nd North Carolina Regiments. Earl Hess chronicles the unit's formation and growth under Pettigrew and its subsequent exploits under William W. Kirkland and William MacRae. Beyond recounting the brigade's military engagements, Hess draws on letters, diaries, memoirs, and service records to explore the camp life, medical care, social backgrounds, and political attitudes of these gallant Tar Heels. He also addresses the continuing debate between North Carolinians and Virginians over responsibility for the failure of Pickett's Charge."--BOOK JACKET.

Brown emphasizes the careful planning by Robert E. Lee, as he sought to move people, equipment, and more than fifty-seven miles of wagons and ambulances back to Virginia after the Gettysburg battle. He credits Lee's deliberate pace, skillful use of hostile and challenging terrain, and constant positioning behind defenses.

The first major modern edition of General William T. Sherman's wartime correspondence, this volume features more than 400 letters, both personal and official, written between the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the day Sherman bade farewell to his troops in 1865. Together, they trace Sherman's rise from obscurity to become one of the Union's most famous and effective warriors. Arranged chronologically and grouped into chapters that correspond to significant phases in Sherman's life, these letters - many of which have never before been published - reveal the general's thoughts on politics, military operations, slavery and emancipation, the South, and daily life in the Union army, as well as his reactions to such important figures as General Ulysses S. Grant and President Lincoln. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of events and includes annotations that help clarify references in the letters themselves.

"Reconstruction policy after the Civil War, observes Mark Wahlgren Summers, was shaped not simply by politics, principles, and prejudices. Also at work were fears - often unreasonable fears of renewed civil war and a widespread sense that four years of war had thrown the normal constitutional process so dangerously out of kilter that the republic itself remained in peril. In A Dangerous Stir, Summers illuminates the ways in which these fears and anxieties affected the politics of the immediate post-Civil War years."--Jacket.

"As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817-1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general's military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer"--Dust jacket flap.

Peter Cozzens here presents the first book-length study of the battles of Iuka and Corinth. Fought under brutal conditions and resulting in extremely heavy casualties relative to the numbers engaged - at Iuka, nearly one-third of those engaged fell - Iuka and Corinth proved to be two of the most vicious battles of the war. Drawing on extensive primary research, Cozzens details the tactical aspects of each battle, analyzing troop movements down to the regimental level. In addition to a vivid and detailed battle narrative, Cozzens provides compelling portraits of the campaign's key leaders: Generals Grant, Rosecrans, Van Dorn, and Price. He exposes the consequences of their clashing ambitions and antipathies. Finally, Cozzens analyzes the larger, strategic implications of the northern Mississippi campaign, exploring the repercussions of the Confederate defeats suffered at Iuka and Corinth.

"With this book, Hess sweeps away the accumulated myths about Pickett's Charge to provide the definitive history of the engagement. He explores why the assault took place, how it was organized, what mistakes were made in launching or repelling it, and what it really meant for the final outcome of the Civil War.". "Drawing on exhaustive research, especially in unpublished personal accounts, Hess creates a narrative of the attack from both Union and Confederate perspectives. He examines the history of the units involved, their state of readiness, how they maneuvered under fire, and what the men who marched in the ranks thought about their participation in the assault. Ultimately, Hess explains, such an approach reveals Pickett's Charge as both a case study in how soldiers deal with combat and a dramatic episode of heroism, failure, and fate on the battlefield."--BOOK JACKET.

On July 20, 1864, the Civil War struggle for Atlanta reached a pivotal moment. As William T. Sherman's Union forces came ever nearer the city, the defending Confederate Army of Tennessee replaced its commanding general, removing Joseph E. Johnston and elevating John Bell Hood. This decision stunned and demoralized Confederate troops just when Hood was compelled to take the offensive against the approaching Federals. Attacking northward from Atlanta's defenses, Hood's men struck George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland just after it crossed Peach Tree Creek on July 20. Initially taken by surprise, the Federals fought back with spirit and nullified all the advantages the Confederates first enjoyed. As a result, the Federals achieved a remarkable defensive victory. Offering new and definitive interpretations of the battle's place within the Atlanta campaign, Earl J. Hess describes how several Confederate regiments and brigades made a pretense of advancing but then stopped partway to the objective and took cover for the rest of the afternoon on July 20. Hess shows that morale played an unusually important role in determining the outcome at Peach Tree Creek - a soured mood among the Confederates and overwhelming confidence among the Federals spelled disaster for one side and victory for the other. -- from dust jacket.

Although he took command of the Army of the Potomac only three days before the first shots were fired at Gettysburg, Union general George G. Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg

"In this ... quantitative study, Joseph T. Glatthaar provides a comprehensive narrative and statistical analysis of many key aspects of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia ... While gathering research materials for [another project] Glatthaar compiled quantative data on the background and service of 600 randomly selected soldiers - 150 artillerists, 150 cavalrymen, and 300 infantrymen - affording him ... insight into the pre-war and wartime experience of Lee's troops ... While confirming much of what is believed about the army, Glatthaar's evidence [presented in this volume] challenges some conventional thinking in significant ways ... and provides a broader and fuller portrait of the men who served under General Lee"--Jacket.

The reconciliation of North and South following the Civil War depended as much on cultural imagination as on the politics of Reconstruction. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Nina Silber documents the transformation from hostile sectionalism to sentimental reunion rhetoric. Northern culture created a notion of reconciliation that romanticized and feminized southern society. In tourist accounts, novels, minstrel shows, and popular magazines, northerners contributed to a mythic and nostalgic picture of the South that served to counter their anxieties regarding the breakdown of class and gender roles in Gilded Age America. Indeed, for many Yankees, the ultimate symbol of the reunion process, and one that served to reinforce Victorian values as well as northern hegemony, was the marriage of a northern man and a southern woman. Southern men also were represented as affirming traditional gender roles. As northern men wrestled with their nation's increasingly global and aggressive foreign policy, the military virtues extolled in Confederate legend became more admired than reviled. By the 1890s, concludes Silber, northern whites had accepted not only a newly resplendent image of Dixie but also a sentimentalized view of postwar reunion.