Author: Jeffry D. Wert Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1416593357 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 402
Book Description
An “eloquent and judicious”* analysis of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, from one of leading Civil War historians—now in paperback. From the time Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 1, 1862, until the Battle of Gettysburg thirteen months later, the Confederate army compiled a record of military achievement almost unparalleled in our nation’s history. How it happened—the relative contributions of Lee, his top command, opposing Union generals, and of course the rebel army itself—is the subject of Civil War historian Jeffry D. Wert’s fascinating new history. Wert shows how the audacity and aggression that fueled Lee’s victories ultimately proved disastrous at Gettysburg. But, as Wert explains, Lee had little choice: outnumbered by an opponent with superior resources, he had to take the fight to the enemy in order to win. When an equally combative Union general—Ulysses S. Grant—took command of northern forces in 1864, Lee was defeated. A Glorious Army draws on the latest scholarship to provide fresh assessments of Lee; his top commanders Longstreet, Jackson, and Stuart; and a shrewd battle strategy that still offers lessons to military commanders today.
Author: Stuart McConnell Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807863300 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
The Grand Army of the Republic, the largest of all Union Army veterans' organizations, was the most powerful single-issue political lobby of the late nineteenth century, securing massive pensions for veterans and helping to elect five postwar presidents from its own membership. To its members, it was also a secret fraternal order, a source of local charity, a provider of entertainment in small municipalities, and a patriotic organization. Using GAR convention proceedings, newspapers, songs, rule books, and local post records, Stuart McConnell examines this influential veterans' association during the years of its greatest strength. Beginning with a close look at the men who joined the GAR in three localities -- Philadelphia; Brockton, Massachusetts; and Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin - McConnell goes on to examine the Union veterans' attitudes towards their former Confederate enemies and toward a whole range of noncombatants whom the verterans called "civilians": stay-at-home townsfolk, Mugwump penion reformers, freedmen, women, and their own sons and daughters. In the GAR, McConnell sees a group of veterans trying to cope with questions concerning the extent of society's obligation to the poor and injured, the place of war memories in peacetime, and the meaning of the "nation" and the individual's relation to it. McConnell aruges that, by the 1890s, the GAR was clinging to a preservationist version of American nationalism that many white, middle-class Northerners found congenial in the face of the social upheavals of that decade. In effect, he concludes, the nineteenth-century career of the GAR is a study in the microcosm of a nation trying to hold fast to an older image of itself in the face of massive social change.
Author: Darrell Collins Publisher: Savas Beatie ISBN: 1611210097 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 505
Book Description
FINALIST FOR BIOGRAPHY, 2008, ARMY HISTORICAL FOUNDATION DISTINGUISHED BOOK AWARD WINNER, 2009, THE DOUGLAS SOUTHALL FREEMAN AWARD FOR BEST BOOK ON SOUTHERN HISTORY Jedediah Hotchkiss, Stonewall Jackson’s renowned mapmaker, expressed the feelings of many contemporaries when he declared that Robert Rodes was the best division commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. This well-deserved accolade is all the more remarkable considering that Rodes, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a prewar railroad engineer, was one of a very few officers in Lee’s army to rise so high without the benefit of a West Point education. Major General Robert E. Rodes of the Army of Northern Virginia: A Biography, is the first deeply researched scholarly biography on this remarkable Confederate officer. From First Manassas in 1861 to Third Winchester in 1864, Rodes served in all the great battles and campaigns of the legendary Army of Northern Virginia. He quickly earned a reputation as a courageous and inspiring leader who delivered hard-hitting attacks and rock steady defensive efforts. His greatest moment came at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863, when he spearheaded Stonewall Jackson’s famous flank attack that crushed the left wing of General Hooker’s Army of the Potomac. Rodes began the conflict with a deep yearning for recognition and glory, coupled with an indifferent attitude toward religion and salvation. When he was killed at the height of his glorious career at Third Winchester on September 19, 1864, a trove of prayer books and testaments were found on his corpse. Based upon exhaustive new research, Darrell Collins’s new biography breathes life into a heretofore largely overlooked Southern soldier. Although Rodes’ widow consigned his personal papers to the flames after the war, Collins has uncovered a substantial amount of firsthand information to complete this compelling portrait of one of Robert E. Lee’s most dependable field generals. Darrell L. Collins is the author of several books on the Civil War, including General William Averell’s Salem Raid: Breaking the Knoxville Supply Line (1999) and Jackson’s Valley Campaign: The Battles of Cross Keys and Port Republic (The Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders Series, 1993). A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Darrell and his wife Judith recently relocated to Conifer, Colorado.
Author: Gordon Corrigan Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1605986054 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
The glory and tragedy of the Hundred Years War is revealed in a new historical narrative, bringing Henry V, the Black Prince, and Joan of Arc to fresh and vivid life. In this captivating new history of a conflict that raged for over a century, Gordon Corrigan reveals the horrors of battle and the machinations of power that have shaped a millennium of Anglo-French relations. The Hundred Years War was fought between 1337 and 1453 over English claims to both the throne of France by right of inheritance and large parts of the country that had been at one time Norman or, later, English. The fighting ebbed and flowed, but despite their superior tactics and great victories at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, the English could never hope to secure their claims in perpetuity: France was wealthier and far more populous, and while the English won the battles, they could not hope to hold forever the lands they conquered. Military historian Gordon Corrigan's gripping narrative of these epochal events is combative and refreshingly alive, and the great battles and personalities of the period—Edward III, The Black Prince, Henry V, and Joan of Arc among them—receive the full attention and reassessment they deserve.
Author: Jeffry D. Wert Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0743271920 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 574
Book Description
The Sword of Lincoln is the first authoritative, accessible, single-volume history of the Army of the Potomac from a renowned Civil War historian. From Bull Run to Gettysburg to Appomattox, the Army of the Potomac repeatedly fought -- and eventually defeated -- Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. Jeffry D. Wert, one of our finest Civil War historians, brings to life the battles, the generals, and the common soldiers who fought for the Union and ultimately prevailed. The Army of the Potomac endured a string of losses under a succession of flawed commanders -- McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker -- until at Gettysburg it won a decisive battle under a new commander, General George Meade. Within a year the Army of the Potomac would come under the overall leadership of the Union's new general-in-chief, Ulysses S. Grant. Under Grant the army would finally trap and defeat Lee and his forces. Wert's history draws on letters and diaries, some previously unpublished, to show us what army life was like. Throughout the book Wert shows how Lincoln carefully monitored the operations of the Army of the Potomac, learning as the war progressed, until he found in Grant the commander he'd long sought. Perceptive in its analysis and compellingly written, The Sword of Lincoln is the finest modern account of the army that was central to the Civil War.
Author: Donald R. Hickey Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421417057 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 167
Book Description
The story of the battle that saved New Orleans, made Andrew Jackson a hero for the ages, and shaped the American public memory of the war. Whether or not the United States “won” the war of 1812, two engagements that occurred toward the end of the conflict had an enormous influence on the development of American identity: the successful defenses of the cities of Baltimore and New Orleans. Both engagements bolstered national confidence and spoke to the élan of citizen soldiers and their militia officers. The Battle of New Orleans—perhaps because it punctuated the war, lent itself to frontier mythology, and involved the larger-than-life figure of Andrew Jackson—became especially important in popular memory. In Glorious Victory, leading War of 1812 scholar Donald R. Hickey recounts the New Orleans campaign and Jackson’s key role in the battle. Drawing on a lifetime of research, Hickey tells the story of America’s “forgotten conflict.” He explains why the fragile young republic chose to challenge Great Britain, then a global power with a formidable navy. He also recounts the early campaigns of the war—William Hull’s ignominious surrender at Detroit in 1812; Oliver H. Perry’s remarkable victory on Lake Erie; and the demoralizing British raids in the Chesapeake that culminated in the burning of Washington. Tracing Jackson’s emergence as a leader in Tennessee and his extraordinary success as a military commander in the field, Hickey finds in Jackson a bundle of contradictions: an enemy of privilege who belonged to Tennessee’s ruling elite, a slaveholder who welcomed free blacks into his army, an Indian-hater who adopted a native orphan, and a general who lectured his superiors and sometimes ignored their orders while simultaneously demanding unquestioning obedience from his men. Aimed at students and the general public, Glorious Victory will reward readers with a clear understanding of Andrew Jackson’s role in the War of 1812 and his iconic place in the postwar era.
Author: Byron Farwell Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393305333 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
Farwell provides profiles of eight Victorian military officers--men who helped create the British Empire and whose lives reflect the age. Photos.
Author: Holly A. Mayer Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN: 9781570033391 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
" Belonging to the Army reveals the identity and importance of the civilians now referred to as camp followers, whom Holly A. Mayer calls the forgotten revolutionaries of the War for American Independence. These merchants, contractors, family members, servants, government officers, and military employees provided necessary supplies, services, and emotional support to the troops of the Continental Army. Mayer describes their activities and demonstrates how they made encampments livable communities and played a fundamental role in the survival and ultimate success of the Continental Army. She also considers how the army wanted to be rid of the followers but were unsuccessful because of the civilians' essential support functions and determination to make camps into communities. Instead the civilians' assimilation gave an expansive meaning to the term "belonging to the army
Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker Publisher: Casemate ISBN: 1612001793 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
On the third day of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee launched a magnificent attack. For pure pageantry it was unsurpassed, and it also marked the centerpiece of the war, both time-wise and in terms of how the conflict had turned a cornerÑfrom persistent Confederate hopes to impending Rebel despair. But PickettÕs Charge was crushed by the Union defenders that day, having never had a chance in the first place. The ConfederacyÕs real Òhigh tideÓ at Gettysburg had come the afternoon before, during the swirling conflagration when LongstreetÕs corps first entered the battle, when the Federals just barely held on. The foremost Rebel spearhead on that second day of the battle was BarksdaleÕs Mississippi brigade, which launched what one (Union) observer called the "grandest charge that was ever seen by mortal man.Ó BarksdaleÕs brigade was already renowned in the Army of Northern Virginia for its stand-alone fights at Fredericksburg. On the second day of Gettysburg it was just champing at the bit to go in. The Federal left was not as vulnerable as Lee had envisioned, but had cooperated with Rebel wishes by extending its Third Corps into a salient. HoodÕs crack division was launched first, seizing DevilÕs Den, climbing Little Round Top, and hammering in the wheatfield. Then Longstreet began to launch McLawsÕ division, and finally gave Barksdale the go-ahead. The Mississippians, with their white-haired commander on horseback at their head, utterly crushed the peach orchard salient and continued marauding up to Cemetery Ridge. Hancock, Meade, and other Union generals desperately struggled to find units to stem the Rebel tide. One of BarksdaleÕs regiments, the 21st Mississippi, veered off from the brigade in the chaos, rampaging across the field, overrunning Union battery after battery. The collapsing Federals had to gather men from four different corps to try to stem the onslaught. Barksdale himself was killed at the apex of his advance. Darkness, as well as Confederate exhaustion, finally ended the dayÕs fight as the shaken, depleted Federal units on their heights took stock. They had barely held on against the full ferocity of the Rebels, on a day that decided the fate of the nation. BarksdaleÕs Charge describes the exact moment when the Confederacy reached its zenith, and the soldiers of the Northern states just barely succeeded in retaining their perfect Union. Phillip Thomas Tucker, Ph.D. Has authored or edited over 20 books on various aspects of the American experience, especially in the fields of Civil War, Irish, African-American, Revolutionary, and Southern history. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, he has earned three degrees in American history, including a Ph.D. From St. Louis University in 1990. For over two decades, Dr. Tucker served as a military historian for the U.S. Air Force. He currently lives in the vicinity of Washington, DC.
Author: Jeffry D. Wert
Author: Stuart McConnell
Author: Darrell Collins
Author: Gordon Corrigan
Author: Jeffry D. Wert
Author: Donald R. Hickey
Author: Byron Farwell
Author: John Childs
Author: Holly A. Mayer
Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker