Author: Robert M. Utley Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 0806160926 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
Taking a novel approach to the military history of the post–Civil War West, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley examines the careers of seven military leaders who served as major generals for the Union in the Civil War, then as brigadier generals in command of the U.S. Army’s western departments. By examining both periods in their careers, Utley makes a unique contribution in delineating these commanders’ strengths and weaknesses. While some of the book’s subjects—notably Generals George Crook and Nelson A. Miles—are well known, most are no longer widely remembered. Yet their actions were critical in the expansion of federal control in the West. The commanders effected the final subjugation of American Indian tribal groups, exercising direct oversight of troops in the field as they fought the wars that would bring Indians under military and government control. After introducing readers to postwar army doctrine, organization, and administration, Utley takes each general in turn, describing his background, personality, eccentricities, and command style and presenting the rudiments of the campaigns he prosecuted. Crook embodied the ideal field general, personally leading his troops in their operations, though with varying success. Christopher C. Augur and John Pope, in contrast, preferred to command from their desks in department headquarters, an approach that led both of them to victory on the battlefield. And Miles, while perhaps the frontier army’s most detestable officer, was also its most successful in the field. Rounding out the book with an objective comparison of all eight generals’ performance records, Utley offers keen insights into their influence on the U.S. military as an institution and on the development of the American West.
Author: Elizabeth R. Varon Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199347921 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
Winner, Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction Winner, Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies, New York Military Affairs Symposium Winner of the Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize of the Austin Civil War Round Table Finalist, Jefferson Davis Award of the Museum of the Confederacy Best Books of 2014, Civil War Monitor 6 Civil War Books to Read Now, Diane Rehm Show, NPR Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the popular mind -- it was, many believe, a moment that transcended politics, a moment of healing, a moment of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon reveals in this vividly narrated history, this rosy image conceals a seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of nation would emerge from war. The combatants in that debate included the iconic Lee and Grant, but they also included a cast of characters previously overlooked, who brought their own understanding of the war's causes, consequences, and meaning. In Appomattox, Varon deftly captures the events swirling around that well remembered-but not well understood-moment when the Civil War ended. She expertly depicts the final battles in Virginia, when Grant's troops surrounded Lee's half-starved army, the meeting of the generals at the McLean House, and the shocked reaction as news of the surrender spread like an electric charge throughout the nation. But as Varon shows, the ink had hardly dried before both sides launched a bitter debate over the meaning of the war and the nation's future. For Grant, and for most in the North, the Union victory was one of right over wrong, a vindication of free society; for many African Americans, the surrender marked the dawn of freedom itself. Lee, in contrast, believed that the Union victory was one of might over right: the vast impersonal Northern war machine had worn down a valorous and unbowed South. Lee was committed to peace, but committed, too, to the restoration of the South's political power within the Union and the perpetuation of white supremacy. These two competing visions of the war's end paved the way not only for Southern resistance to reconstruction but also our ongoing debates on the Civil War, 150 years later. Did America's best days lie in the past or in the future? For Lee, it was the past, the era of the founding generation. For Grant, it was the future, represented by Northern moral and material progress. They held, in the end, two opposite views of the direction of the country-and of the meaning of the war that had changed that country forever.
Author: Steven J. Ramold Publisher: University of North Texas Press ISBN: 1574418025 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 505
Book Description
Despite popular belief, the Civil War did not end when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, in April 1865. The Confederacy still had tens of thousands of soldiers under arms, in three main field armies and countless smaller commands scattered throughout the South. Although pressed by Union forces at varying degrees, all of the remaining Confederate armies were capable of continuing the war if they chose to do so. But they did not, even when their political leaders ordered them to continue the fight. Convinced that most civilians no longer wanted to continue the war, the senior Confederate military leadership, over the course of several weeks, surrendered their armies under different circumstances. Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered his army in North Carolina only after contentious negotiations with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Gen. Richard Taylor ended the fighting in Alabama in the face of two massive Union incursions into the state rather than try to consolidate with other Confederate armies. Personal rivalry also played a part in his practical considerations to surrender. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith had the decision to surrender taken out of his hands—disastrous economic conditions in his Trans-Mississippi Department had eroded morale to such an extent that his soldiers demobilized themselves, leaving Kirby Smith a general without an army. The end of the Confederacy was a messy and complicated affair, a far cry from the tidy closure associated with the events at Appomattox.
Author: MacKinlay Kantor Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company ISBN: 9781402751240 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
From a Pulitzer Prize winner comes the story of an unforgettable moment in American history: the historic meeting between General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant that ended the Civil War. MacKinlay Kantor captures all the emotions and the details of those few days: the aristocratic Lee’s feeling of resignation; Grant’s crippling headaches; and Lee’s request--which Grant generously allowed--to permit his soldiers to keep their horses so they could plant crops for food.
Author: Michael E. Haskew Publisher: Zenith Press ISBN: 0760348170 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
They endured hardship and deprivation as they fought for their home and ideals - relive the final days of the Army of Northern Virginia. Appomattox: The Last Days of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia encompasses the defense and evacuation of the Confederate capital of Richmond, the horrific combat in the trenches of Petersburg, General Robert E. Lee's withdrawal toward the Carolinas in his forlorn hope of a rendezvous with General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee to carry on the fight, the relentless pursuit of Union forces, and the ultimate realization that further resistance against overwhelming odds was futile. The Army of Northern Virginia was the fighting soul of the Confederacy in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. From its inception, it fought against overwhelming odds. Union forces might have occupied territory, but as long as the Confederate army was active in the field, the rebellion was alive. Through four years of bitter conflict, the Army of Northern Virginia and its longtime commander, General Robert E. Lee, became the stuff of legend. By April 1865, its days were numbered. There are many stories of heroism and sacrifice, both Union and Confederate, during the Civil War, and Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia wrote their own epic chapter. Author Michael E. Haskew, a researcher, writer, and editor of many military history subjects for over twenty years, puts the hardship and deprivation suffered by this Army's soldiers while defending their home and ideals into proper perspective.
Author: Stephen R. Taaffe Publisher: Modern War Studies ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
"Stephen Taaffe takes a close look at this command cadre, examining who was appointed to these positions, why they were appointed, and why so many of them ultimately failed to fulfill their responsibilities. He demonstrates that ambitious officers such as Gouverneur Warren, John Reynolds, and Winfield Scott Hancock employed all the weapons at their disposal, from personal connections to exaggerated accounts of prowess in combat, to claw their way into these important posts." "Once there, however, as Taaffe reveals, many of these officers failed to navigate the tricky and ever-changing political currents that swirled around the Army of the Potomac. As a result, only three of them managed to retain their commands for more than a year, and their machinations caused considerable turmoil in the army's high command structure."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: William Garrett Piston Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 082034625X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 271
Book Description
In the South, one can find any number of bronze monuments to the Confederacy featuring heroic images of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and many lesser commanders. But while the tarnish on such statues has done nothing to color the reputation of those great leaders, there remains one Confederate commander whose tarnished image has nothing to do with bronze monuments. Nowhere in the South does a memorial stand to Lee's intimate friend and second-in-command James Longstreet. In Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant, William Garrett Piston examines the life of James Longstreet and explains how a man so revered during the course of the war could fall from grace so swiftly and completely. Unlike other generals in gray whose deeds are familiar to southerners and northerners alike, Longstreet has the image not of a hero but of an incompetent who lost the Battle of Gettysburg and, by extension, the war itself. Piston's reappraisal of the general's military record establishes Longstreet as an energetic corps commander with an unsurpassed ability to direct troops in combat, as a trustworthy subordinate willing to place the war effort above personal ambition. He made mistakes, but Piston shows that he did not commit the grave errors at Gettysburg and elsewhere of which he was so often accused after the war. In discussing Longstreet's postwar fate, Piston analyzes the literature and public events of the time to show how the southern people, in reaction to defeat, evolved an image of themselves which bore little resemblance to reality. As a product of the Georgia backwoods, Longstreet failed to meet the popular cavalier image embodied by Lee, Stuart, and other Confederate heroes. When he joined the Republican party during Reconstruction, Longstreet forfeited his wartime reputation and quickly became a convenient target for those anxious to explain how a "superior people" could have lost the war. His new role as the villain of the Lost Cause was solidified by his own postwar writings. Embittered by years of social ostracism resulting from his Republican affiliation, resentful of the orchestrated deification of Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet exaggerated his own accomplishments and displayed a vanity that further alienated an already offended southern populace. Beneath the layers of invective and vilification remains a general whose military record has been badly maligned. Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant explains how this reputation developed—how James Longstreet became, in the years after Appomattox, the scapegoat for the South's defeat, a Judas for the new religion of the Lost Cause.
Author: Richard L. Kiper Publisher: Kent State University Press ISBN: 9780873386364 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 420
Book Description
A sympathetic assessment of Major General John Alexander McClernand, a highly controversial individual who served his country as soldier and statesman. It sheds light on the Union command systems and the politics of war, as well as the personalities and relationships among senior officers.
Author: Brooks D. Simpson Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469617463 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Historians have traditionally drawn distinctions between Ulysses S. Grant's military and political careers. In Let Us Have Peace, Brooks Simpson questions such distinctions and offers a new understanding of this often enigmatic leader. He argues that during the 1860s Grant was both soldier and politician, for military and civil policy were inevitably intertwined during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. According to Simpson, Grant instinctively understood that war was 'politics by other means.' Moreover, he realized that civil wars presented special challenges: reconciliation, not conquest, was the Union's ultimate goal. And in peace, Grant sought to secure what had been won in war, stepping in to assume a more active role in policymaking when the intransigence of white Southerners and the obstructionist behavior of President Andrew Johnson threatened to spoil the fruits of Northern victory.
Author: Robert M. Utley
Author: Elizabeth R. Varon
Author: Steven J. Ramold
Author: MacKinlay Kantor
Author: Michael E. Haskew
Author: Stephen R. Taaffe
Author: William Garrett Piston
Author: Richard L. Kiper
Author: 
Author: Brooks D. Simpson