Download or read book General John Gordon at the Wilderness written by John Gordon and published by . This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Brown Gordon (1832-1904) was one of the South's biggest firebrands, and he fought like it, displaying personal courage and toughness unmatched by most of the South's fighters. The result was multiple wounds at places like the Seven Days Battles, and most notably at Antietam, where he was hit 4 times and continued to fight until a bullet slammed him in the face, passing through his cheek and out his jaw. Gordon would have likely drowned in his own blood if it had not drained out through a bullet hole in his cap. Lee described Gordon to Jefferson Davis as "characterized by splendid audacity." The same qualities that made Gordon a ferocious leader throughout the war also made him an ardent opponent of the Reconstruction and a feisty writer. Gordon had been in the thick of almost every famous battle in the Eastern theater, making him a great source. Gordon's memoirs, "Reminiscences of the Civil War," also tell soldierly anecdotes, the most famous of them being the way in which he aided Union division commander Francis Barlow during Day 1 at Gettysburg. Gordon's memoirs, published near the end of his life almost 40 years after the war, also demonstrate the mystique of the Lost Cause, of which Gordon was one of its strongest proponents. His memoirs reflect that, leading historians to compare him to General Jubal Early. Like most memoirs, Gordon's was self-serving, and historians dispute some of his claims (such as being promoted to Lieutenant General, the highest military title in the Confederate armies). Nevertheless, "Reminiscences" is a spellbinding account of the Civil War told by one of its toughest fighers.
Download or read book Reminiscences of the Civil War written by John Brown Gordon and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1903 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON'S last work was the publishing of his "Reminiscences of the Civil War." This volume, written in his vigorous style and broad, patriotic spirit, has been most favorably received and read all over the country. Since his death this memorial edition is brought out; and it is appropriate that an additional introduction should accompany it, somewhat in the shape of a biographical sketch. General John Brown Gordon was an all-round great man--a valiant and distinguished soldier, an eminent statesman, a great orator, an author of merit, and a public-spirited and useful citizen. He was born in Upson County, Georgia, February 6, 1832. His father was the Rev. Zachary Herndon Gordon. The family was of Scotch extraction, and its members fought in the Revolutionary War. He received his education at the university of his native State, and by profession was a lawyer. At the breaking out of the war, in 1861, he enlisted as a private soldier, and was elected captain of his company. His career was perhaps as brilliant as that of any officer in the Confederate army. In rapid succession he filled every grade--that of Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier-General, Major-General, and, near the end, was assigned to duty as Lieutenant-General (by authority of the Secretary of War), and while he never received the commission in regular form, he commanded, at the surrender at Appomattox, one half of the Army of Northern Virginia, under Robert E. Lee. At the close of the war he had earned the reputation of being perhaps the most conspicuous and personally valiant officer surviving, and the one generally regarded as most promising and competent for increased rank and larger command. His imposing and magnificent soldierly bearing, coupled with his splendid ringing voice and far-reaching oratory, made him the "White-plumed Knight of our Southland" and the "Chevalier Bayard of the Confederate Army." He had the God-given talent of getting in front of his troops and, in a few magnetic appeals, inspiring them almost to madness, and being able to lead them into the jaws of death. This was notably done at Fredericksburg, and again on the 12th of May, at the battle of Spottsylvania Court House. He greatly distinguished himself on many bloody fields. I mention now, as most prominent, the battles of Seven Pines, Sharpsburg or Antietam, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, Cedar Creek, Petersburg, and Appomattox. At Sharpsburg he was wounded five times, but would not leave his troops till the last shot laid him helpless and insensible on the field. A scholarly professor of history in one of our Southern universities recently stated that in his study of the great war on both sides he had found but one prominent general who, when he was in command, or when he led a charge, had never been defeated or repulsed, and that general was John B. Gordon.
Download or read book The Battle of the Wilderness May 5 6 1864 written by Gordon C. Rhea and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2004-09 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fought in a tangled forest fringing the south bank of the Rapidan River, the Battle of the Wilderness marked the initial engagement in the climactic months of the Civil War in Virginia, and the first encounter between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. In an exciting narrative, Gordon C. Rhea provides the consummate recounting of that conflict of May 5 and 6, 1864, which ended with high casualties on both sides but no clear victor. With its balanced analysis of events and people, command structures and strategies, The Battle of the Wilderness is operational history as it should be written.
Download or read book In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee written by Gordon C. Rhea and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early May 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant initiated a drive through central Virginia to crush Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. For forty days, the armies fought a grinding campaign from the Rapidan River to the James River that helped decide the course of the Civil War. Several of the war's bloodiest engagements occurred in this brief period: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, Totopotomoy Creek, Bethesda Church, and Cold Harbor. Pitting Grant and Lee against one another for the first time in the war, the Overland Campaign, as this series of battles and maneuvers came to be called, represents military history at its most intense. In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee, a unique blend of narrative and photographic journalism from Gordon C. Rhea, the foremost authority on the Overland Campaign, and Chris E. Heisey, a leading photographer of Civil War battlefields, provides a stunning, stirring account of this deadly game of wits and will between the Civil War's foremost military commanders. Here Grant fought and maneuvered to flank Lee out of his heavily fortified earthworks. And here Lee demonstrated his genius as a defensive commander, countering Grant's every move. Adding to the melee were cavalry brawls among the likes of Philip H. Sheridan, George A. Custer, James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, and Wade Hampton. Forty days of combat produced horrific casualties, some 55,000 on the Union side and 35,000 on the Confederate. By the time Grant crossed the James and began the Siege of Petersburg, marking an end to this maneuver, both armies had sustained significant losses that dramatically reduced their numbers. Rhea provides a rich, fast-paced narrative, movingly illustrated by more than sixty powerful color images from Heisey, who captures the many moods of these hallowed battlegrounds as they appear today. Heisey made scores of visits to the areas where Grant and Lee clashed, giving special attention to lesser-known sites on byways and private property. He captures some of central Virginia's most stunning landscapes, reminding us that though battlefields conjure visions of violence, death, and sorrow, they can also be places of beauty and contemplation. Accompanying the modern pictures are more than twenty contemporary photographs taken during the campaign or shortly afterwards, some of them never before published. At once an engaging military history and a vivid pictorial journey, In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee offers a fresh vision of some of the country's most significant historic sites.
Download or read book The Maps of the Wilderness written by Bradley Gottfried and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maps of the Wilderness: An Atlas of the Wilderness Campaign, May 2-7, 1864 continues Bradley M. Gottfried’s efforts to study and illustrate the major campaigns of the Civil War’s Eastern Theater. This is his fifth book in the ongoing Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series. The previous four were The Maps of Gettysburg (2007), The Maps of First Bull Run (2009), The Maps of Antietam (2012), and The Maps of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run Campaigns (2013). This latest magisterial work breaks down the entire campaign (and all related operational maneuvers) into 24 map sets or “action-sections” enriched with 120 original full-page color maps. These spectacular cartographic creations bore down to the regimental and battery level. The Maps of the Wilderness includes an assessment of the winter of 1863-1864, the planning for the campaign, the crossing of the Rapidan River, and two days of bloody combat and the day of watchful stalemate thereafter. At least one—and as many as eight—maps accompany each “action-section.” Opposite each map is a full facing page of detailed footnoted text describing the units, personalities, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) depicted on the accompanying map, all of which make the story of the first large-scale combat of 1864 come alive. Each cartographic snapshot also serves to unlock everything ever written on the subject. This detailed coverage also includes an order of battle, interview with the author, bibliography, and an index. This original presentation leads readers on a journey through the epic battle that would prove to be the opening salvo in a prolonged fight that would not end until the Confederates surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865. The Wilderness Campaign has two unique characteristics. First, although he did not command the Army of the Potomac, the battle was Ulysses S. Grant’s first against General Robert E. Lee. Second, the Wilderness fighting—prolonged, bloody, and inconclusive—is widely viewed as the most confusing action of the entire war. The dense thickets and deep smoke obscured much of what occurred during the two days of combat. Gottfried’s book cuts through the confusion to deliver a clear account of the horrendous struggle. Perfect for the easy chair or for walking hallowed ground, The Maps of the Wilderness is a seminal work that, like his earlier studies, belongs on the bookshelf of every serious and casual student of the Civil War, or in the hands of an avid enthusiast out walking the Hallowed Ground.
Download or read book Portraits of Lieutenant General John B Gordon written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book For Virginia written by Mark R. Brewer and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 1063 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The about the book information is not available at this time
Download or read book Wilderness Campaign written by John Cannan and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 1993-03-21 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of General Grant's offensive against General Lee at Richmond.
Download or read book Text v 2 Maps written by Matthew Forney Steele and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On to Petersburg written by Gordon C. Rhea and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2017-09-06 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With On to Petersburg, Gordon C. Rhea completes his much-lauded history of the Overland Campaign, a series of Civil War battles fought between Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in southeastern Virginia in the spring of 1864. Having previously covered the campaign in his magisterial volumes on The Battle of the Wilderness, The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, To the North Anna River, and Cold Harbor, Rhea ends this series with a comprehensive account of the last twelve days of the campaign, which concluded with the beginning of the siege of Petersburg. On to Petersburg follows the Union army’s movement to the James River, the military response from the Confederates, and the initial assault on Petersburg, which Rhea suggests marked the true end of the Overland Campaign. Beginning his account in the immediate aftermath of Grant’s three-day attack on Confederate troops at Cold Harbor, Rhea argues that the Union general’s primary goal was not—as often supposed—to take Richmond, but rather to destroy Lee’s army by closing off its retreat routes and disrupting its supply chains. While Grant struggled at times to communicate strategic objectives to his subordinates and to adapt his army to a faster-paced, more flexible style of warfare, Rhea suggests that the general successfully shifted the military landscape in the Union’s favor. On the rebel side, Lee and his staff predicted rightly that Grant would attempt to cross the James River and lay siege to the Army of Northern Virginia while simultaneously targeting Confederate supply lines. Rhea examines how Lee, facing a better-provisioned army whose troops outnumbered Lee’s two to one, consistently fought the Union army to an impasse, employing risky, innovative field tactics to counter Grant’s forces. Like the four volumes that preceded it, On to Petersburg represents decades of research and scholarship and will stand as the most authoritative history of the final battles in the campaign.
Download or read book Reminiscences of the Civil War written by John Brown Gordon and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For many years I have been urged to place on record my reminiscences of the war between the States. In undertaking the task now, it is not my purpose to attempt a comprehensive description of that great struggle, nor an elaborate analysis of the momentous interests and issues involved. The time may not have arrived for a full and fair history of that most interesting period in the Republic's life. The man capable of writing it with entire justice to both sides is perhaps yet unborn. He may appear, however, at a future day, fully equipped for the great work. If endowed with the requisite breadth and clearness of view, with inflexible mental integrity and absolute freedom from all bias, he will produce the most instructive and thrilling record in the world's deathless annals, and cannot fail to make a contribution of measureless value to the American people and to the cause of free government throughout the world ... I have also recorded in this volume a large number of those characteristic and thrilling incidents which illustrate a unique and hitherto unwritten phase of the war, the story of which should not be lost, because it is luminous with the noblest lessons. Many of these incidents came under my own observation"--Introduction.
Download or read book Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History written by Samuel Gordon Heiskell and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Fire in the Wilderness written by John Reeves and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting account of the first bloody showdown between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—a battle that sealed the fate of the Confederacy and changed the course of American history. In the spring of 1864, President Lincoln feared that he might not be able to save the Union. The Army of the Potomac had performed poorly over the previous two years, and many Northerners were understandably critical of the war effort. Lincoln assumed he’d lose the November election, and he firmly believed a Democratic successor would seek peace immediately, spelling an end to the Union. A Fire in the Wilderness tells the story of that perilous time when the future of the United States depended on the Union Army’s success in a desolate forest roughly sixty-five miles from the nation’s capital. At the outset of the Battle of the Wilderness, General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia remained capable of defeating the Army of the Potomac. But two days of relentless fighting in dense Virginia woods, Robert E. Lee was never again able to launch offensive operations against Grant’s army. Lee, who faced tremendous difficulties replacing fallen soldiers, lost 11,125 men—or 17% of his entire force. On the opposing side, the Union suffered 17,666 casualties. The alarming casualties do not begin to convey the horror of this battle, one of the most gruesome in American history. The impenetrable forest and gunfire smoke made it impossible to view the enemy. Officers couldn’t even see their own men during the fighting. The incessant gunfire caused the woods to catch fire, resulting in hundreds of men burning to death. “It was as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell itself had usurped the place of the earth,” wrote one officer. When the fighting finally subsided during the late evening of the second day, the usually stoical Grant threw himself down on his cot and cried.
Download or read book Richard S Ewell written by Donald C. Pfanz and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Richard Stoddert Ewell holds a unique place in the history of the Army of Northern Virginia. For four months Ewell was Stonewall Jackson's most trusted subordinate; when Jackson died, Ewell took command of the Second Corps, leading it at Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. In this biography, Donald Pfanz presents the most detailed portrait yet of the man sometimes referred to as Stonewall Jackson's right arm. Drawing on a rich array of previously untapped original source materials, Pfanz concludes that Ewell was a highly competent general, whose successes on the battlefield far outweighed his failures. But Pfanz's book is more than a military biography. It also examines Ewell's life before and after the Civil War, including his years at West Point, his service in the Mexican War, his experiences as a dragoon officer in Arizona and New Mexico, and his postwar career as a planter in Mississippi and Tennessee. In all, Pfanz offers an exceptionally detailed portrait of one of the South's most important leaders.
Download or read book The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant written by Ulysses S. Grant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Leaps straight onto the roster of essential reading for anyone even vaguely interested in Grant and the Civil War.” —Ron Chernow, author of Grant “Provides leadership lessons that can be obtained nowhere else... Ulysses Grant in his Memoirs gives us a unique glimpse of someone who found that the habit of reflection could serve as a force multiplier for leadership.” —Thomas E. Ricks, Foreign Policy Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, sold door-to-door by former Union soldiers, were once as ubiquitous in American households as the Bible. Mark Twain and Henry James hailed them as great literature, and countless presidents credit Grant with influencing their own writing. This is the first comprehensively annotated edition of Grant’s memoirs, clarifying the great military leader’s thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War and offering his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. With annotations compiled by the editors of the Ulysses S. Grant Association’s Presidential Library, this definitive edition enriches our understanding of the pre-war years, the war with Mexico, and the Civil War. Grant provides essential insight into how rigorously these events tested America’s democratic institutions and the cohesion of its social order. “What gives this peculiarly reticent book its power? Above all, authenticity... Grant’s style is strikingly modern in its economy.” —T. J. Stiles, New York Times “It’s been said that if you’re going to pick up one memoir of the Civil War, Grant’s is the one to read. Similarly, if you’re going to purchase one of the several annotated editions of his memoirs, this is the collection to own, read, and reread.” —Library Journal
Download or read book The Generals Of Gettysburg written by Larry Tagg and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with insightful anecdotes and lively narrative, The Generals of Gettysburg presents detailed information on the character and personality of all 133 combat-command officers as well as an in-depth account of each man's actions on the field. This marriage of character --the features and attributes of a man -- with each general's battlefield record, offers new insights into the battle and its outcome.
Download or read book The Civil War written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Abraham Lincoln's presidential victory in 1861, eleven Southern states withdrew from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, sparking a war between the North and South in which a series of bitterly contested battles and sieges, and countless minor skirmishes, were fought. DK's The Civil War is divided into seven chronological chapters, each introduced by a general overview of the military and political situation. Each of the war's major engagements is treated individually, while still connecting the complicated relationships between the war's far-flung theaters or the overall strategies of the two sides. The Civil War also includes the reactions of ordinary soldiers and civilians to the momentous events they witnessed, as well as features on major personalities--military and civilian--and on aspects of the war away from the battlefield, such as the effects of the Northern blockade or the fate of prisoners. The casualty toll of the Civil War still exceeds that of every other American war, before and since, put together. Race and states' rights remain potent issues to this day, making the story of the Civil War as gripping today as it was when it divided the nation more than 150 years ago.
