Download or read book Lee s Tarnished Lieutenant written by William Garrett Piston and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Confederate Struggle for Command written by Alexander Mendoza and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Though he has traditionally been saddled with much of the blame for the Confederate loss at Gettysburg, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet was a capable, resourceful, and brave commander. Lee referred to Longstreet as his "Old Warhorse," and Longstreet's men gave him the sobriquet "Bull of the Woods" for his aggressive tactics at Chickamauga." "Now, historian Alexander Mendoza offers a comprehensive analysis of Longstreet's leadership during his seven-month assignment in the Tennessee theater of operations. He concludes that the obstacles to effective command faced by Longstreet during his sojourn in the west had at least as much to do with longstanding grievances and politically motivated prejudices as they did with any personal or military shortcomings of Longstreet himself."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book God and General Longstreet The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind written by Barbara L. Bellows and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Longstreet at Gettysburg written by Cory M. Pfarr and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length, critical analysis of Lieutenant General James Longstreet's actions at the Battle of Gettysburg. The author argues that Longstreet's record has been discredited unfairly, beginning with character assassination by his contemporaries after the war and, persistently, by historians in the decades since. By closely studying the three-day battle, and conducting an incisive historiographical inquiry into Longstreet's treatment by scholars, this book presents an alternative view of Longstreet as an effective military leader, and refutes over a century of negative evaluations of his performance.
Download or read book Lee and His Generals in War and Memory written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, Civil War historian Gary W. Gallagher examines Robert E. Lee, his principal subordinates, the treatment they have received in the literature on Confederate military history, and the continuing influence of Lost Cause arguments in the late-twentieth-century United States. Historical images of Lee and his lieutenants were shaped to a remarkable degree by the reminiscences and other writings of ex-Confederates who formulated what became known as the Lost Cause interpretation of the conflict. Lost Cause advocates usually portrayed Lee as a perfect Christian warrior and Stonewall Jackson as his peerless "right arm" and often explained Lee's failings as the result of inept performances by other generals. Many historians throughout the twentieth century have approached Lee and other Confederate military figures within an analytical framework heavily influenced by the Lost Cause school. The twelve pieces in Lee and His Generals in War and Memory explore the effect of Lost Cause arguments on popular perceptions of Lee and his lieutenants. Part I offers four essays on Lee, followed in Part II by five essays that scrutinize several of Lee's most famous subordinates, including Stonewall Jackson, John Bankhead Magruder, James Longstreet, A.P. Hill, Richard S. Ewell, and Jubal Early. Taken together, these pieces not only consider how Lost Cause writings enhanced or diminished Confederate military reputations but also illuminate the various ways post--Civil War writers have interpreted the actions and impacts of these commanders. Part III contains two articles that shift the focus to the writings of Jubal Early and LaSalle Corbell Pickett, both of whom succeeded in advancing the notion of gallant Lost Cause warriors. The final two essays, which contemplate the current debate over the Civil War's meaning for modern Americans, focus on Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War and on the issue of battlefield preservation. Gallagher adeptly highlights the chasm that often separates academic and popular perceptions of the Civil War and discusses some of the ways in which the Lost Cause continues to resonate. Lee and His Generals in War and Memory will certainly attract those interested in Lee and his campaigns, the Army of Northern Virginia, the establishment of popular images of the Confederate military, and the manner in which historical memory is created and perpetuated.
Download or read book Two Men and A People written by Gregory H. Blake and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two opposing generals and the people of East Tennessee met in the fall of 1863. For James Longstreet, the commander of the Confederate forces, the campaign for Knoxville and East Tennessee marked the nadir of his military career, which climaxed in December 1863, with him submitting a letter of resignation as commander of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. For Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Federal forces, the campaign demonstrated his leadership and tactical ability following his December 1862 debacle as commander of the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. For the region of East Tennessee and Knoxville, the campaign enabled the people to reach the pinnacle they had aspired to since their settlement of the region. They had escaped economic and religious oppression in Europe, negotiated and fought with the Cherokee Indian Nation, created the State of Franklin (which was denied statehood), saw its political power vanish to Middle Tennessee, and was limited in its economic development by the region's landscape.
Download or read book Lee and His Generals written by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A legendary professor at Louisiana State University, T. Harry Williams not only produced such acclaimed works as Lincoln and the Radicals, Lincoln and His Generals, and a biography of Huey Long that won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, but he also mentored generations of students who became distinguished historians in their own right. In this collection, ten of those former students, along with one author greatly inspired by Williams’s example, offer incisive essays that honor both Williams and his career-long dedication to sound, imaginative scholarship and broad historical inquiry. The opening and closing essays, fittingly enough, deal with Williams himself: a biographical sketch by Frank J. Wetta and a piece by Roger Spiller that place Williams in larger historical perspective among writers on Civil War generalship. The bulk of the book focuses on Robert E. Lee and a number of the commanders who served under him, starting with Charles Roland’s seminal article “The Generalship of Robert E. Lee,” the only one in the collection that has been previously published. Among the essays that follow Roland’s are contributions by Brian Holden Reid on the ebb and flow of Lee’s reputation, George C. Rable on Stonewall Jackson’s deep religious commitment, A. Wilson Greene on P. G. T. Beauregard’s role in the Petersburg Campaign, and William L. Richter on James Longstreet as postwar pariah. Together these gifted historians raise a host of penetrating and original questions about how we are to understand America’s defining conflict in our own time—just as T. Harry Williams did in his. And by encompassing such varied subjects as military history, religion, and historiography, Lee and His Generals demonstrates once more what a fertile field Civil War scholarship remains. Lawrence Lee Hewitt is professor of history emeritus at Southeastern Louisiana University. Most recently, he and Arthur W. Bergeron, now deceased, coedited three volumes of essays under the collective title Confederate Generals in the Western Theater. Thomas E. Schott served for many years as a historian for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Special Operations Command. He is the author of Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography, which won both the Society of American Historians Award and the Jefferson Davis Award.
Download or read book Rebels in Repose Confederate Commanders After the War written by Allie Stuart Povall and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The irascible Jubal A. Early, Robert E. Lee's "bad old man," went to Canada after the war and remained an unreconstructed Rebel until his death. Lee became president of Washington College and urged reconciliation with the North. Braxton Bragg never found solid economic footing and remained mournful of slavery's demise until his own, when a heart attack took him in Galveston. The South's high command traveled dramatically divergent paths after the dissolution of the Confederacy. Their professional reputations were often rewritten accordingly, as the rise of the Lost Cause ideology codified the deification of Lee and the vilification of James Longstreet. Allie Povall shares the stories of nineteen of these former generals, touching briefly on their antebellum and wartime experiences before richly detailing their attempts to salvage livelihoods from the wreckage of America's defining cataclysm.
Download or read book The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The six essays in this volume testify to the enduring impact of the Civil War on our national consciousness. Covering subjects as diverse as tactics, the uses of autobiography, and the power of myth-making in the southern tradition, they illustrate the rewards of imaginative scholarship--even for the most intensely studied battle in America's history. The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond brings current research and interpretation to bear on a range of pivotal issues surrounding the final day of the battle, July 3, 1863. This revisionist approach begins by expanding our knowledge of the engagement itself: individual essays address Confederate general James Longstreet's role in Pickett's Charge and Union general George Meade's failure to pursue Lee after the fighting. Other essays widen the scope of investigation to look at contemporary reactions to the Confederate defeat across the South, the construction of narratives by the participants themselves--from Confederate survivors of Pickett's assault to Union sergeant Ben Hirst--and the reverberations of Pickett's final momentous charge. Combining fresh evidence with the reinterpretation of standard sources, these essays refocus our view of the third day at Gettysburg to take in its diverse stories of combat and memory. The contributors are Gary W. Gallagher, William Garrett Piston, Carol Reardon, Robert K. Krick, Robert L. Bee, and A. Wilson Greene.
Download or read book Miller Cornfield at Antietam The Civil War s Bloodiest Combat written by Phillip Thomas Tucker, PhD and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Phillip Thomas Tucker reveals the triumph and tragedy of the greatest sacrifice of life of any battleground in America. On September 17, 1862, the forces of Major General George B. McClellan and his Union Army of the Potomac confronted Robert E. Lee's entire Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland. The Union forces mounted a powerful assault on Lee's left flank in the idyllic Miller Cornfield. It was the single bloodiest day in the history of the Civil War. The elite combat units of the Union's Iron Brigade and the Confederate Texas Brigade held a dramatic showdown and suffered immense losses through vicious attacks and counterattacks sweeping through the cornstalks.
Download or read book Grant and Lee written by Edward H. Bonekemper, III and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-10 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian is a comprehensive, multi-theater, war-long comparison of the command skills of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Written by Edward H. Bonekemper III, Grant and Lee clarifies the impact both generals had on the outcome of the Civil War—namely, the assistance that Lee provided to Grant by Lee's excessive casualties in Virginia, the consequent drain of Confederate resources from Grant's battlefronts, and Lee's refusal and delay of reinforcements to the combat areas where Grant was operating. The reader will be left astounded by the level of aggression both generals employed to secure victory for their respective causes, as Bonekemper demonstrates that Grant was a national general whose tactics were consistent with acheiving Union victory, whereas Lee's own priorities constantly undermined the Confederacy's chances of winning the war. Building on detailed accounts of both generals' major campaigns and battles, this book provides a detailed comparison of the primary military and personal traits of the two men. That analysis supports the preface discussion and the chapter-by-chapter conclusions that Grant did what the North needed to do to win the war: be aggressive, eliminate enemy armies, and do so with minimal casualties (154,000), while Lee was too offensive for the undermanned Confederacy, suffered intolerable casualties (209,000), and allowed his obsession with the Commonwealth of Virginia to obscure the broader interests of the Confederacy. In addition, readers will find interest in the 18 highly detailed and revealing battle maps, as well as in a comprehensive set of appendices that describes the casualties incurred by each army, battle by battle.
Download or read book Three Days at Gettysburg written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays from Civil War historians on leadership during the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. Based on manuscript sources and consideration of existing literature, the contributors challenge prevailing interpretations of key officers' performances.
Download or read book Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg written by Glenn Tucker and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lee and His Army in Confederate History written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Lee Considered written by Alan T. Nolan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the heroes produced by the Civil War, Robert E. Lee is the most revered and perhaps the most misunderstood. Lee is widely portrayed as an ardent antisecessionist who left the United States Army only because he would not draw his sword against his native Virginia, a Southern aristocrat who opposed slavery, and a brilliant military leader whose exploits sustained the Confederate cause. Alan Nolan explodes these and other assumptions about Lee and the war through a rigorous reexamination of familiar and long-available historical sources, including Lee's personal and official correspondence and the large body of writings about Lee. Looking at this evidence in a critical way, Nolan concludes that there is little truth to the dogmas traditionally set forth about Lee and the war.
Download or read book The Myth of the Lost Cause written by Edward H. Bonekemper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History isn't always written by the winners... Twenty-first-century controversies over Confederate monuments attest to the enduring significance of our nineteenth-century Civil War. As Lincoln knew, the meaning of America itself depends on how we understand that fratricidal struggle. As soon as the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms at Appomattox, a group of Confederate officers took up their pens to refight the war for the history books. They composed a new narrative—the Myth of the Lost Cause—seeking to ennoble the sacrifice and defeat of the South, which popular historians in the twentieth century would perpetuate. Unfortunately, that myth would distort the historical imagination of Americans, north and south, for 150 years. In this balanced and compelling correction of the historical record, Edward Bonekemper helps us understand the Myth of the Lost Cause and its effect on the social and political controversies that are still important to all Americans.
Download or read book The 10 Biggest Civil War Blunders written by Edward H. Bonekemper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes the Civil War so fascinating is that it presents an endless number of "what if" scenarios—moments when the outcome of the war (and therefore world history) hinged on a single small mistake or omission. In this book, Civil War historian Edward Bonekemper highlights the ten biggest Civil War blunders, focusing in on intimate moments of military indecision and inaction involving great generals like Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and William T. Sherman as well as less effective generals such as George B. McClellan, Benjamin Butler, and Henry W. Halleck. Bonekemper shows how these ten blunders significantly affected the outcome of the war, and explores how history might easily have been very different if these blunders were avoided.
