Download or read book The Battle of Ezra Church and the Struggle for Atlanta written by Earl J. Hess and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-05-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fought on July 28, 1864, the Battle of Ezra Church was a dramatic engagement during the Civil War's Atlanta campaign. Confederate forces under John Bell Hood desperately fought to stop William T. Sherman's advancing armies as they tried to cut the last Confederate supply line into the city. Confederates under General Stephen D. Lee nearly overwhelmed the Union right flank, but Federals under General Oliver O. Howard decisively repelled every attack. After five hours of struggle, 5,000 Confederates lay dead and wounded, while only 632 Federals were lost. The result was another major step in Sherman's long effort to take Atlanta. Hess's compelling study is the first book-length account of the fighting at Ezra Church. Detailing Lee's tactical missteps and Howard's vigilant leadership, he challenges many common misconceptions about the battle. Richly narrated and drawn from an array of unpublished manuscripts and firsthand accounts, Hess's work sheds new light on the complexities and significance of this important engagement, both on and off the battlefield.
Download or read book Slaughter at the Chapel written by Gary Ecelbarger and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-10-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Ezra Church was one of the deadliest engagements in the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War and continues to be one of the least understood. Both official and unofficial reports failed to illuminate the true bloodshed of the conflict: one of every three engaged Confederates was killed or wounded, including four generals. Nor do those reports acknowledge the flaws—let alone the ultimate failure—of Confederate commander John Bell Hood’s plan to thwart Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s southward advance. In an account that refutes and improves upon all other interpretations of the Battle of Ezra Church, noted battle historian Gary Ecelbarger consults extensive records, reports, and personal accounts to deliver a nuanced hour-by-hour overview of how the battle actually unfolded. His narrative fills in significant facts and facets of the battle that have long gone unexamined, correcting numerous conclusions that historians have reached about key officers’ intentions and actions before, during, and after this critical contest. Eleven troop movement maps by leading Civil War cartographer Hal Jespersen complement Ecelbarger’s analysis, detailing terrain and battle maneuvers to give the reader an on-the-ground perspective of the conflict. With new revelations based on solid primary-source documentation, Slaughter at the Chapel is the most comprehensive treatment of the Battle of Ezra Church yet written, as powerful in its implications as it is compelling in its moment-to-moment details.
Download or read book Fighting for Atlanta written by Earl J. Hess and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As William T. Sherman's Union troops began their campaign for Atlanta in the spring of 1864, they encountered Confederate forces employing field fortifications located to take advantage of rugged terrain. While the Confederates consistently acted on the defensive, digging eighteen lines of earthworks from May to September, the Federals used fieldworks both defensively and offensively. With 160,000 troops engaged on both sides and hundreds of miles of trenches dug, fortifications became a defining factor in the Atlanta campaign battles. These engagements took place on topography ranging from Appalachian foothills to the clay fields of Georgia's piedmont. Leading military historian Earl J. Hess examines how commanders adapted their operations to the physical environment, how the environment in turn affected their movements, and how Civil War armies altered the terrain through the science of field fortification. He also illuminates the impact of fighting and living in ditches for four months on the everyday lives of both Union and Confederate soldiers. The Atlanta campaign represents one of the best examples of a prolonged Union invasion deep into southern territory, and, as Hess reveals, it marked another important transition in the conduct of war from open field battles to fighting from improvised field fortifications.
Download or read book All the Fighting They Want written by Stephen Davis and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War’s Atlanta campaign rages on following A Long and Bloody Task: “More than informative . . . challenges simplistic caricatures of Hood and Sherman” (The Civil War Monitor). John Bell Hood brought a hang-dog look and a hard-fighting spirit to the Army of Tennessee. Once one of the ablest division commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia, he found himself, by the spring of 1864, in the war’s Western Theater. Recently recovered from grievous wounds sustained at Chickamauga, he suddenly found himself thrust into command of the Confederacy’s ill-starred army even as Federals pounded on the door of the Deep South’s greatest untouched city, Atlanta. His predecessor, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, had failed to stop the advance of armies under Federal commander William T. Sherman, who had pushed and maneuvered his way from Chattanooga, Tennessee, right to Atlanta’s very doorstep. Johnston had been able to do little to stop him. The crisis could not have been more acute. Hood, an aggressive risk-taker, threw his men into the fray with unprecedented vigor. Sherman welcomed it. “We’ll give them all the fighting they want,” Sherman said. He proved a man of his word. In All the Fighting They Want, Georgia native Steve Davis, the world’s foremost authority on the Atlanta campaign, tells the tale of the last great struggle for the city. His Southern sensibility and his knowledge of the battle, accumulated over a lifetime of living on the ground, make this an indispensable addition to the acclaimed Emerging Civil War Series. “Military historian Steve Davis vividly presents the last great struggle for the city.” —Midwest Book Review
Download or read book Army History written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book July 22 written by Earl J. Hess and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-01-13 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So remarkable was the fighting to the east of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, that it earned its place as the only engagement of the Civil War to be widely referred to by the date of its occurrence. Also known as the Battle of Atlanta, this was the largest engagement of the four-month-long Atlanta Campaign for control of the city and the region. Although Confederate commander John Bell Hood’s forces flanked William T. Sherman’s line and were able to crush the end of it, they could go no further. On July 22, 1864, the Confederates came closer to achieving a major tactical victory than on any other day of the Atlanta Campaign. Prolific Civil War historian Earl Hess’s July 22 is a thorough study of all aspects of the most prominent battle of the Civil War’s Atlanta Campaign. Based on exhaustive research in primary sources, Hess has crafted a unique and compelling study of not only the tactics and strategy associated with the engagement but also of the personal experiences of Union and Confederate soldiers and the effects the battle had on them. This book offers fresh insights to the significance that the Battle of July 22 held for the larger Atlanta campaign and the entire Union war effort. Hess also provides a thorough discussion of the death of Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, the most prominent casualty of the battle, and the effect this loss had on Union soldiers and civilians alike. He concludes with an assessment of the battle’s legacy in American history and culture. Detailing one of the larger and more vigorously fought battles of the Civil War, Hess’s treatment of the Battle of Atlanta stands out as a strong example of Civil War operational history. The combination of maneuver, unit handling, stout combat by the individual soldier, and combative spirit on both sides make July 22 one of the most fascinating and remarkable battles in American history. There is much for the student of military history to learn on many levels of tactics, the experience of combat, and battlefield leadership.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War written by Lorien Foote and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every time Union armies invaded Southern territory there were unintended consequences. Military campaigns always affected the local population -- devastating farms and towns, making refugees of the inhabitants, undermining slavery. Local conditions in turn altered the course of military events. The social effects of military campaigns resonated throughout geographic regions and across time. Campaigns and battles often had a serious impact on national politics and international affairs. Not all campaigns in the Civil War had a dramatic impact on the country, but every campaign, no matter how small, had dramatic and traumatic effects on local communities. Civil War military operations did not occur in a vacuum; there was a price to be paid on many levels of society in both North and South. The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War assembles the contributions of thirty-nine leading scholars of the Civil War, each chapter advancing the central thesis that operational military history is decisively linked to the social and political history of Civil War America. The chapters cover all three major theaters of the war and include discussions of Bleeding Kansas, the Union naval blockade, the South West, American Indians, and Reconstruction. Each essay offers a particular interpretation of how one of the war's campaigns resonated in the larger world of the North and South. Taken together, these chapters illuminate how key transformations operated across national, regional, and local spheres, covering key topics such as politics, race, slavery, emancipation, gender, loyalty, and guerrilla warfare.
Download or read book The Atlanta Campaign 1864 written by David A. Powell and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2024-04-18 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated narrative of the Atlanta campaign complete with maps, illustrations, and diagrams. General John Bell Hood’s tenure commanding the Confederate Army of Tennessee stood in marked contrast to that of his predecessor Joseph E. Johnston. Where Johnston was forced to conduct a war of maneuver, parrying William T. Sherman’s repeated flanking attempts, he rarely risked offensive blows. The initiative remained almost entirely with the Federals. When Johnston did stand to accept battle, with only a few exceptions, he received enemy assaults behind fortified lines. However, weeks of retreating undermined morale. With Hood in charge, offense became the order of the day. Hood fought the two largest and bloodiest battles of the entire campaign within the space of two days: attacking at Peachtree Creek on July 20, and again at the Battle of Atlanta on July 22. A third attack at Ezra Church on July 28 was launched by Stephen D. Lee, on his own initiative. The results of all three battles, however, were the same—bloody failures for the Confederates. Thereafter, Hood adopted a more defensive strategy, choosing to preserve what combat power his army retained. The second volume on the Atlanta campaign portrays the final months of the struggle for Atlanta, from mid-July to September, including what remains to be seen of the battles around the city: Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, Decatur, and Ezra Church. The siege will cover historic views of Atlanta, operations east of the city, and the city’s capture. The cavalry chapter focuses on the Union cavalry raids south of Atlanta which ended in disaster. Finally, the fighting at Jonesboro will bring the series to a close.
Download or read book Upon the Fields of Battle written by Andrew S. Bledsoe and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2018-11-07 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New developments in Civil War scholarship owe much to removal of artificial divides by historians seeking to explore the connections between the home front and the battlefield. Indeed, scholars taking a holistic view of the war have contributed to our understanding of the social complexities of emancipation—of freedom in a white republic—and the multifaceted experiences of both civilians and soldiers. Given these accomplishments, research focusing on military history prompts prominent and recurring debates among Civil War historians. Critics of traditional military history see it as old-fashioned, too technical, or irrelevant to the most important aspects of the war. Proponents of this area of study view these criticisms as a misreading of its nature and potential to illuminate the war. The collected essays in Upon the Fields of Battle bridge this intellectual divide, demonstrating how historians enrich Civil War studies by approaching the period through the specific but nonetheless expansive lens of military history. Drawing together contributions from Keith Altavilla, Robert L. Glaze, John J. Hennessy, Earl J. Hess, Brian Matthew Jordan, Kevin M. Levin, Brian D. McKnight, Jennifer M. Murray, and Kenneth W. Noe, editors Andrew S. Bledsoe and Andrew F. Lang present an innovative volume that deeply integrates and analyzes the ideas and practices of the military during the Civil War. Furthermore, by grounding this collection in both traditional and pioneering methodologies, the authors assess the impact of this field within the social, political, and cultural contexts of Civil War studies. Upon the Fields of Battle reconceives traditional approaches to subjects like battles and battlefields, practice and policy, command and culture, the environment, the home front, civilians and combatants, atrocity and memory, revealing a more balanced understanding of the military aspects of the Civil War’s evolving history.
Download or read book Slaughter at the Chapel written by Gary Ecelbarger and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-10-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Ezra Church was one of the deadliest engagements in the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War and continues to be one of the least understood. Both official and unofficial reports failed to illuminate the true bloodshed of the conflict: one of every three engaged Confederates was killed or wounded, including four generals. Nor do those reports acknowledge the flaws—let alone the ultimate failure—of Confederate commander John Bell Hood’s plan to thwart Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s southward advance. In an account that refutes and improves upon all other interpretations of the Battle of Ezra Church, noted battle historian Gary Ecelbarger consults extensive records, reports, and personal accounts to deliver a nuanced hour-by-hour overview of how the battle actually unfolded. His narrative fills in significant facts and facets of the battle that have long gone unexamined, correcting numerous conclusions that historians have reached about key officers’ intentions and actions before, during, and after this critical contest. Eleven troop movement maps by leading Civil War cartographer Hal Jespersen complement Ecelbarger’s analysis, detailing terrain and battle maneuvers to give the reader an on-the-ground perspective of the conflict. With new revelations based on solid primary-source documentation, Slaughter at the Chapel is the most comprehensive treatment of the Battle of Ezra Church yet written, as powerful in its implications as it is compelling in its moment-to-moment details.
Download or read book Armies of Deliverance written by Elizabeth R. Varon and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth Varon offers both a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Lincoln's Union coalition sought to deliver the South from slaveholder tyranny and deliver to it the blessings of modern civilization. Over the course of the war, supporters of black freedom built the case that slavery was the obstacle to national reunion and that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit Northern and Southern whites alike. To sustain their morale, Northerners played up evidence of white Southern Unionism, of antislavery progress in the slaveholding border states, and of disaffection among Confederates. But the Union's emphasis on Southern deliverance served, ironically, not only to galvanize loyal Amer icans but also to galvanize disloyal ones. Confederates, fighting to establish an independent slaveholding republic, scorned the Northern promise of liberation and argued that the emancipation of blacks was synonymous with the subjugation of the white South.
Download or read book Braxton Bragg written by Earl J. Hess and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. While Hess analyzes Bragg's many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army--including Bragg's superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates--reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general's personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.
Download or read book Soldiers from Experience written by Eric Michael Burke and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2022-10-26 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Civil War Books and Authors Book of the Year Award In Soldiers from Experience, Eric Michael Burke examines the tactical behavior and operational performance of Major General William T. Sherman’s Fifteenth US Army Corps during its first year fighting in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. Burke analyzes how specific experiences and patterns of meaning-making within the ranks led to the emergence of what he characterizes as a distinctive corps-level tactical culture. The concept—introduced here for the first time—consists of a collection of shared, historically derived ideas, beliefs, norms, and assumptions that play a decisive role in shaping a military command’s particular collective approach on and off the battlefield. Burke shows that while military historians of the Civil War frequently assert that generals somehow imparted their character upon the troops they led, Sherman’s corps reveals the opposite to be true. Contrary to long-held historiographical assumptions, he suggests the physical terrain itself played a much more influential role than rifled weapons in necessitating tactical changes. At the same time, Burke argues, soldiers’ battlefield traumas and regular interactions with southern civilians, the enslaved, and freedpeople during raids inspired them to embrace emancipation and the widespread destruction of Rebel property and resources. An awareness and understanding of this culture increasingly informed Sherman’s command during all three of his most notable late-war campaigns. Burke’s study serves as the first book-length examination of an army corps operating in the Western Theater during the conflict. It sheds new light on Civil War history more broadly by uncovering a direct link between the exigencies of nineteenth-century land warfare and the transformation of US wartime strategy from “conciliation,” which aimed to protect the property of Southern civilians, to “hard war.” Most significantly, Soldiers from Experience introduces a new theoretical construct of small unit–level tactical principles wholly absent from the rapidly growing interdisciplinary scholarship on the intricacies and influence of culture on military operations.
Download or read book War Like the Thunderbolt written by Russell S. Bonds and published by Westholme Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on diaries, unpublished letters, and other archival sources to trace the events of the Civil War campaign that sealed the fate of the Confederacy and was instrumental in securing Abraham Lincoln's reelection.
Download or read book This Great Struggle written by Steven E. Woodworth and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-04-16 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Referring to the war that was raging across parts of the American landscape, Abraham Lincoln told Congress in 1862, "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope on earth." Lincoln recognized what was at stake in the American Civil War: not only freedom for 3.5 million slaves but also survival of self-government in the last place on earth where it could have the opportunity of developing freely. Noted historian Steven E. Woodworth tells the story of what many regard as the defining event in United States history. While covering all theaters of war, he emphasizes the importance of action in the region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River in determining its outcome. Woodworth argues that the Civil War had a distinct purpose that was understood by most of its participants: it was primarily a conflict over the issue of slavery. The soldiers who filled the ranks of the armies on both sides knew what they were fighting for. The outcome of the war—after its beginnings at Fort Sumter to the Confederate surrender four years later—was the result of the actions and decisions made by those soldiers and millions of other Americans. Written in clear and compelling fashion, This Great Struggle is their story—and ours.
Download or read book The Road Past Kennesaw written by Richard M. McMurry and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Atlanta s Historic Westview Cemetery written by Jeff Clemmons and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2018 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1884, several leading citizens purchased 577 acres to open Atlanta's Westview Cemetery. The rolling terrain, part of which was a site in the Civil War battle of Ezra Church, became the final resting place for more than 100,000 people. Prominent locals buried here include Grant Park namesake L.P. Grant, author Joel Chandler Harris, High Museum benefactor Harriet High, Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler Sr. and Havertys founder J.J. Haverty. The cemetery's Westview Abbey mausoleum is one of the nation's largest, with more than eleven thousand crypts. Throughout its history, Westview dabbled in other business ventures, including a cafeteria, a funeral home and an ambulance service. And for decades, the cemetery's Westview Floral Company sold flowers to lot owners and local businesses, leading to its own advice column in the Atlanta Constitution. Author Jeff Clemmons traces the complete history of this treasured necropolis.
