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Book The Bell Irvin Wiley Reader

Download or read book The Bell Irvin Wiley Reader written by Hill Jordan and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2001-02-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For countless readers, the books of Bell Irvin Wiley (1906–1980) remain a high-water mark in historical writing on the American Civil War. The Life of Billy Yank, The Life of Johnny Reb, The Road to Appomattox, Southern Negroes, 1861–1865, all are classics in the field, and Wiley’s influence on contemporary Civil War scholarship has been immeasurable. The Bell Irvin Wiley Reader offers for the first time many lesser known and unpublished writings of this eminent historian and provides an intimate portrait of the man Life magazine once hailed as “the nation’s foremost authority of soldier life during the Civil War.” Culled from a trove of 176 boxes of Wiley’s personal papers at the Emory University archives, the selections in this collection present a broad cross section of his work, both oral and written, and focus on the professor’s favorite subjects. Among the documents are speeches and articles, such as “The Road to War,” “Lincoln, Plain Man of the People,” “Life on the Confederate Home Front,” “The Collapse of the Confederacy,” “American History and Racial Understanding,” “Historians and the National Register,” and “Why Teach the Civil War?” Also included are lecture outlines, one of Wiley’s infamous final exams, and an oral history interview with the historian. Each piece reveals Wiley’s immense talent as a historian, communicator, and educator, as well as his continuing power to enlighten and inspire readers and students alike. Buttressed with an excellent introduction by editors Hill Jordan and J. H. Segars and biographical notations and section introductions by James I. Robertson Jr.—one of Wiley’s best students—this anthology shows Wiley to be an enigma: a distinguished scholar who enjoyed the company of ordinary people; a staunch advocate for civil rights who would not agree to ease university admission standards for blacks; a master teacher who declined departmental chairmanships. He was, indeed, the uncommon “common man” of which he wrote so often, and his work continues to provide us with a clearer understanding of our great American heritage. With previously unpublished family photographs and a complete bibliography of Wiley’s books and articles, The Bell Irvin Wiley Reader will fascinate all Civil War enthusiasts, introducing new readers to and reacquainting old friends with the life and works of this unsurpassed scholar.

Book Road To Appomattox

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bell Irvin Wiley
  • Publisher : LSU Press
  • Release : 1994-06-01
  • ISBN : 9780807119112
  • Pages : 156 pages

Download or read book Road To Appomattox written by Bell Irvin Wiley and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1994-06-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published forty years ago, Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Road to Appomattox marked one of the first efforts by a Civil War scholar to identify the internal causes of the South’s defeat. Today this elegant little book remains one of the most penetrating, thought-provoking works on the subject. In the book’s three chapters, Wiley treats three broad reasons for the failure of the Confederacy: weak political leadership, low morale among the populace, and four “internal influences” in the South. Those four shortcomings stemmed from traits apparently endemic to southerners in general, Wiley explains, and they included disharmony among and between political and military leaders; the government’s failure to provide adequate public information systems; rigidity in outlook and course of action; and poor judgment, especially of the North’s strength, the South’s own strength, and Europe’s dependence on cotton. Recent years have witnessed a number of significant studies dealing with Confederate defeat, particularly with the failings of Davis as war leader and with the complex issue of the South’s dedication to the cause. Wiley was one of the first historians to raise these issues and discuss them trenchantly. Those familiar with The Road to Appomattox will cheer the reissue of this resonant work; first-time readers will see why.

Book They who Fought Here

Download or read book They who Fought Here written by Bell Irvin Wiley and published by New York : Macmillan. This book was released on 1959 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Life of Billy Yank

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bell Irvin Wiley
  • Publisher : LSU Press
  • Release : 2008-09-01
  • ISBN : 9780807133750
  • Pages : 492 pages

Download or read book The Life of Billy Yank written by Bell Irvin Wiley and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this companion to The Life of Johnny Reb, Bell Irvin Wiley explores the daily lives of the men in blue who fought to save the Union. With the help of many soldiers' letters and diaries, Wiley explains who these men were and why they fought, how they reacted to combat and the strain of prolonged conflict, and what they thought about the land and the people of Dixie. This fascinating social history reveals that while the Yanks and the Rebs fought for very different causes, the men on both sides were very much the same. "This wonderfully interesting book is the finest memorial the Union soldier is ever likely to have.... [Wiley] has written about the Northern troops with an admirable objectivity, with sympathy and understanding and profound respect for their fighting abilities. He has also written about them with fabulous learning and considerable pace and humor.

Book Slaves No More

Download or read book Slaves No More written by Bell Irvin Wiley and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Between 1820 and 1861 more than 12,000 American blacks made the long voyage to Liberia. Many were members of families that had been brought to America in the 1600s. In the jungles of West Africa these new settlers battled virulent tropical diseases, marauding wild beasts, and fierce native tribesmen; with only basic hand tools (draft animals could hardly survive the climate) they faced the challenge of carving out fields from one of the world's densest forests. To former masters and to their own people the new Liberians wrote letters about physical deprivations, often asking for help; they also reported proudly on the political progress of their adopted country, which became a republic in 1847. Despite the discouragement and disappointment reflected in many of the letters, the settlers demonstrated a remarkable capacity to overcome the hostility of nature and to endure with courage and dignity. Bell I. Wiley has collected and annotated 273 letters written from Liberia by former slaves... To read the letters is to reach a new understanding of the meaning of slavery and of freedom; one senses the strength of the black family that distance did not splinter; one wonders at the religious faith that endured through the unimagined hardships and disasters"--

Book Embattled Confederates

Download or read book Embattled Confederates written by Bell Irvin Wiley and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pictorial survey of the political leadership and social conditions in the South during the Civil War. Includes 300 photographs and Appendices listing members of the Confederate Congress and its Generals.

Book The Civil War Soldier

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Barton
  • Publisher : NYU Press
  • Release : 2002-09
  • ISBN : 0814798799
  • Pages : 528 pages

Download or read book The Civil War Soldier written by Michael Barton and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1943, Bell Wiley's groundbreaking book Johnny Reb launched a new area of study: the history of the common soldier in the U.S. Civil War. This anthology brings together in one landmark volume over one hundred years of the best writing on the common soldier, from an account of life as a Confederate soldier written in 1882 to selections of Wiley's classic scholarship, and from the story of women who joined the army disguised as men to an essay on the soldier's art of dying.

Book Embattled Courage

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gerald Linderman
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2008-06-30
  • ISBN : 1439118574
  • Pages : 372 pages

Download or read book Embattled Courage written by Gerald Linderman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linderman traces each soldier's path from the exhilaration of enlistment to the disillusionment of battle to postwar alienation. He provides a rare glimpse of the personal battle that raged within soldiers then and now.

Book The Life of Johnny Reb

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bell Irvin Wiley
  • Publisher : LSU Press
  • Release : 2008-01-01
  • ISBN : 9780807133255
  • Pages : 484 pages

Download or read book The Life of Johnny Reb written by Bell Irvin Wiley and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this companion to The Life of Johnny Reb, Bell Irvin Wiley explores the daily lives of the men in blue who fought to save the Union. With the help of many soldiers' letters and diaries, Wiley explains who these men were and why they fought, how they reacted to combat and the strain of prolonged conflict, and what they thought about the land and the people of Dixie. This fascinating social history reveals that while the Yanks and the Rebs fought for very different causes, the men on both sides were very much the same. "This wonderfully interesting book is the finest memorial the Union soldier is ever likely to have.... [Wiley] has written about the Northern troops with an admirable objectivity, with sympathy and understanding and profound respect for their fighting abilities. He has also written about them with fabulous learning and considerable pace and humor.

Book For Cause and Comrades

    Book Details:
  • Author : James M. McPherson
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 1997-04-03
  • ISBN : 0199741050
  • Pages : 258 pages

Download or read book For Cause and Comrades written by James M. McPherson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-04-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.

Book The Death and Resurrection of Jefferson Davis

Download or read book The Death and Resurrection of Jefferson Davis written by Donald E. Collins and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Civil War ended, Jefferson Davis had fallen from the heights of popularity to the depths of despair. In this fascinating new book, Donald E. Collins explores the resurrection of Davis to heroic status in the hearts of white Southerners culminating in one of the grandest funeral processions the nation had ever seen. As schools closed and bells tolled along the thousand mile route, Southerners appeared en masse to bid a final farewell to the man who championed Southern secession and ardently defended the Confederacy.

Book Pershing s Crusaders

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard S. Faulkner
  • Publisher : University Press of Kansas
  • Release : 2017-03-17
  • ISBN : 0700623736
  • Pages : 778 pages

Download or read book Pershing s Crusaders written by Richard S. Faulkner and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 778 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great War caught a generation of American soldiers at a turning point in the nation's history. At the moment of the Republic's emergence as a key player on the world stage, these were the first Americans to endure mass machine warfare, and the first to come into close contact with foreign peoples and cultures in large numbers. What was it like, Richard S. Faulkner asks, to be one of these foot soldiers at the dawn of the American century? How did the doughboy experience the rigors of training and military life, interact with different cultures, and endure the shock and chaos of combat? The answer can be found in Pershing's Crusaders, the most comprehensive, and intimate, account ever given of the day-to-day lives and attitudes of the nearly 4.2 million American soldiers mobilized for service in World War I. Pershing’s Crusaders offers a clear, close-up picture of the doughboys in all of their vibrant diversity, shared purpose, and unmistakably American character. It encompasses an array of subjects from the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their view of the Allied and German soldiers and civilians they encountered, their sexual and spiritual lives, their reasons for serving, and how they lived and fought, to what they thought about their service along every step of the way. Faulkner's vast yet finely detailed portrait draws upon a wealth of sources—thousands of soldiers' letters and diaries, surveys and memoirs, and a host of period documents and reports generated by various staff agencies of the American Expeditionary Forces. Animated by the voices of soldiers and civilians in the midst of unprecedented events, these primary sources afford an immediacy rarely found in historical records. Pershing's Crusaders is, finally, a work that uniquely and vividly captures the reality of the American soldier in WWI for all time.

Book History Teaches Us to Hope

    Book Details:
  • Author : Charles Roland
  • Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
  • Release : 2010-09-12
  • ISBN : 0813129176
  • Pages : 365 pages

Download or read book History Teaches Us to Hope written by Charles Roland and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-09-12 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before his death in 1870, Robert E. Lee penned a letter to Col. Charles Marshall in which he argued that we must cast our eyes backward in times of turmoil and change, concluding that “it is history that teaches us to hope.” Charles Pierce Roland, one of the nation’s most distinguished and respected historians, has done exactly that, devoting his career to examining the South’s tumultuous path in the years preceding and following the Civil War. History Teaches Us to Hope: Reflections on the Civil War and Southern History is an unprecedented compilation of works by the man the volume editor John David Smith calls a “dogged researcher, gifted stylist, and keen interpreter of historical questions.”Throughout his career, Roland has published groundbreaking books, including The Confederacy (1960), The Improbable Era: The South since World War II (1976), and An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War (1991). In addition, he has garnered acclaim for two biographical studies of Civil War leaders: Albert Sidney Johnston (1964), a life of the top field general in the Confederate army, and Reflections on Lee (1995), a revisionist assessment of a great but frequently misunderstood general. The first section of History Teaches Us to Hope, “The Man, The Soldier, The Historian,” offers personal reflections by Roland and features his famous “GI Charlie” speech, “A Citizen Soldier Recalls World War II.” Civil War–related writings appear in the following two sections, which include Roland’s theories on the true causes of the war and four previously unpublished articles on Civil War leadership. The final section brings together Roland’s writings on the evolution of southern history and identity, outlining his views on the persistence of a distinct southern culture and his belief in its durability. History Teaches Us to Hope is essential reading for those who desire a complete understanding of the Civil War and southern history. It offers a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary historian.

Book Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer

Download or read book Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer written by G. Moxley Sorrel and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work presents a compelling account of the Civil War. It follows the narrative of a man who witnessed it from the beginning, always in the center of the action. When the war broke out in April 1861, G. Moxley Sorrel worked as a bank clerk in Savannah. He left this job to watch Fort Sumter fall, then offered his services to the new Confederacy. He found himself working as a staff officer for James Longstreet, then a brigade commander, in no time. It was the start of a long and beneficial partnership that lasted till the war's end. Published posthumously, this work comprises vivid descriptions of his thrilling experiences. His reminisces are easy to read, pleasant, and moving. Many critics called it one of the best portrayals of the personalities of prominent participants in the Confederacy, marked by a touch of humor and swift characterization.

Book The Union Soldier in Battle

Download or read book The Union Soldier in Battle written by Earl J. Hess and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reminder that the buisness of war is killing, this study recounts the hellish realms of Civil War combat. Drawing upon letters, diaries and memoirs of Northern soldiers, it reveals not only their deepest fears and shocks, but also their sources of inner strengths.

Book General Lee s Army

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joseph Glatthaar
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2009-03-24
  • ISBN : 1416596976
  • Pages : 626 pages

Download or read book General Lee s Army written by Joseph Glatthaar and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Confederate troops under Robert E. Lee presents portraits of soldiers from all walks of life, offers insight into how the Confederacy conducted key operations, and reveals how closely the South came to winning the war.

Book The Civil War Soldier

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Barton
  • Publisher : NYU Press
  • Release : 2002-09
  • ISBN : 0814798802
  • Pages : 529 pages

Download or read book The Civil War Soldier written by Michael Barton and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1943, Bell Wiley's groundbreaking book Johnny Reb launched a new area of study: the history of the common soldier in the U.S. Civil War. This anthology brings together in one landmark volume over one hundred years of the best writing on the common soldier, from an account of life as a Confederate soldier written in 1882 to selections of Wiley's classic scholarship, and from the story of women who joined the army disguised as men to an essay on the soldier's art of dying.