Download or read book Sabres Saddles and Spurs written by William R. Carter and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sabres, Saddles, and Spurs is the diary of the exciting war experiences of Lieutenant Colonel William R. Carter, a member, and often commander, of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry, Brigadier General William C. Wickham's Brigade, Cavalry Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. Carter was mortally wounded at the Battle of Trevilian Station, the largest and bloodiest cavalry battle of the Civil War. As modern students of the Civil War turn their attention more and more to the cavalry, the mobile arm of the commanders, accounts such as Carter's supply the details of battle and of life with the horses essential to that research. Carter's writings are a chronicle of warfare from a cavalry commander's point of view. Here is Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as its horsemen fought mounted and on foot.
Download or read book The Union Cavalry Comes of Age written by Eric J Wittenberg and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning cavalry historian shares a myth-busting look at how the Union cavalry surpassed its Confederate counterpart and helped win the Civil War. The Army of the Potomac’s mounted units suffered early in the Civil War at the hands of the horsemen of the South. However, by 1863, the Federal cavalry had evolved into a fearsome fighting machine. Despite the numerous challenges occupying officers and politicians, as well as the harrowing existence of troopers in the field, the Northern cavalry helped turn the tide of war much earlier than is generally acknowledged. In this expertly researched volume, historian Eric J. Wittenberg describes how the Union cavalry became the largest, best-mounted, and best-equipped force of horse soldiers the world had ever seen. The 1863 consolidation of numerous scattered Federal units created a force to be reckoned with—a single corps ten thousand strong. Wittenberg’s research thoroughly debunks the narrative that the Confederate “cavaliers” were the superior force.
Download or read book Plenty of Blame to go Around written by Eric J. Wittenberg and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A welcome new account of Stuart’s fateful ride during the 1863 Pennsylvania campaign . . . well researched, vividly written, and shrewdly argued.” —Mark Grimsley, author of And Keep Moving On June 1863. The Gettysburg Campaign is in its opening hours. Harness jingles and hoofs pound as Confederate cavalryman James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart leads his three brigades of veteran troopers on a ride that triggers one of the Civil War’s most bitter and enduring controversies. Instead of finding glory and victory-two objectives with which he was intimately familiar, Stuart reaped stinging criticism and substantial blame for one of the Confederacy’s most stunning and unexpected battlefield defeats. In Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg, Eric J. Wittenberg and J. David Petruzzi objectively investigate the role Stuart’s horsemen played in the disastrous campaign. It is the first book ever written on this important and endlessly fascinating subject. Did the plumed cavalier disobey General Robert E. Lee’s orders by stripping the army of its “eyes and ears?” Was Stuart to blame for the unexpected combat that broke out at Gettysburg on July 1? Authors Wittenberg and Petruzzi, widely recognized for their study and expertise of Civil War cavalry operations, have drawn upon a massive array of primary sources, many heretofore untapped, to fully explore Stuart’s ride, its consequences, and the intense debate among participants shortly after the battle, through early post-war commentators, and among modern scholars. The result is a richly detailed study jammed with incisive tactical commentary, new perspectives on the strategic role of the Southern cavalry, and fresh insights on every horse engagement, large and small, fought during the campaign.
Download or read book Last Chance For Victory written by Scott Bowden and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-02-23 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gettysburg is the most written about battle in American military history. Generations after nearly 50,000 soldiers shed their blood there, serious and fundamental misunderstandings persist about Robert E. Lee's generalship during the campaign and battle. Most are the basis of popular myths about the epic fight. Last Chance for Victory: Robert E. Lee and the Gettysburg Campaign addresses these issues by studying Lee's choices before, during, and after the battle, the information he possessed at the time and each decision that was made, and why he acted as he did. Even options open to Lee that he did not act upon are carefully explored from the perspective of what Lee and his generals knew at the time. Some of the issues addressed include:Whether Lee's orders to Jeb Stuart were discretionary and allowed him to conduct his raid around the Federal army. The authors conclusively answer this important question with the most original and unique analysis ever applied to this controversial issue;Why Richard Ewell did not attack Cemetery Hill as ordered by General Lee, and why every historian who has written that Lee's orders to Ewell were discretionary are dead wrong;Why Little Round Top was irrelevant to the July 2 fighting, a fact Lee clearly recognized;Why Cemetery Hill was the weakest point along the entire Federal line, and how close the Southerners came to capturing it;Why Lee decided to launch en echelon attack on July 2, and why most historians have never understood what it was or how close it came to success; Last Chance for Victory will be labeled heresy by some, blasphemy by others, all because its authors dare to call into question the dogmas of Gettysburg. But they do so carefully, using facts, logic, and reason to weave one of the most compelling and riveting military history books of our age.Readers will never look at Robert E. Lee and Gettysburg the same way again.
Download or read book The Bristoe Campaign written by Adrian Tighe and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-03-14 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Described by John Esten Cooke, of JEB Stuart’s staff, as “one of the liveliest episodes of the late war” the Bristoe Campaign was a small and seemingly unimportant event sandwiched between the battle at Gettysburg and the Wilderness bloodbath. Bristoe receives scant attention from historians, despite being an attempt by Lee, to seize the strategic initiative. Marking the decline in Confederate leadership, Lee’s inability to compensate, and the growing Union confidence and capability. The campaign outcome was significant; being the turning point of the war as Lee was now on the defensive and the Union forces held the initiative.
Download or read book Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station written by Jeffrey Wm Hunt and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third installment of this award-winning Civil War series offers a vivid and authoritative chronicle of Meade and Lee’s conflict after Gettysburg. The Eastern Theater of the Civil War during the late summer and fall of 1863 was anything but inconsequential. Generals George Meade and Robert E. Lee clashed in cavalry actions and pitched battles that proved that the war in Virginia was far decided at Gettysburg. Drawing on official reports, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other archival sources, Jeffrey Wm Hunt sheds much-needed light on this significant period in Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station. After Gettysburg, the Richmond War Department sent James Longstreet and two divisions from Lee’s army to reinforce Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Washington followed suit by sending two of Meade’s corps to reinforce William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland. Despite his weakened state, Lee launched a daring offensive that drove Meade back but ended in a bloody defeat at Bristoe Station on October 14th. What happened next is the subject of Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station, a fast-paced and dynamic account of Lee’s bold strategy to hold the Rappahannock River line. Hunt provides a day-by-day, and sometimes minute-by-minute, account of the Union army’s first post-Gettysburg offensive action and Lee’s efforts to repel it. In addition to politics, strategy, and tactics, Hunt examines the intricate command relationships, Lee’s questionable decision-making, and the courageous spirit of the fighting men.
Download or read book Meade and Lee After Gettysburg written by Jeffrey Wm Hunt and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “very satisfying blow-by-blow account of the final stages of the Gettysburg Campaign” fills an important gap in Civil War history (Civil War Books and Authors). Winner of the Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Book Award This fascinating book exposes what has been hiding in plain sight for 150 years: The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but deep in central Virginia two weeks later along the line of the Rappahannock. Contrary to popular belief, once Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the Potomac back to Virginia, the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit—and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high wooded terrain. Doing so would trap Lee in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley and potentially bring about the decisive victory that had eluded Union arms north of the Potomac. The two weeks that followed resembled a grand chess match with everything at stake—high drama filled with hard marching, cavalry charges, heavy skirmishing, and set-piece fighting that threatened to escalate into a major engagement with the potential to end the war in the Eastern Theater. Throughout, one thing remains clear: Union soldiers from private to general continued to fear the lethality of Lee’s army. Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, the first of three volumes on the campaigns waged between the two adversaries from July 14 through the end of July, 1863, relies on the official records, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other sources to provide a day-by-day account of this fascinating high-stakes affair. The vivid prose, coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature. Named Eastern Theater Book of the Year byCivil War Books and Authors
Download or read book Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station written by Jeffrey Hunt and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-19 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War in the Eastern Theater during the late summer and fall of 1863 was anything but inconsequential. Generals Meade and Lee continued where they had left off, executing daring marches while boldly maneuvering the chess pieces of war in an effort to gain decisive strategic and tactical advantage. Cavalry actions crisscrossed the rolling landscape; bloody battle revealed to both sides the command deficiencies left in the wake of Gettysburg. It was the first and only time in the war Meade exercised control of the Army of the Potomac on his own terms. Jeffrey Wm Hunt brilliant dissects these and others issues in Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station: The Problems of Command and Strategy After Gettysburg, from Brandy Station to the Buckland Races, August 1 to October 31, 1863. The carnage of Gettysburg left both armies in varying states of command chaos as the focus of the war shifted west. Lee further depleted his ranks by dispatching James Longstreet (his best corps commander) and most of his First Corps via rail to reinforce Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. The Union defeat that followed at Chickamauga, in turn, forced Meade to follow suit with the XI and XII Corps. Despite these reductions, the aggressive Lee assumed the strategic offensive against his more careful Northern opponent, who was also busy waging a rearguard action against the politicians in Washington. Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station is a fast-paced, dynamic account of how the Army of Northern Virginia carried the war above the Rappahannock once more in an effort to retrieve the laurels lost in Pennsylvania. When the opportunity beckoned Lee took it, knocking Meade back on his heels with a threat to his army as serious as the one Pope had endured a year earlier. As Lee quickly learned again, A. P. Hill was no Stonewall Jackson, and with Longstreet away Lee’s cudgel was no longer as mighty as he wished. The high tide of the campaign ebbed at Bristoe Station with a signal Confederate defeat. The next move was now up to Meade. Hunt’s follow-up volume to his well-received Meade and Lee After Gettysburg is grounded upon official reports, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other archival sources. Together, they provide a day-by-day account of the fascinating high-stakes affair during this three-month period. Coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, this new study offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature.
Download or read book If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania Volume 1 June 3 21 1863 written by Scott L. Mingus and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2022-08-26 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scott L. Mingus Sr. and Eric J. Wittenberg, the authors of more than forty Civil War books, have once again teamed up to present a history of the opening moves of the Gettysburg Campaign in the two-volume study “If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania”: The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac March to Gettysburg. This compelling study is one of the first to integrate the military, media, political, social, economic, and civilian perspectives with rank-and-file accounts from the soldiers of both armies as they inexorably march toward their destiny at Gettysburg. This first installment covers June 3–21, 1863, while the second, spanning June 22–30, completes the march and carries the armies to the eve of the fighting. Gen. Robert E. Lee began moving part of his Army of Northern Virginia from the Old Dominion toward Pennsylvania on June 3, 1863. Lee believed his army needed to win a major victory on Northern soil if the South was to have a chance at winning the war. Transferring the fighting out of war-torn Virginia would allow the state time to heal while he supplied his army from untapped farms and stores in Maryland and the Keystone State. Lee had also convinced Pres. Jefferson Davis that his offensive would interfere with the Union effort to take Vicksburg in Mississippi. The bold movement would trigger extensive cavalry fighting and a major battle at Winchester before culminating in the bloody three-day battle at Gettysburg. As the Virginia army moved north, the Army of the Potomac responded by protecting the vital roads to Washington, D.C., in case Lee turned to threaten the capital. Opposing presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, meanwhile, kept a close watch on the latest and often conflicting military intelligence gathered in the field. Throughout northern Virginia, central Maryland, and south-central Pennsylvania, meanwhile, civilians and soldiers alike struggled with the reality of a mobile campaign and the massive logistical needs of the armies. Thousands left written accounts of the passage of the long martial columns. Mingus and Wittenberg mined hundreds of primary accounts, newspapers, and other sources to produce this powerful and gripping account. As readers will quickly learn, much of it is glossed over in other studies of the campaign, which cannot be fully understood without a firm appreciation of what the armies (and civilians) did on their way to the small crossroads town in Pennsylvania.
Download or read book Glory Enough for All written by Eric J. Wittenberg and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2007-07-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the ferocious fighting at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in June 1864, Union Lt. Gen.øUlysses S. Grant ordered his cavalry, commanded by Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, to distract the Confederate forces opposing the Army of the Potomac. Glory Enough for All chronicles the battle that resulted when Confederate cavalry pursued and caught their Federal foes at Trevilian Station, Virginia, perhaps the only truly decisive cavalry battle of the American Civil War. ø Eric J. Wittenberg tells the stories of the men who fought there, including eight Medal of Honor winners and one Confederate whose death at Trevilian Station made him the third of three brothers to die in the service of Company A of the Fourth Virginia Cavalry. He also addresses the little-known but critical cavalry battle at Samaria (Saint Mary's) Church on June 24, 1864, where Union Brig. Gen. David N. Gregg's division was nearly destroyed. ø The only modern strategic analysis of the battle, Glory Enough for All challenges prevailing interpretations of General Sheridan and of the Union cavalry. Wittenberg shows that the outcome of Trevilian Station ultimately prolonged Grant's efforts to end the Civil War.
Download or read book Trevilian Station June 11 12 1864 written by Joseph W. McKinney and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 1864, General Ulysses Grant ordered his cavalry commander, Philip Sheridan, to conduct a raid to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad between Charlottesville and Richmond. Sheridan fell short of his objective when he was defeated by General Wade Hampton's cavalry in a two-day battle at Trevilian Station. The first day's fighting saw dismounted Yankees and Rebels engaged at close range in dense forest. By day's end, Hampton had withdrawn to the west. Advancing the next morning, Sheridan found Hampton dug in behind hastily built fortifications and launched seven dismounted assaults, each repulsed with heavy casualties. As darkness fell, the Confederates counterattacked, driving the Union forces from the field. Sheridan began his withdrawal that night, an ordeal for his men, the Union wounded and Confederate prisoners brought off the field and the hundreds of starved and exhausted horses that marked his retreat, killed to prevent their falling into Confederate hands.
Download or read book Riding in Circles J e b Stuart and the Confederate Cavalry 1861 1862 written by and published by Arnold Pavlovsky. This book was released on with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Calamity at Frederick written by Alexander B. Rossino and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The loss of Robert E. Lee’s Special Orders No. 191 is one of the Civil War’s enduring mysteries. In this meticulous study, Alexander Rossino presents a bold new interpretation of the evidence surrounding the orders’ creation, distribution, and loss outside Frederick, Maryland, in September 1862. Rossino makes extensive use of primary sources to explore these subjects and other important questions related to the orders, including why General Lee thought his army could operate north of the Potomac until winter; why Lee found it necessary to seize the Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry; what Lee hoped to accomplish after capturing Harpers Ferry; where Corporal Barton Mitchell of the 27th Indiana found the Lost Orders; and if D. H. Hill or someone else was to blame for losing the orders. The result is a well-documented reassessment that sheds new light while challenging long-held assumptions. Calamity at Frederick is the Confederate companion to The Tale Untwisted by Gene M. Thorp and Alexander Rossino, which told the story from the Union perspective.
Download or read book Report of the Quartermaster General to the Senate and General Assembly for the Year written by and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cavalryman of the Lost Cause written by Jeffry D. Wert and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-23 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cavalryman of the Lost Cause is the first major biography in decades of the famous Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart. Based on research in manuscript collections, personal memoirs and reminiscences, and regimental histories, this comprehensive volume reflects outstanding Civil War scholarship. James Ewell Brown Stuart was the premier cavalry commander of the Confederacy. He gained a reputation for daring early in the war when he rode around the Union army in the Peninsula Campaign, providing valuable intelligence to General Robert E. Lee at the expense of Union commander George B. McClellan. Stuart has long been controversial because of his performance in the critical Gettysburg Campaign, where he was out of touch with Lee for several days; this left Lee uncertain about the size and movement of the Union army, information that would prove decisive when the battle began. In an engagement with the cavalry of Union general Philip Sheridan in spring 1864, Stuart was killed. He was only thirty-one. Jeffry D. Wert provides new details about Stuart's childhood and youth, and he draws on letters between Stuart and his wife, Flora, to show us the man as he was: eager for glory, daring sometimes to the point of recklessness, but a devoted and loving husband and father. Stuart has long been regarded as the finest Confederate cavalryman and one of the best this country has ever produced. Wert shows how Stuart's friendship with Stonewall Jackson and his relationship with Lee were crucial; at the same time Stuart's relationships with his subordinates were complicated and sometimes troubled. Cavalryman of the Lost Cause is a riveting biography of a towering figure of the Civil War, a fascinating and colorful work by one of our finest Civil War historians.
Download or read book The 6th United States Cavalry in the Civil War written by Donald C. Caughey and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first scholarly history of the only regular army cavalry regiment raised during the Civil War. Unlike volunteer regiments raised by individual states, the regular regiments drew soldiers from across the country. By war's end 2,130 men and at least one woman from 29 states and 14 countries served in the 6th U.S. Cavalry. The regiment's initial cast of officers included two grandsons of a former president, a cousin of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, two cousins of the governor of Pennsylvania, the son of a Radical Republican senator who opposed President Lincoln, and a number of enlisted soldiers promoted from the ranks. The book relies heavily upon primary sources to tell the regiment's story in the words of the participants. These include diaries and letters of officers and enlisted soldiers alike, several of which are previously unpublished. Official reports are excerpted when appropriate to provide the commander's view of the regiment's performance.
Download or read book The Massacre at Sand Creek written by Bruce Cutler and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1997-09-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fictionalized account of the massacre by the U.S. Army of a Cheyenne village after it had raised the white flag. The event occurred in 1864 in Colorado. The commander, Colonel John Chivington, was never brought to justice, while Captain Silas Soule, who with his company refused to participate, was killed as a traitor. Five hundred people died. By the author of The Dark Fire.
