"From his command post in Cairo, Illinois, Grant led troops to Union victories at Belmont, Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson. Kionka interweaves the story of Grant's military successes and advancement with a social history of Cairo, highlighting the area's economic gains and the contributions of civilian volunteers through first-person accounts"--Provided by publisher.
"Focusing on the exploits of Private Henry Fleming and his fellow soldiers, Lentz's study of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage debunks earlier criticism of the novel as impressionistic by proving, through a close examination of war history, combat, and, specifically, the Chancellorsville battle, its realistic founding"--Provided by publisher.
The story of the critical reception of Crane's great Civil War novel from its publication to the present, with particular attention to the effects of later wars on that reception.
For someone who did not actually fight in the American Civil War, Stephen Crane was extraordinarily accurate in his description of the psychological tension experienced by a youthful soldier grappling with his desire to act heroically, his fears, and redemption. Stephen Crane's novel The Red Badge of Courage provides an extraordinary take on the battlefield experiences of a young soldier coming of age under extreme circumstances. His writing took place a generation after the war's conclusion, at a time when the entire nation was coming to grips with the meaning of the Civil War. It was during this time in the late 19th century that the battle over the memory of the war was taking place. This new, annotated edition of the novel is designed to guide readers through references made through Crane's characters and how they reflect Civil War military experiences—specifically how "the youth's" experiences reflect the reality of the multi-day battle of Chancellorsville, which took place in Virginia beginning on May 1, 1863, and concluded on May 4 of the same year. The annotated text is preceded by introductory essays on Crane and on the Civil War. Crane's short story "The Veteran" is also included to allow readers to better understand the post-war lives of Civil War soldiers.
Scholars of the Civil War era have commonly assumed that veterans of the Union and Confederate armies effortlessly melted back into society and that they adjusted to the demands of peacetime with little or no difficulty. Yet the path these soldiers followed on the road to reintegration was far more tangled. New Men unravels the narrative of veteran reentry into civilian life and exposes the growing gap between how former soldiers saw themselves and the representations of them created by late-nineteenth century American society. In the early years following the Civil War, the concept of the “veteran” functioned as a marker for what was assumed by soldiers and civilians alike to be a temporary social status that ended definitively with army demobilization and the successful attainment of civilian employment. But in later postwar years this term was reconceptualized as a new identity that is still influential today. It came to be understood that former soldiers had crossed a threshold through their experience in the war, and they would never be the same: They had become new men. Uncovering the tension between veterans and civilians in the postwar era adds a new dimension to our understanding of the legacy of the Civil War. Reconstruction involved more than simply the road to reunion and its attendant conflicts over race relations in the United States. It also pointed toward the frustrating search for a proper metaphor to explain what soldiers had endured. A provocative engagement with literary history and historiography, New Men challenges the notion of the Civil War as “unwritten” and alters our conception of the classics of Civil War literature. Organized chronologically and thematically, New Men coherently blends an analysis of a wide variety of fictional and nonfictional narratives. Writings are discussed in revelatory pairings that illustrate various aspects of veteran reintegration, with a chapter dedicated to literature describing the reintegration experiences of African Americans in the Union Army. New Men is at once essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the origins of our concept of the “veteran” and a book for our times. It is an invitation to build on the rich lessons of the Civil War veterans’ experiences, to develop scholarship in the area of veterans studies, and to realize the dream of full social integration for soldiers returning home.
“It is impossible to reproduce the state of mind of the men who waged war in 1917 and 1918,” Edward Coffman wrote in The War to End All Wars. In Doughboys on the Great War the voices of thousands of servicemen say otherwise. The majority of soldiers from the American Expeditionary Forces returned from Europe in 1919. Where many were simply asked for basic data, veterans from four states—Utah, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Virginia—were given questionnaires soliciting additional information and “remarks.” Drawing on these questionnaires, completed while memories were still fresh, this book presents a chorus of soldiers’ voices speaking directly of the expectations, motivations, and experiences as infantrymen on the Western Front in World War I. What was it like to kill or maim German soldiers? To see friends killed or maimed by the enemy? To return home after experiencing such violence? Again and again, soldiers wrestle with questions like these, putting into words what only they can tell. They also reflect on why they volunteered, why they fought, what their training was, and how ill-prepared they were for what they found overseas. They describe how they interacted with the civilian populations in England and France, how they saw the rewards and frustrations of occupation duty when they desperately wanted to go home, and—perhaps most significantly—what it all added up to in the end. Together their responses create a vivid and nuanced group portrait of the soldiers who fought with the American Expeditionary Forces on the battlefields of Aisne-Marne, Argonne Forest, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, the Marne, Metz, Meuse-Argonne, St. Mihiel, Sedan, and Verdun during the First World War. The picture that emerges is often at odds with the popular notion of the disillusioned doughboy. Though hardened and harrowed by combat, the veteran heard here is for the most part proud of his service, service undertaken for duty, honor, and country. In short, a hundred years later, the doughboy once more speaks in his own true voice.
A Broken Regiment recounts the tragic history of one of the Civil War's most ill-fated Union military units. Organized in the late summer of 1862, the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was unprepared for battle a month later, when it entered the fight at Antietam. The results were catastrophic: nearly a quarter of the men were killed or wounded, and Connecticut's 16th panicked and fled the field. In the years that followed, the regiment participated in minor skirmishes before surrendering en masse in North Carolina in 1864. Most of its members spent months in southern prison camps, including the notorious Andersonville stockade, where disease and starvation took the lives of over one hundred members of the unit. The struggles of the 16th led survivors to reflect on the true nature of their military experience during and after the war, and questions of cowardice and courage, patriotism and purpose, were often foremost in their thoughts. Over time, competing stories emerged of who they were, why they endured what they did, and how they should be remembered. By the end of the century, their collective recollections reshaped this troubling and traumatic past, and the "unfortunate regiment" emerged as the "Brave Sixteenth," their individual memories and accounts altered to fit the more heroic contours of the Union victory. The product of over a decade of research, Lesley J. Gordon's A Broken Regiment illuminates this unit's complex history amid the interplay of various, and often competing, voices. The result is a fascinating and heartrending story of one regiment's wartime and postwar struggles.
