The twenty-one profiles of Confederate generals in this volume chronicle the South's war effort. Familiar leaders such as Lee, Jackson, and Stuart are each covered, as are the notorious Nathan Bedford Forrest, Episcopalian bishop Leonidas Polk, and John C. Breckinridge, who ran against Lincoln in 1860 and briefly served in the U.S. Senate. With the same accessible style of the first volume, Jones shows how the outcome of battles, campaigns, and even entire theaters often depended on individual commanders.
In The Pride of the Confederate Artillery, Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., illustrates the significance of the unit and, for the first time, positions this pivotal group in its rightful place in history. The Fifth Company, Washington Artillery of New Orleans, fought with the Army of Tennessee from Shiloh to Chickamauga, from Perryville to Mobile, and from Atlanta to Jackson, Mississippi. Slocomb's Battery, as it was also known, won repeated praise from every commander of that army. Although it sustained high losses, the company was recognized for its bold, tenacious fighting and was considered the Army of Tennessee's finest close-combat battery. The Pride of the Confederate Artillery is the compelling story of four hundred men, their organization and service, their victories and defeats in over forty battles.
The single most important volume for anyone interested in the Civil War to own and consult. (From the foreword by James M. McPherson) The first guide to Civil War literature to appear in nearly 30 years, this book provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and informative survey and analysis of the vast body of Civil War literature. More than 40 essays, each by a specialist in a particular subfield of Civil War history, offer unmatched thoroughness and discerning assessments of each work's value. The essays cover every aspect of the war from strategy, tactics, and battles to logistics, intelligence, supply, and prisoner-of-war camps, from generals and admirals to the men in the ranks, from the Atlantic to the Far West, from fighting fronts to the home front. Some sections cover civilian leaders, the economy, and foreign policy, while others deal with the causes of war and aspects of Reconstruction, including the African-American experience during and after the war. Breadth of topics is matched by breadth of genres covered. Essays discuss surveys of the war, general reference works, published and unpublished papers, diaries and letters, as well as the vast body of monographic literature, including books, dissertations, and articles. Genealogical sources, historical fiction, and video and audio recordings also receive attention. Students of the American Civil War will find this work an indispensable gateway and guide to the enormous body of information on America's pivotal experience.
Based on nearly five decades of research, this magisterial work is a biographical register and analysis of the people who most directly influenced the course of the Civil War, its high commanders. Numbering 3,396, they include the presidents and their cabinet members, state governors, general officers of the Union and Confederate armies (regular, provisional, volunteers, and militia), and admirals and commodores of the two navies. Civil War High Commands will become a cornerstone reference work on these personalities and the meaning of their commands, and on the Civil War itself. Errors of fact and interpretation concerning the high commanders are legion in the Civil War literature, in reference works as well as in narrative accounts. The present work brings together for the first time in one volume the most reliable facts available, drawn from more than 1,000 sources and including the most recent research. The biographical entries include complete names, birthplaces, important relatives, education, vocations, publications, military grades, wartime assignments, wounds, captures, exchanges, paroles, honors, and place of death and interment. In addition to its main component, the biographies, the volume also includes a number of essays, tables, and synopses designed to clarify previously obscure matters such as the definition of grades and ranks; the difference between commissions in regular, provisional, volunteer, and militia services; the chronology of military laws and executive decisions before, during, and after the war; and the geographical breakdown of command structures. The book is illustrated with 84 new diagrams of all the insignias used throughout the war and with 129 portraits of the most important high commanders.
" An updated edition of this concise yet comprehensive history of the Civil War, written by a distinguished historian of the conflict. Charles Roland skillfully interweaves the story of battles and campaigns with accounts of the major political, diplomatic, social, and cultural events of the epoch and insightful sketches of the leading actors. Of prime interest are the contrasts he draws between the opposing presidents and generals. What traits, he asks, made Lincoln superior to Davis as a war leader? How were Union military leaders able to forge a more effective fighting force, a more comprehensive strategy than their opponents? Roland's thoughtful anwers and his recognition of the contadictions of human nature and the interpaly of intention and chance raise this book above a mere recounting of military events. The story of the Civil War is the epic of the American people. Never has it been told more movingly.
Bradley Clampitt's The Confederate Heartland examines morale in the Civil War's western theater -- the region that witnessed the most consistent Union success and Confederate failure and the battle ground where many historians contend that the war was won and lost. Clampitt's sweeping vision of the Confederate heartland and assessment of morale, nationalism, and Confederate identity with a western emphasis, fashions a more balanced historical landscape for Civil War studies.
Blood on the Bayou covers the final, decisive campaigns of May-July, 1863, for control of the Mississippi River Valley but argues that events west of the Mississippi were as important as those occurring on the eastern shore. Culminating in the sieges of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Union efforts also included a determination to liberate—and arm—as many slaves in the region as they could. The Confederates, desperate to avoid the calamity of losing both their forts and what they considered their chattel property, fought back with determination and imagination hoping to somehow affect the outcome of these campaigns despite long odds. Please see the description for the print edition for further detail of this title.
Residents of antebellum northwest Louisiana held strong pro-Union sentiments, and the Pierson family of Bienville Parish, Louisiana, were no exception, opposing secession in 1861. Yet once war began, the region contributed its full share of support to the southern army, and four of William H. Pierson's eight sons enlisted. Ranging from the early battles of the Trans-Mississippi to the epic battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, and from the brutal trenches of Vicksburg to provost guard duty in north Louisiana, this extensive collection of Civil War letters, written by three of the Pierson brothers, offers riveting glimpses of almost every variety of experience faced by Confederate soldiers. Prolific letter writers, the Piersons were educated, observant, and well placed to comment not only on the battles and campaigns of their regiments but also on their commanding officers, the effect of political activity on soldier morale, being taken captive, and, most of all, their entire family's understanding of and commitment to the Confederate cause.
The outcomes of campaigns in the Civil War often depended on top generals having the right corps commanders in the right place at the right time. Mutual trust and respect between generals and their corps commanders, though vital to military success, was all too rare: Corps commanders were often forced to exercise considerable discretion in the execution of orders from their generals, and bitter public arguments over commanders' performances in battle followed hard on the heels of many major engagements. Controversies that arose during the war around the decisions of corps and army commanders-such as Daniel Sickles's disregard of George Meade's orders at the Battle of Gettysburg-continue to provoke vigorous debate among students of the Civil War. Corps Commanders in Blue offers eight case studies that illuminate the critical roles the Union corps commanders played in shaping the war's course and outcome. The contributors examine, and in many cases challenge, widespread assumptions about these men while considering the array of internal and external forces that shaped their efforts on and off the battlefield. Providing insight into the military conduct of the Civil War, Corps Commanders in Blue fills a significant gap in the historiography of the war by offering compelling examinations of the challenges of corps command in particular campaigns, the men who exercised that command, and the array of factors that shaped their efforts, for good or for ill.