Civil War History - General DiscussionFor Discussions on Civil War Era Personalities, Politics, Issues, Campaigns, Battles, and more. Serious Civil War Discussions Only Please! All other posts will be deleted.
Lastcat, you are definitely doing yourself a disservice by not reading up on the war. Yes the internet is good, yes, Ken Burns series is ok. Personally, I liked Danny Glover's Civil War Journal better. He went into much greater detail. I'm not crazy about his politics today. But he did a good job moderating the episodes when they were published.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of Shelby Foote. I do like James I. Roberston and Bruce Catton. James McPherson is ok but he can get kind of snobby. Personally, I like to read the journals that were published by the men who fought the war. Some of the time worn classics are:
Minutae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia by Carlton McCarthy - A bit romantic but good vignettes of camp & on the march.
Hard Tack & Coffee by John D. Billings Not as romantic as McCarthy but very good in the average life department.
Memoirs of Service Afloat by Raphael Semmes. A good read by the Caotain of the Alabama.
U.S. Grant autobiography 4 volumes.
Gone For a soldier Alfred Bellard 2nd NJ Light Artillery.
13 Months in the Rebel Army by William G. Stephenson. Excellent account by an impressed New Yorker who served in the CSA in the western theater
Passing of the Armies by Joshua L. Chamberlain
Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade by John O. Casler. This is a great memoir by a misfit of a soldier. Not a typical memoir at all.
Four Years with General Lee by Walter Taylor an intimate account of Taylor's staffing duties with General Lee.
But my favorite book of all that sets the stage for all these guys is a really really good read called The Class of 1846 by John Waugh. He follows the pre Civil War careers of this class and lays the foundation of the struggle of 1861. Studys the officers on both sides before they became famous Civil War personalities.
Memphis
__________________ I've seen these sweat soaked heroes fight, in superheated air,to keep their ship alive and right, though no one knows they're there. And thus they'll fight for ages on, till warships sail no more,amid the boilers mighty heat and turbines hellish roar. So when you see a ship pull out, to meet a warlike foe, remember faintly if you can "the men who sail below"
~ excerpted from "The Men Who sail below", Author unknown.
Foote is a excellent writer and I would recommend both his novels and a collection of letters he wrote to fellow writer and friend Walker Percy. Unlike the folksy way he comes across in the Ken Burns series, he had a highly educated, cold, sometimes somewhat cynical, intelligence.
His narrative of the CW is worth reading, IMO. He covers the Western Theater completely, and Jefferson Davis plays more of a role than he usually does. Foote makes a real attempt to understand Davis's circumstances and decisions.
On the politics around the war, the role of blacks in the war, the role of slavery is bringing it about, I disagree with him, as do most recent scholars.
I thought the Ken Burns' series was very good. Nitpicking aside, it emphasized the military aspects pretty well, told the story vividly, and made fighting the war a d****** dirty, ugly business. It set up comparsions between a Southern town and Northern town(Deer Isle, Maine, near where my mother grew up), but never really went into the homefront on either side. Compared to other attempts to dramatize the war, its far, far ahead. It's decisions: not to use re enactors, to pick individuals and follow them through the war, all "worked."
It's been way too long since I've watched that series, and a lot of water has passed over the dam. One thing it did do (and I'm reasonably certain it affected many of you the same way), it rekindled my interest. At the time, I had about a hundred neglected CW books, and was wasting my time with enjoyable novels.
My impression now of what I had seen these many years ago, is that the series was a touchy/feely overview with no intent to be history, but to rekindle an interest in that era (which, in my case, was certainly successful). Kinda like, we went through a time where different sections of the country had different ideas about the way things ought to be run; so then some considerable bumbling went on and the sides took to duking it out over their differences.
The series was exceptionally well done with some ground-breaking techniques and motion created with the pan/zoom on stills. Whatever fault one may assign to it -- be it inaccurate, not detailed enough, not really history, smarmy -- it did effect a change in my perspective of the time, and apparently in the interest of many others. The series will remain a significant turning point in my life. A personal classic.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I'm not a seasoned enough student of the Civil War yet to comment if it was accurate or not, but it serves as a great jumping off point to learn more about the war.
I've started watching the documentary as well as reading the companion book along with it, to see if I can get more facts and lessons from one or the other. If one misses something, I figure the other will pick up on it.
I guess it's our job as "students" to seperate the facts from the fiction-but the documentary, and other movies like Gettysburg, do the basic job of garnering interest in the subject in the time alloted for the telling of their tales...but I'm learning, and you all know this, that you can spend your life studying this war and not know everything. (But it's sure fun to try!)
I agree with your statement, that in summary, it is the job of students to seperate the facts from fiction. Even 'masters' on the subject, must continue to keep up with any scrap of history that may surface. At times, nuggets of information surface when a family dies out and their relatives who fought in the Civil War are public domain.
As we are generations past those times in the Civil War--they created the history to study and for years to come.
I join with you in agreement, that no matter how much one studies the Civil War or in any other area; one will never know it all --that is the lesson of life. Yet, it is the pleasure and the luxury of being able to sit and explore through maps, books, official battle reports and the inter-Army correspondences; as to achieve some appreciation for those who have fought these wars.
Just some thoughts.
Respectfully submitted for consideration,
M. E. Wolf
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Film has the "slows" and one cannot detail incidents most times, to get something absolutely accurate. It's a lot of high points with film. Look how slow the network news is compared to getting news off the internet. If you doubt that, just check off how many "news stories" are in a half- hour news show.
Of course, I believe any modern book or film is limited by the acceptable history that has grown up around the Civil War. I recall traveling through areas of the South that had strong unionist support during the war. You wouldn't know it by all the rebel stickers on the pickup trucks and vehicles of the youngins'.
I think most Civil War history is strong on Union failures and command, but seems to ignore the real incredible weaknesses of the Confederacy and their infrastructure.
If more truth were published, someone might start wondering why the South seceded and started a war.
How do you lose a war to a McClellan, a Burnside, a Pope, and a Hooker? And the Confederacy never found a general, or an army, to push the Union armies out of Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, western Virginia and Missouri. But by most accounts, the war ended at Appomattox. The Confederacy didn't start losing the war until then. No use in telling a lot of people that the war was lost, long before Appomattox.
I tend to agree with Whitworth, that history emphasizes the failures of the Union forces and ignores the weaknesses of the Confederacy. Yet it's true that the Army of the Potomac had some pretty flawed commanders who were responsible for losses that should have been wins, given the size of the Army of the Potomac compared to the Army of Northern Virginia.
I've never found a biography of George McClellan...the closest I've come is Stephen Sears book, "Confederacies and Commanders," which is quite critical of McClellan, but who, in my opinion, earned that criticism and more.
And to Lastcat, I'd like to add a couple of books to the list that Memphis posted.
"The Sword of Lincoln," by Jeffrey Wert, and
"Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America," by William C. Davis.
I've never found a biography of George McClellan...the closest I've come is Stephen Sears book, "Confederacies and Commanders," which is quite critical of McClellan, but who, in my opinion, earned that criticism and more.
I just picked up, at the local used book store, Stephen Sears George B. McClellan: The Young Napolean. They also had a copy of Sears' The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan but I was not interested enough in Little Mac to pick that one up as well. I like Sears' writing so I am looking forward to the former, once it works its way to the top of my rather large stack of "to be read."
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
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