Member Review Review: Book bayonets 'brothers divided' myth of Civil War generals Armistead and Hancock

Belle Montgomery

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Review: Book bayonets 'brothers divided' myth of Civil War generals Armistead and Hancock​

STEVE HALVONIK



SEP 7, 2021

6:06 AM

Heroes aren’t born. They are manufactured, made up, invented.
Heroes are social constructs, embedded in popular folklore and passed down from generation to generation to help us process cataclysmic events.
Case in point: Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock. The opposing Civil War generals were acquaintances but hardly BFFs, at least by today’s definition. Yet pop culture embellished and promoted their fractured friendship to symbolize how the Civil War divided our nation and pitted “brother against brother.’’
Local author and Civil War buff Tom McMillan deconstructs the Armistead-Hancock myth in his excellent new book, “Armistead and Hancock: Behind the Gettysburg Legend of Two Friends at the Turning Point of the Civil War.’’

“The account of their friendship and ultimate showdown at Gettysburg, when Armistead’s troops attacked Hancock’s troops and both men fell wounded, is one of the astonishing personal stories of the Civil War, and yet its details were distorted in the 20th century by two popular and widely acclaimed works of ‘historic fiction,’’’ McMillan avers.
His assertion is based on...Rest of Article:
https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/boo...k-civil-war-history-2021/stories/202109070002

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Interesting... when you watch the movie Gettysburg, one would think they were as close as brothers. I've never actually studied their relationship, but have heard they were not as close as portrayed. Thanks for the review.
 
One of the most dangerous places on the planet is between Shaara and Maxwell on one side and a great piece of stereotyped fiction on the other. You'll end up with tread marks on your forehead.
 
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