**spoiler alert** The coming of the Civil War ended Sam Clemens’ career as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, and launched him into the American West, whe**spoiler alert** The coming of the Civil War ended Sam Clemens’ career as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, and launched him into the American West, where he reinvented himself as Mark Twain — journalist, humorist, and writer. But before he fled Missouri and the war, perhaps he had a brief interlude where he tried and failed at soldiering. This sketch tells the tale of a brief stint with a Confederate Missouri militia, the Marion Rangers, as green, undisciplined, and feather-head a bunch as ever went to war. It is almost certainly more fiction than fact, but it does capture the feel of the the war’s earliest days.
”For a time, life was idly delicious. It was perfect. There was no war to mar it”
In this humorous sketch, Twain captured the unreality of war’s beginning. Young men, their heads full of romance and chivalry, set out to war as on a lark. It seems a grand adventure to these boys, up until they encounter their first minor difficulties and inconveniences, bumbling about as they fled from mere rumor of the enemy.
”It was rumored that the enemy were advancing in our direction. The rumor was but a rumor; nothing definite about it. So in the confusion, we did not know which way to retreat.”
They continued in this vein, running from one camp to another, eating up the provisions of local farmers, with no order, no military discipline, no enemy sighted, and no clue among them. That is, until a stranger perceived as the enemy, rode toward their encampment one night, and in a panicked volley they shot him down.
”The thought shot through me that I was a murderer — that I had killed a man — a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow.”
Here the sketch turned from humorous farce into something close to tragedy. The would be soldiers are sobered by the cold finality of the deed. Soon thereafter, they meet up with more serious troops, and many of them, including the author, simply melt away, leaving soldiering and the war behind.
Mark Twain notes that there were many such raw and inept bands at war’s beginning, some of whom actually seasoned into competent warriors. As for himself, he writes,
”I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part of it learned — I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.”...more
The Battle of Gettysburg has been central to my knowledge of the Civil War as long as I’ve been aware of that war. I was five years old when I first tThe Battle of Gettysburg has been central to my knowledge of the Civil War as long as I’ve been aware of that war. I was five years old when I first toured the battlefield with my family (and have returned to it many times). One of the earliest Civil War books that I read as a kid was the YA novel We Were There at the Battle of Gettysburg. In over five decades of Civil War reading and study, I felt that my knowledge of the battle was comprehensive — so much so that I nearly passed over this book despite its outstanding reviews.
Happily, I did read it. Yes, it contained all that information that I had gathered in a lifetime of reading, from Lee’s planning his Northern invasion to the final, stirring words of the Gettysburg Address. But there was so much more. There was context about 19th century battlefield technology that challenged some of the most basic received wisdom about how the war and battle was fought. (Both the impact of the rifled musket and the uses of cavalry in 19th century America receive attention.) Received wisdom about specific aspects of the battle and the men who fought it was challenged as well. The cherished heroic tale of the 20th Maine on Little Round Top is cast as evolving out of which of the heroes of the battle’s second day survived the war to promote their own story (Joshua Chamberlain rather than Strong Vincent) rather than what was the most significant action of that day’s battle. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion is full of moments like these.
Allen Guelzo manage to write a book that is fresh and at times startling about the most well known battle of America’s most written about war. Guelzo’s take on several of the battle’s events and participants very well may contradict what you think you know, and even if he doesn’t change your mind, he will definitely make you stop and think about it.
Odds are that you know the name Custer because of how he died. He was a hero of the Civil War, a minor author of some contemporary note, and a player Odds are that you know the name Custer because of how he died. He was a hero of the Civil War, a minor author of some contemporary note, and a player in Democratic politics. But the reason his name lives on in the American imagination is because of his last, disastrously fatal battle at The Little Bighorn — Custer’s Last Stand. It was the greatest U.S. Military defeat in the Indian Wars of the 19th century. Many, many books have been written about it. And you won’t find it in this book.
Instead, Stiles’s book concentrated on putting Custer the man in context. It first does this by examining Custer’s career, focusing attention on his rise to national prominence as a dashing young hero of the Civil War. It examines his complexity as a man — his often conflicting ideas and ideals, his relationships with his wife, patrons, and enemies, and his own insecurities, that seemed only ever fully overcome when he preformed in battle. And finally, it fleshes out the important context of Custer both as a man of his times and out of step with those times. This portrait of a changing America as it was in the second half of the 19th century is perhaps the best aspect of this study.
For all that has been written about him, George Armstrong Custer largely remains a moveable myth. He has been portrayed as a hero, a martyr, a villain, a racist, and a fool. His legend has changed to suit the times and political climate in which it is told. Stiles’s book is not an attempt to rehabilitate Custer’s reputation — it’s an intense warts and all examination. But it definitely aims to remove his story from the realm of legend and easy propaganda, and instead reveal the history of the man behind the American myth. ...more
The Myth of the Lost Cause is a point by point refutation of what Bonekemper calls, “the most successful propaganda campaign in American history.” If The Myth of the Lost Cause is a point by point refutation of what Bonekemper calls, “the most successful propaganda campaign in American history.” If you are at all familiar with this Cultural myth, you’re not likely to find anything new here. What the author does for us, though, is to organize the information into a concise and convincing volume.
He begins with a brief overview of The Lost Cause Myth. He explains why the South needed it, why the North tolerated it, who created it, and how it eventually became accepted as historical by most everybody. He then lists the individual components that make up the Myth. Finally, he gives each point, from the War wasn’t about Slavery, to Grant was a bull-headed butcher, it’s own chapter where he thoroughly debunks it with primary sources, historians, and logic. At the end, he gives a brief summation of what he has already covered.
This isn’t a flashy presentation. It’s simply broken down in such a methodical, orderly manner that the information becomes that much more valuable to you, even if you already knew it....more
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