Mystic Chords of Memory: Civil War Battlefields and Historic Sites Recaptured

Customer Reviews:

The greatest test for The Great Republic.......2000-01-14

Writing on the U.S. Civil War must be a daunting task for any author. The vast coliseum of scholarship where so many have been and so many are yet to go leaves little scope for something different or new. Somehow, though, David Eicher's "Mystic Chords of Memory" is a refreshing photographic look at America's supreme hour.

The author has seemingly visited every battlefield, seen every monument, heard every story, read every text, letter and gravestone. From Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theatre, there are "then and now" photographs of many of the key places in that great conflict. The "now" photos from Eicher's own albums are splendid, evocative modern portraits of their black and white kin placed nearby. The photographs are matched by Eicher's simple and plain prose, brisk with quotes from the old generals, their soldiers and their families.

Eicher's book seems to share a similar ancestry to Ken Burns' masterful civil war television series. Both employ simple and elegant approaches to the task of conveying meaning to the conflict. Like Burns, Eicher doesn't waste time with interpretative Rubik's cubes. To Eicher, the Civil War is basic history - bloody, tragic, wasteful - but pure and simple history just the same. Get on with the pictures, stories and bonding with the old heroes; leave quarrel and contention to others.

Book Description

No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.

In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.

Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.

Customer Reviews:

The South Wins the Reconstruction.......2007-09-22

A nation's memory is composed of many facets some of which are mythical while others are more accurate. David W. Blight's book examines in detail how American memory of the Civil War during the period from 1863, the war's turning point, to 1915, its semicentennial, was constructed. His dissection of this memory revolves around his primary theme of the interplay of race and reunion and how reunion triumphed over emancipation: Southern white-supremacists joined with Northern and Southern reconciliationists to overcome emancipationists' efforts. He analyzes in detail the various facets of the composition and formation of this memory providing a valuable avenue for understanding the fifty-two years he covers and also insights to American racial history to the twenty-first century.

Race and Reunion uses many primary sources covering a broad range of thought, including fiction and nonfiction, which gives his book give a comprehensive view of the many aspects of the memory of the war. Several of these sources show the surprising overt intention of some Southerners soon after the war to ensure that not only would Reconstruction be overthrown but that the South would return to the status quo antebellum by promulgating its view of the war. Politics helped sink radical Reconstruction and efforts of Southern writers and historians ensured that the Southern view of history would prevail. Slavery could not be reinstituted, but the subservient relationship of blacks could, and through the efforts of Southern writers, orators, politicians, and much physical violence, it was. Jim Crow laws then ensured resubjugation of blacks.

Southern women's groups, writers in periodicals such as the Southern Magazine and later the papers published by the Southern Historical Society, joined with unreconstructed rebels such as former General Jubal A. Early to attempt "to vindicate Southern secession and glorify the Confederate soldier ... [and] to launch a propaganda assault on popular history and memory (p. 79)." Some Southern authors even made the amazing argument that had the North not begun the war, the South would have ended slavery on its own. In addition, because the North, especially New England, was responsible for transporting slaves from Africa to America, it was more blameworthy than the South for the institution of slavery; therefore, since all shared responsibility and blame, neither section should be singled out.

The Southern "Lost Cause" school formed to help Southerners cope with the devastating military and economic losses and to ensure that its military loss would not carry over to political and social arenas. It joined with the romantic "moonlight and magnolia" view in the late nineteenth century which was epitomized by D.W. Griffith's 1915 Birth of a Nation film epic. The film graphically portrayed virtually all of the stereotypes espoused by the Lost Cause school most importantly showing how child-like blacks adhered to the Southern cause and detailed the "evils" of Radical Republican Reconstruction which included black rule, Northern Carpetbaggers, and Southern Scalawags.

One of the chief tenets of the Lost Cause school was its portrayal of black slaves by writers such as Nelson Page as faithful, loyal workers and servants who actually benefited by slavery. Slavery took untutored, uneducated, pagan, non-English speaking savages and gave them Christianity, the English language, and worthwhile skills needed to become civilized. Here, slaves loved their masters and were better off under slavery than they were under Reconstruction.

The white Southern efforts to restore its antebellum weltanschauung succeeded for many reasons, the primary one being the desire found in most white Americans to come to a final resolution for the devastation and death brought by the war. Once both sides passed the initial period of shock and anger immediately after the war, moves towards reconciliation began especially among veterans. The Lost Cause school tenet which celebrated the valor, patriotism, and sacrifices of the Southern soldier soon accepted white Northern soldiers as part of that cohort. Shared memories of these soldiers helped to paper over hatreds engendered during the war except for some who still carried memories of prisoner of war experiences. But despite these, most veterans came to share the common experiences of war and their reconciliation helped the sections to join in mutually forgetting the horrors of war and in the celebration of the soldiers' valor. The famous 1913 Gettysburg reunion of veterans from both sides epitomized this spirit. In this spirit of forgetting and of a new nationalism, the "Race Problem" was shunted aside as too divisive and difficult to resolve. Too, the majority of whites saw no evils in resubjugation of blacks believing that emancipation was sufficient by itself. The "Separate but equal" doctrine promulgated by the U.S. Supreme Court its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision was acceptable to whites. Certainly white society did not want blacks as social equals.

Race and Reunion is an extraordinarily valuable book. Despite some unnecessary repetitions of its theme perhaps due to the book's somewhat non-sequential structure, its lucid depiction of how the South's view of the Civil War overcame emancipationist's efforts is clearly shown by his use of a plethora of sources. Especially important is his effective use of black citizens including authors, speakers, clergy, veterans, former slaves, and college professors, to portray black majority and minority views. Despite efforts of writers like W. E. B. Du Bois, blacks lost most of the benefits of emancipation but more importantly, the Southern views of the war persisted long after 1915 as the established American memory. Not until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's was the South's victory in establishing its memory of the Civil War as the "correct" American history overcome.

A top pick.......2006-01-05

Race and Reunion is definitely on my "top ten list" for Civil War books. The story of how the war was remembered, and its significance debated is as important, if not more so, as the various battles. Blight uses a wide range of sources North and South, concluding his narrative with the 50th anniversary commemorations.
I agree somewhat with the critique that that Blight is too dismissive of the positives of the re-unionist movement. Although post 1876 re-unionism helped ensconce Jim Crow, the genuine embrace of moderate northerners and southerners was beneficial to nationalist growth to such an extent it is now taken for granted. You might compare the French and American Armies of World War I if you don't think there was a positive effect of such a reunion; the legacy of the French Revolution being bitterer. I would recommend reading Ari Hoogenboom's biography of Rutherford B. Hayes for further evidence of the positives of the reunion movement.

The Civil War in American Memory.......2005-10-24

If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?" Fredrick Douglass, an African American and leading abolitionist during the Civil War era, realized the importance of this question at the conclusion of the war. The Confederacy may have been defeated on the battlefield, but how Americans entered the meaning of the war into their historical consciousnesses had major implications for the United States. In his classic essay titled "What is a Nation?" Ernest Renan discussed the concept of memory and how citizens' remembrances of events contribute to nation-building. Furthermore, he asserted that a nation requires a great deal of forgetting. In Race and Reunion, David Blight, a professor of History and black studies at Amherst College, examines three different visions, or memories, that Americans formed in regards to how they interpreted the meaning of the Civil War. These three different memories competed with one another and in the end one memory gained widespread acceptance while the essence of the Civil War was forgotten. As a result of this, the North and South put their differences behind them and reconciled, but at the same time the races divided.

Blight's monograph illustrates that different memories - the reconciliationist, emancipationist, and followers of the "Lost Cause" - were held by different groups of people following the war. The Civil War caused an enormous amount of death and destruction and as a result the government needed to decide if they wanted the country to heal or if they wanted to impose justice on the South. Frederick Douglass believed, "There was a right side and a wrong side in the late war" and wanted the federal government to implement policies that would protect the recently freed slaves and bring them to an equal status with their former masters. For a brief period following the war, the Radical Republicans seemed to have some success with securing rights for the blacks through the federal government. However, as followers of the "Lost Cause" began to promulgate their beliefs, the meaning of the Civil War began to be forgotten and historical amnesia began to set in. Through violence and measures taken to write history to support the Southern cause by placing the blame of the war on the North, the emancipationist vision of the war began to fade.

Blight focuses on examining the reconciliationist vision of the war and how this memory became enmeshed in the minds of most Americans. Albion Tourgée, a literary figure of the time that adopted an emancipationist vision, asserted, "Only fools forget the causes of war." Yet forgetting the meaning of the war is exactly what happened in the fifty years following America's second revolution. Facing the difficulty of securing rights for the emancipated slaves in the South, the Republicans curtailed their commitment to African Americans. No other event signifies this retreat than the Compromise of 1877 in which Samuel Tilden agreed to let Rutherford Hayes take the presidency under the condition that the last remaining Union soldiers would leave the Southern states. This event legitimized allowing the sections to reconcile while the rights of the blacks were denied. This sense of reconciliation can be found amongst the soldiers themselves. Rather than focusing on the causes of the war, past soldiers, both North and South, found commonality in the suffering, bravery, and honor that they experienced during the war. The photo that Blight includes on page 389 illustrates this idea. Taken during the semi-centennial celebration of the battle of Gettysburg in 1913, the photo shows ex-Confederate and Union soldiers clasping hands over the stone wall located on the field where Pickett's charge took place. Clearly, the meaning of the war was gradually forgotten as the nation healed and the sections reconciled at the expense of African Americans.

Blight's greatest contribution is that he shows the importance of the role that memories play in the formation of a nation. Like Renan, he understands that how major events have been remembered, or forgotten, have major implications for a nation. Nation-building is a continuous, ongoing process. The ways in which people choose to remember significant events are directly related to this process. Blight uses various statements from a wide variety of individuals as evidence of how different people interpreted the meaning of the Civil War. For example, Blight includes many statements from Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to show how they were dissatisfied with the prevailing memory that the majority of Americans held of the Civil War. Special attention is also given to the contrasts between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. When Blight discusses the memory that was conjured from the followers of the Lost Cause, he mentions the role that Mildred Lewis Rutherford, historian of the United Daughters of the Confederacy from 1911 to 1916, had in writing a history of the war that alleviated the South of any wrongdoing. Central to the "Lost Cause" memory is Nelson Page, a Southern writer who showed, in a twisted sort of history, that slaves actually enjoyed living on the plantation and were happy to serve the owners. Moreover, D. W. Griffith's film Birth of Nation attempted to glorify the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed them as the saviors of a war torn south. Blight discusses these various individuals and shows how each contributed to the formation of the three memories that are central to his monograph. Hindsight has shown that the reconciliationist memory gained the most acceptance following the Civil War. As Blight explains in his prologue, "In the end, this is a story of how the forces of reconciliation overwhelmed the emancipationist vision in the national culture, how the inexorable drive for reunion both used and trumped race." Hence, "The essence of the war was...sacrificed on the altar of reunion."

Although the emancipationist memory faded into the subconsciousness of our nation's memory, it would appear once again a century after the Civil War. W.E.B. Du Bois was so insightful when he postulated, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." In a massive attempt to gain rights for African Americans in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement erupted and delivered the emancipationist vision to the forefront of American thought. Martin Luther King Junior realized what reconciliation had meant for the black race when he stated, "One hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free." Blight's Race and Reunion should be read by everyone. Writing in a clear, flowing pose and using a wide variety of sources including literature, Memorial Day orations, and monuments, he shows that the formation of different memories after the Civil War has had a deep impact on American nation-building. Moreover, and perhaps more significant, he explains the harm that was done to African Americans as the meaning of the Civil War was largely forgotten in the years that followed its conclusion.

A deeply flawed book.......2005-08-24

Despite book prizes and many good reviews, this is a deeply flawed book. The author states in his prologue that he will be selective about sources and what he will discuss in the book. This is not a good way for an author to introduce a subject which he clearly views as divisive in American history. Blight has an agenda and follows it throughout the narrative. The writer has a deep problem with the reconcialtion and reunion of the North and South after the Civil War and links everything to racism North and South. He portrays a reconciliation that is an unwritten conspiracy to subvert emancipation to sectional reconciliation. One glaring ommission in the book is that reconciliation was government policy promulgated by Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and Admiral Porter. It was a conscious decision to try to bring the South back into the Union in as easy a manner as possible without the retributions other nations extract from defeated foes. After Lincoln's death radical reconstruction exacted what revenge it could from the South. The South resents the excesses of Reconstruction. Throughout the book Blight fails to see how Reconstruction coupled with the stigma of defeat could legitimately influence Southern White thinking. Although not stated, Blight also seems to have the attitude that Reconstruction should have been a permanent state of affairs for the South. If a little reconstruction was good, a whole lot more would be better. It is not hard to imagine that Blight would have approved of "re-education camps" to deal with any lingering Southern hostility.
Blight's racial prism is often used to denigrate the efforts that Northerners made to free the slaves. As an example the Underground Railroad is treated as mostly myth in which White Northerners could make up or embellish stories about how they helped slaves escape. He gives credit to a few noble individuals but downplays the extent of White participation in the liberation of blacks.
Blight also overlooks the deep-seated American character that has spared excessive retribution in conflicts with our enemies. This applies to our attitudes to German and Japan after WWII. Far removed from the racial overtones of the Civil War, most Americans have tried to forget old animosities. This includes the veterans of more modern wars, just as it did the veterans of the Civil War. This is in sharp contrast to, for instance, British veterans of WWII in the Pacific who have never forgiven the Japanese for their atrocities.
Blight fails to examine the deep-seated belief that both Northerners and Southerners considered themselves Americans. Blight fails to examine the tragedy of the Civil War as the American Iliad. This concept has made the American Civil War a subject of deep interest not just to Americans but to people around the world. It was a war thrust upon the country but unsettled problems. As soon as it was over people wanted to return to a sense of a "normal" American. But this is not a part of Blight's race driven view of why the country so desperately wanted to unite after this most horrible of American wars. His is the conspiracy of some dark racial divide both North and South
Blight makes some important points regarding the Lost Cause mythology that has driven an enormous amount of study and writing over the decades since the Civil War ended. The segregation and racism of the South after Reonstruction is to be deplored. Racism also tainted the North, perhaps actually growing stronger than when blacks were honored by the Republican press during the Civil War as soldiers for the cause. Many Southerners still recite a history that exempts slavery as the root cause of the war despite the decades of conflict which led up to the final eruption into outright war. Southerners have had a hard time accepting the defeat by the North during the war except through overwhelming force. It is hard to accept that an army of "mudsills" defeated the flower of Southern manhood.
The reason to read this book is to understand how many in the academic world always look for the worst in American society. In many ways it is not about the history of the reunion of the North and South after the Civil War. It is a deep seated view that America is permanently tainted by racism and other deep flaws of character. Unfortunately, many have taken this book as a "bible" of sorts to interpret the Civil War and the brave men both North and South who fought it and then tried to make America whole again.

A beautiful work of history.......2004-11-17

On the canvas of American historical memory, it proved much easier to unite the Blue and the Gray than it has to connect the black with the white. David Blight's brilliant work on the memory of the Civil War argues that in the fifty years following General Lee's surrender, the war's deepest meanings were debated and negotiated, with crucial consequences for the future of the nation. In the end, the need for sectional reunion combined with virulent white supremacy to inculcate a purposeful forgetting of the racial underpinning and egalitarian possibility of the Civil War. The North allowed the South to completely dictate the terms on which the conflict would be remembered, subscribing to a narrative in which the mutual valor of soldiers from both sections was elevated, the blame for slavery eradicated, and African Americans left to fend for themselves in the era of Jim Crow.
Blight's principal contribution, beyond providing the most complete and profound study of historical memory and the Civil War yet attempted, is his suggestion that culture and memory, not politics, were primarily responsible for the nation's failure to remain true to the emancipationist meaning of the war. Tracing the development of the memory of the Civil War in American consciousness from the 1863 Gettysburg Address to the all-white North/South reunion that commemorated the battle of Gettysburg 50 years later, Blight argues that the South, through the work of historical societies, Lost Cause novelists, women's groups, and veterans associations, "forged one of the most highly orchestrated grassroots partisan histories ever conceived," in which both sections shared the blame equally and the racial causes and consequences of the war were conspicuously silent. In its zeal to heal the scars of the war and reconstruction, the North accepted the southern reading of history, choosing reunion over race, and leaving the egalitarian promises of the war unfulfilled. In this cultural context, African American efforts to remember the racial meaning of the war were marginalized as completely as were African Americans themselves.
For all its considerable brilliance, Race and Reunion is slightly tarnished by the feeling of inevitability accorded to the processes described above. While expertly explaining how the South's victory in the realm of historical memory trumped the North's victory on the battlefield, Blight fails to explain how it could have been otherwise. One gets the sense that the North's failure to forcefully impose its own reading of the war immediately after the cessation of hostilities was its downfall - it seems that the emancipationist vision of the Civil War was doomed by 1866, due to the cataclysmic psychological impact of the war, the deep-rooted need for sectional reconciliation, and the greater ideological unity of the South. This slight criticism aside, Blight's work is a monumental achievement and an invaluable contribution to the study of the Civil War which wrests the conflict from the clutches of tweed-clad 19th century historians and re-enactors in blue and gray, placing it squarely in the center of the American experience.

Average customer rating:

An astute and well written history book.
Good for Most
Good history
Nice broad perspective
Spreading the Myth

A Line In The Sand
Randy Roberts , and James S. Olson
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (Critical Issue)
A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
The Alamo Reader: A Study in History
Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Public Planet)

ASIN: 0684835444

Book Description

In late February and early March of 1836, the Mexican Army under the command of General Antonio López de Santa Anna besieged a small force of Anglo and Tejano rebels at a mission known as the Alamo. The defenders of the Alamo were in an impossible situation. They knew very little of the events taking place outside the mission walls. They did not have much of an understanding of Santa Anna or of his government in Mexico City. They sent out contradictory messages, they received contradictory communications, they moved blindly and planned in the dark. And in the dark early morning of March 6, they died.

In that brief, confusing, and deadly encounter, one of America's most potent symbols was born. The story of the last stand at the Alamo grew from a Texas rallying cry, to a national slogan, to a phenomenon of popular culture and presidential politics. Yet it has been a hotly contested symbol from the first. Questions remain about what really happened: Did William Travis really draw a line in the sand? Did Davy Crockett die fighting, surrounded by the bodies of two dozen of the enemy? And what of the participants' motives and purposes? Were the Texans justified in their rebellion? Were they sincere patriots making a last stand for freedom and liberty, or were they a ragtag collection of greedy men-on-the-make, washed-up politicians, and backwoods bullies, Americans bent on extending American slavery into a foreign land?

The full story of the Alamo -- from the weeks and months that led up to the fateful encounter to the movies and speeches that continue to remember it today -- is a quintessential story of America's past and a fascinating window into our collective memory. In A Line in the Sand, acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and James Olson use a wealth of archival sources, including the diary of José Enrique de la Peña, along with important and little-used Mexican documents, to retell the story of the Alamo for a new generation of Americans. They explain what happened from the perspective of all parties, not just Anglo and Mexican soldiers, but also Tejano allies and bystanders. They delve anew into the mysteries of Crockett's final hours and Travis's famous rhetoric. Finally, they show how preservationists, television and movie producers, historians, and politicians have become the Alamo's major interpreters. Walt Disney, John Wayne, and scores of journalists and cultural critics have used the Alamo to contest the very meaning of America, and thereby helped us all to "remember the Alamo."

Download Description

San Antonio, Texas, 1836. A Mexican army led by Santa Anna attacks a small fort called the Alamo. Disputes still rage over exactly what happened, why it happened, and how it should be remembered. Indeed, the battles fought over the memory of the Alamo have been almost as fierce as their subject. In a riveting combination of history and cultural analysis, historians Randy Roberts and James N. Olson blend a rich narrative of the battle -- told from the perspectives of both the Anglo and Mexican troops -- drawing from a wide range of sources, including newly released documents from Mexican military archives and just-discovered pages of the famous de la Pena diary. Still controversial after all these years, the events at the Alamo pose some fascinating questions: Did Crockett really die a hero, or did he surrender before a summary execution? And why have Americans built a shrine for an event that lasted no more than ninety minutes, and inflated it into one of the country's biggest tourist attractions? A full explanation of the San Antonio encounter requires a peeling back of many layers. With powerful writing, Roberts and Olson retell the story of a great American myth, and show how and why it endures. This original volume is sure to change the way readers "Remember the Alamo".

Customer Reviews:

An astute and well written history book........2007-03-07

It was a pleasure to read this book, very informative, well researched and finely written. Whatever your views are of the Alamo and its place in the history of Texas; this book was written by two astute historians with a careful attention to detail with reasoned views and opinions.

Brief but informative and concise histories are given of Travis, Crockett, Bowie, Santa Anna and the events that lead them to a common junction at the Alamo in 1836. My only exposure to the Alamo before this book was the John Wayne movie, so it was great to be able to read this professional account of the history of the Alamo and also its post history into the 21st century.

The authors also make the valid point that native Indians occupied Texas for hundreds of years before any Spanish, Mexican or Anglo claims on it. The history of Texas comes alive in this book and the authors have done a great job as this book is flows smoothly and logically and is accessible to the general history buff.

Good for Most.......2007-01-12

It was no big surprise to read about Santa Anna's negative effects on Mexico. Once you get through the first part of the book you'll have an easier time turning the pages.

Even for a native Texan, the book was definitely not what you'd expect of Travis if you've watched too many Alamo movies. If you're from South Texas you'll probably be surprised when you get near the end of the book.

The story of the battle and politicians of the time was quite interesting and kept my interest more than most parts. It's worth reading, but make sure to visit the Texan Cultures Institute too.

Good history.......2005-09-30

I was assigned to read this in a Texas history class at UT Arlington. So I expected it to be the typical politically correct, leftist, white-bashing I'd grown so accustomed to. I was pleasantly surprised. This book is honest and fair with all sides. It's what historians should strive for because it doesn't take sides. Roberts goes after truth, no matter who gets offended. And yes, sometimes that's the Mexicans. I was shocked to learn all about how Col. Travis abandoned his family, but I was impressed by his courage to the end. Now I feel certain that Santa Ana is the worst thing that ever happened to Mexico. And some of his generals were skilful enough to have won the war and honorable enough to have not executed Texas POWs. I highly recommend the book for anyone who wants to understand this major piece of American history.

Nice broad perspective.......2004-06-08

Just because this book does not agree 100% with Jeff Long is no reason to condemn it. A topic like the Alamo is supposed to include room for debate and disagreement. Although the book may have been written partly in response to Long's version of the Alamo, I feel it also serves as a viable alternative to the current dominant historiography on the Alamo (Hardin and Huffines are good, but they would agree, I think, that theirs is not the "last word"). This is a balanced account which, as other reviewers have noted, includes a complete post-1836 history of the Alamo. A good example of the common-sense historical honesty in this book comes in part of the authors' treatment of the Crockett debate: "...what had been the end of Davy Crockett?...Scores of people had an answer to the question, but their answers banged against one another, knocking silly any hope of discovering the truth."(p.196) There will never be a "last word" on the Alamo, but I do recommend this book to those interested in the topic.

Spreading the Myth.......2004-04-20

Do not be fooled by what this book aspires to be. The authors claim this is an even-handed, accurate retelling of the Battle of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution, but it adds nothing new to the oversimplified accounts you'd find in a 4th grade Texas history book.
The book tries still portrays the Alamo defenders as flawless men of great honor... mythical heroes fighting for a just cause. They try to argue that the Texas Revolution was similar to the American Revolution. They could not be further from the truth; The two events had little in common. The Texas Revolution consisted of a group of opportunistic American settlers who took advantage of the internal turmoils in Mexico at the time to seize a piece of property they had long set their eyes on. It was a prime example of Manifest Destiny at it's most voracious, if you'd like to put a label on it.
The Mexican side of the story gets lost in this book, despite the authors' claim at being unbiased. If you'd like to read an informative book on the subject, pick up Jeff Long's "Duel of the Eagles". That book is indeed an eye-opener (at least for the open-minded). On the other hand, this book might as well had been written by the Daughters of the Texas Revolution for distribution at the Alamo gift shop! It's a badly written history book.

Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens

Average customer rating:

Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens
Andrew Wolpert
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Greece | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Democracy | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0801867908

Book Description

In 404 b.c. the Peloponnesian War finally came to an end, when the Athenians, starved into submission, were forced to accept Sparta's terms of surrender. Shortly afterwards a group of thirty conspirators, with Spartan backing ("the Thirty"), overthrew the democracy and established a narrow oligarchy. Although the oligarchs were in power for only thirteen months, they killed more than 5 percent of the citizenry and terrorized the rest by confiscating the property of some and banishing many others. Despite this brutality, members of the democratic resistance movement that regained control of Athens came to terms with the oligarchs and agreed to an amnesty that protected collaborators from prosecution for all but the most severe crimes.

The war and subsequent reconciliation of Athenian society has been a rich field for historians of ancient Greece. From a rhetorical and ideological standpoint, this period is unique because of the extraordinary lengths to which the Athenians went to maintain peace. In Remembering Defeat, Andrew Wolpert claims that the peace was "negotiated and constructed in civic discourse" and not imposed upon the populace. Rather than explaining why the reconciliation was successful, as a way of shedding light on changes in Athenian ideology Wolpert uses public speeches of the early fourth century to consider how the Athenians confronted the troubling memories of defeat and civil war, and how they explained to themselves an agreement that allowed the conspirators and their collaborators to go unpunished. Encompassing rhetorical analysis, trauma studies, and recent scholarship on identity, memory, and law, Wolpert's study sheds new light on a pivotal period in Athens' history.

If White Kids Die: Memories of a Civil Rights Movement Volunteer

Average customer rating:

A Moment in Time

If White Kids Die: Memories of a Civil Rights Movement Volunteer
Dick J. Reavis
Manufacturer: University of North Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

African-American & Black | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Discrimination & Racism | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 1574411292

Customer Reviews:

A Moment in Time.......2001-07-08

This book was recommended by a friend who is mentioned in the book. Otherwise I probably would not have bought it. However I found it easy to read and very enlightening. I graduated from high school in 1962 from a small town in the South. Although my path took me a different direction; I was fascinated by Dick Reavis' accounts of his experiences at voter registration in a small Southern town. He is certainly very honest in his portrayal of his contributions to the movement. Learning more about the struggles of the college students and the people in the city where they worked helped me have a better understanding of the issues they were trying to help change. I was very naive back then and quite frankly unaware of some of the restrictions that were imposed on African Americans at that time. Thanks for enlightening me. I intend to do more reading on this important chapter in American history.

INDIAN WAR VETERANS: Memories of Army Life and Campaigns in the West, 1864-1898

Average customer rating:

Winning the West
Not to be missed
Mr. Greene does it again.
Great Book.

INDIAN WAR VETERANS: Memories of Army Life and Campaigns in the West, 1864-1898
Jerome Greene
Manufacturer: Savas Beatie
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Gall: Lakota War Chief
A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captivities in the West 1830-1885
Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes 1850-1890
The Army and the Indian (Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890)
Conquering the Southern Plains (Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890)

ASIN: 193271426X

Book Description

The decades-long military campaign for the American West is an endlessly fascinating topic, and award-winning author Jerome A. Greene adds substantially to this genre with Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life and Campaigns in the West, 1864-1898. Greene's study presents the first comprehensive collection of veteran (primarily former enlistedsoldiers') reminiscences. The vast majority of these writings have never before seen wide circulation.

Indian War Veterans addresses soldiers' experiences throughout the area of the trans-Mississippi West. As readers will quickly discover, the depth and breadth of coverage is truly monumental. Topics include recollections of fighting with Custer and the mutilation of the dead at Little Bighorn, the Fetterman fight, the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, battles at Powder River and Rosebud Creek, fighting Crazy Horse at Wolf Mountains, Geronimo and the Apache wars, the Ute and Modoc wars, Wounded Knee, and much more. The remembrances also include selections as diverse as "Christmas at Fort Robinson," "Service with the Eighteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry," and "Chasing the Apache Kid."

These carefully drawn recollections derive from a wide array of sources, including manuscript and private collections, veterans' scrapbooks, obscure newspapers, and private veterans' statements. A special introductory essay about Indian war veterans contains new material about their post-service organizations all the way into the 1960s.

Complimenting the riveting entries are dozens of previously unpublished photographs. Readers will additionally find a gallery of never-before-seen full-color plates displaying a wide variety of Indian War Veterans' badges, medals, and associated materials.

No other book discusses the post-army lives of these men or presents their recollections of army life as thoroughly as Greene's Indian War Veterans. This groundbreaking study will appeal to lay readers, historians, site visitors and interpreters, Civil War and Indian wars enthusiasts, collectors, museum curators, and archeologists. "A treasure-trove of original sources on the Indian wars, an essential addition to every library on the subject." --Paul A. Hutton, University of New Mexico, and the author of "Phil Sheridan and his Army and "The Custer Reader." About the Author: Jerome A. Greene is an award-winning author and historian with the National Park Service. His books include The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781, Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, Morning Star Dawn: The Powder River Expedition and the Northern Cheyenne, 1876, and Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1867-1869. He resides in Colorado.

Customer Reviews:

Winning the West.......2007-08-24

INDIAN WAR VETERANS, Memories of Army Life and Campaigns in the West, 1864-1898, by Jerome A. Greene, Savas Beatie, New York (2007), 388 pages, $45.00.

This comprehensive compilation of essentially enlisted men's reminiscences is a superb collection of actual anecdotes, recollections, and experiences by the men who were there. Being enlisted men, their stories are limited to their actual tactile hands-on encounters. In a sense this is thoroughly refreshing; this is quite different from the all to frequent recollections of those in command that tend to justify their actions and critique their colleagues. As a result there are few explanations as to why they were sent to do what they did, but intense detail on what they saw and felt as participants. This is a prime history of observations by those who were there. Many have never before been published or were published in arcane publications over a century ago and for all practical purposes have been unavailable to the serious scholar or student. The emphasis is on the Plains campaigns but those against the Apache and the Southwest are not ignored. A chapter on the ill-fated Custer expedition is to be expected, but the first hand accounts are new. The details on the Rosebud and Powder River fights are excellent. Often overlooked campaigns and skirmishes are also included such as those of the Modoc War of 1873, Utah's Black Hawk War of 1865, the Chippewa Uprising of 1898, etc.

It should be noted that not all the recollections are those of battles. There are several fascinating remembrances of the cuisine, climate (especially the winters), geography, the Indians themselves and their habitat, the buffalo, Christmas, military life as a cavalryman, and military life as an infantryman. All in all, these writings by the men who lived through these times are not to be missed.

Of distinct note for the true aficionado of the Indian Wars is the lengthy introduction which details the sundries Indian Wars veterans associations, their histories, decorations (previously almost impossible to find photographs of many of their medals are provided), leaders, and their lobbying efforts before Congress for pension benefits and recognition for their noteworthy achievements as soldiers "winning the West." The only criticism one can proffer at all, and it is a minor one, is that the information furnished regarding the Order of Indian Wars of the United States is less than currently accurate. This sodality may have gone into partial hibernation from the 1940s and into the 1990s, but it never actually ceased to function; it continued to have an annual luncheon for its members. It reinitiated full functioning in the 1990s and is alive and well today. This reviewer strongly endorses this work to anyone sincerely interested in the Indian Wars of the second half of the nineteenth century and the intrepid men who fought them.

Not to be missed.......2007-04-19

Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life and Campaigns in the West 1864-1898 provides the first comprehensive collection of veteran reminiscences in print, and is a 'must' for any college-level holding strong in either American Indian history and culture or American military history. Soldiers' experiences are recounted, from fighting with Custer to Powder River battles, Wounded Knee and more. A range of sources compliments entries which are packed with firsthand observation and history, while dozens of previously unpublished photos and two original maps round out the information. INDIAN WAR VETERANS: MEMORIES OF ARMY LIFE AND CAMPAIGNS IN THE WEST, 1864-1898 is not to be missed by any holding seeking definitive coverage of Indian or American military history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Mr. Greene does it again........2007-04-16

A great collection of articles of Indian War veterans covering many topics. Also included is background of indian war veterans associations and a photo insert of Indian war medals and badges. Hopefully Mr. Greene will put out a volume 2 like this one.Dont pass this book up as Mr. Greene is one of the best writers of the Indian Wars we have.

Great Book........2007-03-09

This is a must buy book. Greene's scholarship is once again second to none when it comes to the Old West. His lucid writing and narrative style make this book a real pleasure to read.

Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory

Average customer rating:

an important work
Passages to Freedom by Blight

Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory
David Blight
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement
His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad
Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad as Told by Levi Coffin and William Still
Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform
The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A Comprehensive History (Dover African-American Books)

ASIN: 006085118X
Release Date: 2006-01-24

Book Description

Few things have defined America as much as slavery. In the wake of emancipation the story of the Underground Railroad has become a seemingly irresistible part of American historical consciousness. This stirring drama is one Americans have needed to tell and retell and pass on to their children. But just how much of the Underground Railroad is real, how much legend and mythology, how much invention? Passages to Freedom sets out to answer this question and place it within the context of slavery, emancipation, and its aftermath.

Published on the occasion of the opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Passages to Freedom brings home the reality of slavery's destructiveness. This distinguished yet accessible volume offers a galvanizing look at how the brave journey out of slavery both haunts and inspires us today.

Customer Reviews:

an important work.......2006-12-03

I found this a valuable contribution for understanding this complex history. Not the easiest read in the world, even for those who read lots of nonfiction histories. But excellent. A book I loved because it offers such a personal, rivetting account from the perspective of one heroic African American woman is the fictionalized account of the life of Harriet Tubman, "Home, Miss Moses." It's also not a super easy read but its fictionalized form carries us home. Readers should take a look at both.

Passages to Freedom by Blight.......2005-08-04

The pictures pre-dating and post-dating the Civil War are an extremely valuable part of the overall presentation. I would purchase the volume for the value of the portraits alone.
Famous slave hiding places, way stations, daring routes, Indian
assistance and crossings into the Caribbean and Mexico are depicted. The mid-1840s was the time of the famous Underground
Railroad. Aunt Lucy is depicted. She was a former slave. There is a 1792 view of the Mulberry Plantation with the manor, surrounding huts and a tree.

The 3 generations of slavery are described; namely,
- Charter Generation of the 1st arrivals
- The Plantation Generation of staple producers and cotton
growers
- The Revolutionary Generation of the late 18th century

A live slave auction was depicted in the Richmond of the 1850s.
Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad was described together with
important historical pictures. The Tubman property has survived
the centuries in Cayuga County, New York.

Overall, the work is a complete description and pictorial
presentation for students of American History, Afro-Asian
History, the Civil War and famous persons who lived and fought
for freedom in the early days of the American Revolution onward.
The acquisition would be very valuable for any personal library.

Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory

Average customer rating:

Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory

Manufacturer: University of Tennessee Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 1572332727

Book Description

In the decades following the Civil War, southerners erected hundreds of public sculptures, constructed architectural memorials, and created outdoor ritual spaces as means to express their deeply felt perspectives about the conflict. Built first in mourning and later in a wave of celebratory commemoration that peaked at the turn of the century, the sculptural monuments found across the region record the nostalgic views of Confederate veterans, their descendents, and especially their women. White women often led fund-raising campaigns to build the monuments, which carry inscriptions speaking of courage, duty, states' rights, and "northern aggression." The statues honor the common soldier as well as Confederate leaders such as Lee, Jackson, and Davis.

Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory is a richly illustrated collection of fourteen essays examining the ways in which these memorials—from Monument Avenue to Stone Mountain—and the public rituals surrounding them testify to the tenets of the Lost Cause, a romanticized narrative of the war. Several essays highlight the creative leading role played by women's groups in memorialization, while others explore the alternative ways in which people outside white southern culture—African Americans and Union supporters—wrote their very different histories on the southern landscape.

Amazon.com

Pickett's Charge--the Confederates' desperate (and failed) attempt to break the Union lines on the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg--is best remembered as the turning point of the U.S. Civil War. But Penn State historian Carol Reardon reveals how hard it is to remember the past accurately, especially when an event such as this one so quickly slipped into myth. She writes, "From the time the battle smoke cleared, Pickett's Charge took on this chameleonlike aspect and, through a variety of carefully constructed nuances, adjusted superbly to satisfy the changing needs of Northerners, Southerners, and, finally, the entire nation." With care and detail, Reardon's fascinating book teaches a lesson in the uses and misuses of history.

Book Description

If, as many have argued, the Civil War is the most crucial moment in our national life and Gettysburg its turning point, then the climax of the climax, the central moment of our history, must be Pickett's Charge. But as Carol Reardon notes, the Civil War saw many other daring assaults and stout defenses. Why, then, is it Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg--and not, for example, Richardson's Charge at Antietam or Humphreys's Assault at Fredericksburg--that looms so large in the popular imagination?

As this innovative study reveals, by examining the events of 3 July 1863 through the selective and evocative lens of "memory" we can learn much about why Pickett's Charge endures so strongly in the American imagination. Over the years, soldiers, journalists, veterans, politicians, orators, artists, poets, and educators, Northerners and Southerners alike, shaped, revised, and even sacrificed the "history'' of the charge to create "memories" that met ever-shifting needs and deeply felt values. Reardon shows that the story told today of Pickett's Charge is really an amalgam of history and memory. The evolution of that mix, she concludes, tells us much about how we come to understand our nation's past.

Customer Reviews:

The War Over The Battle.......2004-06-17

"Pickett's Charge In History And Memory" begins with the question as to why this charge, of all the charges of the Civil War, has captured and held the imagination of a nation for over 140 years. This is not the book in which to find the history of the battle of July 3, 1863. This book records the battle over the legacy, the memory and the place in history of that historic charge.
The tenor of this book came as a surprise to me. I had always viewed Pickett's Charge as an ill conceived, vain attack, the only redeeming virtue of which was the heroism of the Confederate troops as they marched to slaughter. I had always viewed Pickett as a goat, rather than a hero. The only excuse which I saw for Pickett was that he only carried out orders for which he was not responsible. I learned that my view is far conventional wisdom.

Carol Reardon does a good job of documenting the war over the battle from the original memories up to the most recent literature and films on the subject. She begins by pointing out that the experience of each participant was limited to the field of vision of each individual, requiring the piecing together of many individual memories in order to assemble the puzzle.

The first public reports of the battle in newspapers were so fragmented that it took weeks before a consensus was reached as to which side had won. Some early reports spoke of a glorious Confederate route of the Yankees. In time, reality sank in and reports turned into a search for a scapegoat on whom to lay the blame for Virginia's glorious failure. Pickett's Charge soon became a highpoint of Virginia's martial glory to be defended from all attackers. Suspicion soon focused on troops from other states, prominently North Carolina, and other commanders, who were said to have failed to provide needed support. This led to a rival claims that troops from North Carolina and other states had done their share and, according to some observers, actually established a high water mark surpassing that established by Pickett's troops at The Angle. I was surprised to learn that not all of the troops in the Charge were under the command of General Pickett. Even the moniker of "Pickett's Charge" came under repeated attack. Squabbles among Confederate heros led to disputes among union troops as to who deserved credit for having stopped the charge. The title of decisive action of the battle of the war was challenged by veterans of Little Round Top and other actions during the battle.

Not only was Pickett a hero of Virginia, but, as the soldier most closely identified with Richmond, his memory benefited from the historical scholarship originating in that city. His funeral attracted renewed attention to the Charge and his widow served, for many years, as a focal point for Pickett devotees.

Through the years, conflicts raged over the location of the markers which so serenely tower over the battlefield today. Commemorations at quarter century intervals renewed rivalries and animosities for a century.

The controversial Gen. Longstreet keeps coming up throughout the book.

Even recent books and films continue to present the "spins" which have been twirling since the days immediately after battle. After many intervening wars, Pickett's Charge remains a subject of great controversy.

Each reader is left to formulate his own answer the original question, why have all other charges paled in comparison to Pickett's Charge in public memory and history? My answer is that it was a major attack, resulting in heavy casualties, which was a significant determinant of the outcome of the war. Its veterans and partisans engaged those of other actions on the fields of scholarship and literature. Clashes of egos as great as the clashes of arms continued to keep and even raise the Charge in public imagination.

Read this book. You will enjoy it. Then write your own review with your answer to the question.

The Battle Over The Battle.......2004-06-17

The tenor of this book came as a surprise to me. I had always viewed Pickett's Charge as an ill conceived, vain attack, the only redeeming virtue of which was the heroism of the Confederate troops as they marched to slaughter. I had always viewed Pickett as a goat, rather than a hero. The only excuse which I saw for Pickett was that he only carried out orders for which he was not responsible. I learned that my view is far conventional wisdom.

Carol Reardon does a good job of documenting the battle over the battle from the original memories up to the most recent literature and films on the subject. She begins by pointing out that the experience of each participant was limited to the field of vision of each individual, requiring the piecing together of many individual memories in order to assemble the puzzle.

The controversial Gen. Longstreet keeps coming up throughout the book.

Read this book. You will enjoy it. Then write your own review with your answer to the question.

How Americans have viewed Pickett's Charge.......2004-05-11

The third day, July 3, 1863, of the Battle of Gettysburg has become immortalized by what is commonly referred to as Pickett's Charge. After an extensive cannonade, a Southern infantry forced crossed about one mile of open ground to attach the Union position on the center of Cemetery Ridge. A small number of Confederate troops reached and briefly penetrated the Union defense. The attack was repulsed with great loss to the Confederate troops. The Battle of Gettysburg was essentially over and the Confederate Army began a long and difficult retreat the next day.

These are some of the bare-boned facts about Pickett's charge. General George Pickett, a subordinate of General Longstreet, commanded the right wing of the Confederate assault leading troops from Virginia. The left wing of the assault was under the command of Generals Pettigrew and Trimble from the Corps of Confederate General A.P. Hill. The assault force on the left included troops from North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere in the South. There was also a small column to the right of Pickett's troops that included soldiers from Florida and Georgia.

Professor Carol Reardon's study, "Pickett's Charge in History and Memory" (1997) eloquently explores how and why the events of the third day at Gettysburg have assumed legendary, heroic status among so many Americans over the years. Professor Reardon gives only the briefest account of the battle itself and focuses instead on the many imponderables and uncertainties in the historical record. She has some important things to say about skepticism regarding the initial battlefield accounts, some of which were written many years after the event when memories had turned and faded. She has even more important things to say about how and why Pickett's charge became and remains a subject for contention and about why many people still find it a climactic moment of the Civil War and of American history.

Professor Reardon describes how Virginians and North Carolinians fought between themselves about which troops had been braver and had carried more of the brunt of the failed assault. She discusses how the Charge became legendary as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy" and how its repulse became viewed as sealing the fate of the Confederacy. Beginning in the mid-1870s Union and Confederate Veterans met on the Gettysburg Battlefield to relive their memories of the Charge. The former enemies had reconciled and become friends. Pickett's Charge became a symbol of the valor, the heroism, and the common bond of soldiering shared by the troops on both sides. The memory of Pickett's charge helped reunite the United States. It also, unhappily, promoted a "Lost Cause", romanticized view of the Old South and tended to draw the Nation's attention away from the issues of slavery and of race relations that had precipitated the Civil War.

I found Professor Reardon's descriptions of the reunions at Gettysburg between veterans in 1877 and 1913 the most moving and interesting part of the book, as they showed clearly the symbolic character that Pickett's Charge had assumed. Pickett's Charge became an emblem of the nature of the Civil War and of the subsequent reconciliation between North and South.

Professor Reardon also devotes more attention to the Union side of the line than is sometimes accorded in studies of the Charge. Interestingly, she points out that Union veterans of the first and second days of Gettysburg -- the soldiers in Sickle's Third Corps, the defenders of Culp's and Cemetery Hills, among others, sometimes felt slighted at the attention lavished on the third day of the Battle at the expense of their contributions.

In recent years, perhaps under the influence of Scharra's novel, "The Killer Angels" the Union defense of Little Round Top under Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine have rivalled Pickett's Charge in accounts of the climactic moment of the Battle. Professor Reardon does not address this revival of interest in Little Round Top. It would be interesting to explore it in a manner analogous to her treatment of the Charge.

I think many modern accounts of the Charge tend to emphasize its futility, the highly remote chances it had of success, and the tremendous loss of life that followed in its wake. This is a more modernistic approach to the Charge than the approach based upon a shared valor and heroism that Professor Reardon discusses. The modern sensibility has affected again the way Americans view the Charge.

Professor Reardon has written a thoughtful meditation of Pickett's charge and its interpretation and reinterpretation over the years. She views her subject seriously and with reverence. She concludes her book with the words of a Gettysburg veteran writing in 1908 (p.213): "Tradition, story, history -- all will not efface the true, grand epic of Gettysburg."

Truth Ever Elusive.......2000-05-30

Ms. Reardon's wonderful book underscores the challenge that we all face as we read and attempt to separate fact from fiction and fancy.This book is a case study in the mysterious confluence of objective history and subjective history. Ms Reardon deftly takes the reader from July 3, 1863, the day of Pickett's Charge, to the present day and shows how elusive the truth is. As an avid student of the American Civil War in particular and history in general,I learned three very important lessons from Ms Reardon. First, the thundering violence and confusion of battle make the search for the truth exceedingly difficult. The actual participants in Pickett's Charge were able to vividly and tellingly relate their emotions at the time. However, their reports of actual events and actions were understandably contradictory. Second, as Ms Reardon illuminates throughout the book, the careful reader must consider the possible motives of the author while reading the work. Ms Reardon demonstrates that the Virginia Historical Society was more interested in protecting state pride than searching for the truth. The numerous instances of conflicting accounts of this single day of the Civil War reminds me of Richard Nixon's resopnse to the question of how history will judge him : "It depends on who writes the history ". One can call Nixon's response cynical, but Ms Reardon reminds us that the wise reader will posses a healthy skepticism. Finally, when one pores through a Civil War book,or any book on warfare for that matter, the reader must understand that the neat maps of the terrain and the formations belie the utter confusion,terror, and violence inherent in battle.

Ms Reardon won me over with her eye for the telling detail when she pointed out that the terrain prevented both Union and Confederate soldiers from a panaromic view of the battlefield.The rolling hills prevented the Union troops from seeing large parts of the charge. Meanwhile, a gentle ridge split the attacking Confederates in half. Ms Reardon ruefully notes that numerous historical accounts from both sides provide intimate details of things that were not visible from the participant's location.

Ms Reardon quotes a grizzled veteran who summed it all up when he said,"Picketts Charge has been so grossly exaggerated and misrepresented as to give some color to the oft-repeated axiom that 'history is an agreed-upon lie'."

Central Moment in History.......2000-01-31

With new books on the Civil War hitting the stands every day it's nice to see that hard nosed research with attention to detail is still alive. Carol Reardon has brought forth past memories, mirrored with a modern day look at Pickett's charge. As the book unfolds, her style of writing lends itself to a wonderful portrayal of the efforts made to fully understand what happened on 3 July 1863.

No matter what the outcome, American lives were lost during a bitter struggle at a time when brother fought against brother. This book, unlike others that try to de-bunk the stories and battle statistics, goes to the heart of the matter. Truly remarkable and most enjoyable to read!

This book is well worth reading and rates as one of the top Civil War books needed on your library shelf.

Book Description

At the now-peaceful spot of Tennessee's Fort Pillow State Historic Area, a horrific incident in the nation's bloodiest war occurred on April 12, 1864. Just as a high bluff in the park offers visitors a panoramic view of the Mississippi River, John Cimprich's absorbing book affords readers a new vantage on the American Civil War as viewed through the lens of the Confederate massacre of unionist and black Federal soldiers at Fort Pillow.

Cimprich covers the entire history of Fort Pillow, including its construction by Confederates, its capture and occupation by Federals, the massacre, and ongoing debates surrounding that affair. He sets the scene for the carnage by describing the social conflicts in Federally occupied areas between secessionists and unionists as well as between blacks and whites. In a careful reconstruction of the assault itself, Cimprich balances vivid firsthand reports with a judicious narrative and analysis of events. He shows how Major General Nathan B. Forrest attacked the garrison with a force outnumbering the Federals roughly 1500 to 600 and a breakdown of Confederate discipline resulted. The 65 percent death toll for black Unionists was approximately twice that for white Unionists, and Cimprich concludes that racism was at the heart of the Fort Pillow massacre. Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory serves as a case study for several major themes of the Civil War: the great impact of military experience on campaigns, the hardships of military life, and the trend toward a more ruthless conduct of the war. The first book to treat the fort's history in full, it provides a valuable perspective on the massacre and, through it, on the war and the world in which it occurred.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books