James Lee McDonough – författare

General William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 burning of Atlanta solidified his legacy as a ruthless leader. Evolving from a spirited student at West Point, Sherman became a general who fought in some of the Civil War’s most decisive campaigns—Shiloh, Vicksburg, Atlanta—until finally, seeking a swift ending to the war’s horrendous casualties, he devastated southern resources on his famous March to the Sea across the Carolinas. Later, as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, Sherman relentlessly paved the way west during the Indian wars. James Lee McDonough’s fresh insight reveals a man tormented by fears that history would pass him by and that he would miss his chance to serve his country. Drawing on years of research, McDonough delves into Sherman’s dramatic personal life, including his strained relationship with his wife, his personal debts, and his young son’s death. The result is a remarkable, illuminating portrait of an American icon.

Colorful, dramatic, blundering, and tragic – these are some of the adjectives that have been applied to the two-day engagement at Shiloh. This battle, which bears the biblical name meaning “place of peace,” was one of the bloodiest encounters of the Civil War. The Union colonel, whose words give the present book its title, foretold the losses when he told his men: “Fill your canteens Boys! Some of you will be in hell before night….”Fought in the early spring of 1862 on the west bank of the Mississippi state line, Shiloh was, up to that time, the biggest battle of American history. One hundred thousand men were involved, and major Civil War commanders such as Grant, Sherman, Johnston, Beauregard, Bragg, and Forrest participated. The battle took the life of Johnston and it left a lasting impact on the reputation of other commanders. More-over, it played a significant role in the campaign for control of the Mississippi Valley.Although hundreds of books have been written about the Civil War and its battle, questions about the disorganized struggle at Shiloh have continued to perplex historians. Why was Grant absent when his army was attacked? Why did Grant and Sherman apparently ignore evidence of a Confederate advance? What happened to Lew Wallace that he never got his division into the fight on the first day of battle? Why did it take the Rebels so long to make their way from Corinth to the battlefield? Did the Rebels really have a distinct opportunity to win the battle, as it seems in retrospect, or were they doomed from the start? Were Johnston and Beauregard working at cross-purposes? Shiloh-In Hell Before Night provides answers or clues to answers of clues to answers for these and other questions arising from this controversial engagement.The author tells his story by placing Shiloh in the larger context of the war and by exploring the very personal side of the conflict through the words of the Union and Confederate participants, officers and common soldiers alike. Touches of humor and even or romance are revealed in the midst of the carnage, but the overriding element is the specter of death. Among those who survived, the soldiers who had been eager to “see the elephant,” as they commonly referred to combat, could never again feel so eager for a fight.James Lee McDonough is professor of history at Auburn University, and the author of Stones River – Bloody Winter in Tennessee, Chattanooga – A Death Grip on the Confederacy, and the co-author of Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin.

On December 31, 1862, some 10,000 Confederate soldiers streamed out of the dim light of early morning to stun the Federals who were still breakfasting in their camp. Nine months earlier the Confederates had charged the Yankees in a similarly devastating attack at dawn, starting the Battle of Shiloh. By the time this new battle ended, it would resemble Shiloh in other ways – it would rival that struggle’s shocking casualty toll of 24,000 and it would become a major defeat for the South. By any Civil War standard, Stones River was a monumental, bloody, and dramatic story. Yet, until now, it has had no modern, documented history. Arguing that the battle was one of the significant engagements in the war, noted Civil War historian James Lee McDonough here devotes to Stones River the attention it ahs long deserved.Stones River, at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was the first big battle in the union campaign to seize the Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta corridor. Driving eastward and southward to sea, the campaign eventually climaxed in Sherman’s capture of Savannah in December 1864. At Stones River the two armies were struggling desperately for control of Middle Tennessee’s railroads and rich farms. Although they fought to a tactical draw, the Confederates retreated.The battle’s outcome held significant implications. For the Union, the victory helped offset the disasters suffered at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bayou. Furthermore, it may have discouraged Britain and France from intervening on behalf of the Confederacy. For the South, the battle had other crucial effects. Since in convinced many that General Braxton Bragg could not successfully command an army, Stones River left the Southern Army torn by dissension in the high command and demoralized in the ranks.One of the most perplexing Civil War battles, Stones River has remained shrouded in unresolved questions. After driving the Union right wing for almost three miles, why could the Rebels not complete the triumph? Could the Union’s Major General William S. Rosecrans have launched a counterattack on the first day of the battle? Was personal tension between Bragg and Breckenridge a significant factor in the events of the engagement’s last day?McDonough uses a variety of sources to illuminate these and other questions. Quotations from diaries, letters, and memoirs of the soldiers involved furnish the reader with a rare, soldier’s-eye view of this tremendously violent campaign. Tactics, strategies, and commanding officers are examined to reveal how personal strengths and weaknesses of the opposing generals, Bragg and Rosecrans, shaped the course of the battle. Vividly recreating the events of the calamitous battle, Stones River – Bloody Winter in Tennessee firmly establishes the importance of this previously neglected landmark in Civil War history.James Lee McDonough is professor of history at Auburn University, and author of Shiloh – In Hell before Night, Chattanooga – A Death Grip on the Confederacy, and co-author of Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin.

On a November afternoon in 1864, the weary Gen. John Bell Hood surveyed the army waiting to attack the Federals at Franklin, Tennessee. He gave the signal almost at dusk, and the Confederates rushed forward to utter devastation. This book describes the events and causes of the five-hour battle in gripping detail, particularly focusing on the reasons for such slaughter at a time when the outcome of the war had already been decided.The genesis of the senseless tragedy, according to McDonough and Connelly, lay in the appointment of Hood to command the Army of Tennessee. It was his decision to throw a total force of some 20,000 men into an ill-advised frontal assault against the Union troops. The Confederates made their approach, without substantial artillery support, on a level of some two miles. Why did Hood select such a catastrophic strategy? The authors analyze his reasoning in full. Their vivid and moving narrative, with statements from eyewitnesses to the battle, make compelling reading for all Civil War buffs and historians.James Lee McDonough is Justin Potter Professor of History at David-Lipscomb College and is the author of Shiloh and Stones River.Thomas L. Connelly, professor of history at the university of South Carolina, is the author of Army of the Heartland, The Marble Man, and Autumn of Glory, a two-volume history of the Army of Tennessee.

War in KentuckyFrom Shiloh to PerryvilleJames Lee McDonoughA compelling new volume from the author of Shiloh—In Hell before Night and Chattanooga—A Death Grip on the Confederacy, this book explores the strategic importance of Kentucky for both sides in the Civil War and recounts the Confederacy's bold attempt to capture the Bluegrass State.  In a narrative rich with quotations from the diaries, letters, and reminiscences of participants, James Lee McDonough brings to vigorous life an episode whose full significance has previously eluded students of the war.In February of 1862, the fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson near the Tennessee-Kentucky border forced a Confederate retreat into northern Alabama. After the Southern forces failed that spring at Shiloh to throw back the Federal advance, the controversial General Braxton Bragg, newly promoted by Jefferson Davis, launched a countermovement that would sweep eastward to Chattanooga and then northwest through Middle Tennessee. Capturing Kentucky became the ultimate goal, which, if achieved, would lend the war a different complexion indeed.Giving equal attention to the strategies of both sides, McDonough describes the ill-fated Union effort to capture Chattanooga with an advance through Alabama, the Confederate march across Tennessee, and the subsequent two-pronged invasion of Kentucky.  He vividly recounts the fighting at Richmond, Munfordville, and Perryville, where the Confederate dream of controlling Kentucky finally ended.The first book-length study of this key campaign in the Western Theater, War in Kentucky not only demonstrates the extent of its importance but supports the case that 1862 should be considered the decisive year of the war.The author: James Lee McDonough, a native of Tennessee, is professor of history at Auburn University. Among his other books are Stones River—Bloody Winter in Tennessee and Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin, which he co-wrote with Thomas L. Connelly.

As general of the Union army and president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant faced problems as grave and demanding as any in the life of the nation: civil war, an ultimately thwarted project of Reconstruction, the early years of the sordid Gilded Age, and the battle for African American rights and freedom. But in life and in death, the general’s standing has been gradually diminished by false conceptions and harsh criticism, from rumors of his alcoholism to his reputation as a cutthroat, abrasive leader.Focusing on his greatest military achievement in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant offers fresh insight into a man whose life was marked by the extremes of achievement and tragedy, from the heights of Civil War success to the depths of public ire and extreme poverty. Renowned Civil War historian James Lee McDonough shows how Grant overcame military and civilian havoc, the perils of vast enemy territory, increasing political pressure from Washington, and a seemingly unending series of setbacks to reopen the Mississippi River at Vicksburg. Alongside the Union victory and a Civil War campaign without parallel, McDonough depicts America during and after its bloody internecine conflict: from the bitter, unprecedented military and political battles over the future of our nation to the long quest for freedom for millions of people who were formerly enslaved.McDonough presents Grant as a highly capable, flawed general who met the challenges of his army and his country—and many of the challenges of his life—as well as might have been expected of any American commander. Grant is a riveting portrait of one of our nation’s most legendary leaders, through the lens of one of the Civil War’s most decisive campaigns.

After Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces ravaged Atlanta in 1864, Ulysses S. Grant urged him to complete the primary mission Grant had given him: to destroy the Confederate Army in Georgia. Attempting to draw the Union army north, General John Bell Hood’s Confederate forces focused their attacks on Sherman’s supply line, the railroad from Chattanooga, and then moved across north Alabama and into Tennessee. As Sherman initially followed Hood’s men to protect the railroad, Hood hoped to lure the Union forces out of the lower South and, perhaps more important, to recapture the long-occupied city of Nashville.Though Hood managed to cut communication between Sherman and George H. Thomas’s Union forces by placing his troops across the railroads south of the city, Hood’s men were spread over a wide area and much of the Confederate cavalry was in Murfreesboro. Hood’s army was ultimately routed. Union forces pursued the Confederate troops for ten days until they recrossed the Tennessee River. The decimated Army of Tennessee (now numbering only about 15,000) retreated into northern Alabama and eventually Mississippi. Hood requested to be relieved of his command. Less than four months later, the war was over.Written in a lively and engaging style, The Western Confederacy's Final Gamble presents new interpretations of the critical issues of the battle. James Lee McDonough sheds light on how the Union army stole past the Confederate forces at Spring Hill and their subsequent clash, which left six Confederate generals dead. He offers insightful analysis of John Bell Hood’s overconfidence in his position and of the leadership and decision-making skills of principal players such as Sherman, George Henry Thomas, John M. Schofield, Hood, and others.McDonough’s subjects, both common soldiers and officers, present their unforgettable stories in their own words. Unlike most earlier studies of the battle of Nashville, McDonough’s account examines the contributions of black Union regiments and gives a detailed account of the battle itself as well as its place in the overall military campaign. Filled with new information from important primary sources and fresh insights, Nashville will become the definitive treatment of a crucial battleground of the Civil War.