Peter S. Carmichael - Böcker

Despite the literary outpouring on the life of Robert E. Lee, the southern chieftain remains an enigma. The existing scholarship is so voluminous, complex, and contradictory that it is difficult to penetrate the inner Lee and appreciate him as a general. Peter S. Carmichael has assembled a formidable array of Civil War historians who rigorously return to Lee's own words and actions in interpreting the war in Virginia. This is the first collective volume to scrutinize specific aspects of the general's military career.Carmichael's opening contribution confronts Lee's supposed drive for a victory of annihilation and takes issue with claims that he was too aggressive. William J. Miller's novel analysis of Lee's leadership during the pivotal Seven Days battles reconstructs his strategic thinking and corrects old assumptions. Gordon C. Rhea overturns the common notion that Lee anticipated his adversaries with uncanny precision in the Overland campaign of 1864. Robert E. L. Krick takes aim at the oft-repeated criticism that Lee was not attuned to the demands of modern warfare because he failed to surround himself with enough subordinates to ensure the smooth operation of the army; in fact, Krick argues, Lee continually fine-tuned the performance of his support staff, striving to eliminate deficiencies. Finally, Max R. Williams's examination of the relationship between Lee and North Carolina governor Zebulon B. Vance, and Mark L. Bradley's portrait of Lee's relationships with Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston, offer contrasting views of the soldier as both politically assertive and reticent, respectively. Falling easily into neither the pro- nor anti-Lee camp, Audacity Personified challenges long-standing beliefs accepted since Douglas Southhall Freeman's influential biography of Lee was published seventy years ago. These diverse scholarly visions of the great Confederate general move beyond clich�, iluuminating Lee's career with fresh interpretations.

This book deals with coming of age in the 1850s and '60s. Challenging the popular conception of Southern youth on the eve of the Civil War as intellectually lazy, violent, and dissipated, Peter Carmichael looks closely at the lives of more than one hundred young white men from Virginia's last generation to grow up with the institution of slavery. He finds them deeply engaged in the political, economic, and cultural forces of their time. Carmichael argues that their experiences force us to reexamine the nature of Southern manhood and shed new light on the formation and reformation of Southern identity during the turbulent last half of the nineteenth century.

From the founding of Jamestown to the American Civil War, slavery and abolition shaped American national, regional and racial identities. This four-volume reset edition draws together rare sources relating to American slavery systems.

From the founding of Jamestown to the American Civil War, slavery and abolition shaped American national, regional and racial identities. This four-volume reset edition draws together rare sources relating to American slavery systems.

From the founding of Jamestown to the American Civil War, slavery and abolition shaped American national, regional and racial identities. This four-volume reset edition draws together rare sources relating to American slavery systems.

From the founding of Jamestown to the American Civil War, slavery and abolition shaped American national, regional and racial identities. This four-volume reset edition draws together rare sources relating to American slavery systems.

How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war. Digging deeply into his soldiers' writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was "a common soldier" but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers' experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.

Between March 1863 and July 1865, Confederate newlyweds Brigadier General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton wrote 524 letters, and all survived, unknown until now. Separated by twenty years in age and differing opinions on myriad subjects, these educated and articulate Confederates wrote frankly and perceptively on their Civil War world. Sharing opinions on generals and politicians, the course of the war, the fate of the Confederacy, life at home, and their wavering loyalties, the Whartons explored the shifting gender roles brought on by war, changing relations between slave owners and enslaved people, the challenges of life behind Confederate lines, the pain of familial loss, the definitions of duty and honor, and more.Featuring one of the fullest known sets of correspondence by a high-level officer and his wife, this volume reveals the Whartons' wartime experience from their courtship in the spring of 1863 to June 1865, when Gabriel Wharton swore loyalty to the United States and accepted parole before returning home. William C. Davis and Sue Heth Bell's thoughtful editing guides readers into this world of experience and its ongoing historical relevance.

Between March 1863 and July 1865, Confederate newlyweds Brigadier General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton wrote 524 letters, and all survived, unknown until now. Separated by twenty years in age and differing opinions on myriad subjects, these educated and articulate Confederates wrote frankly and perceptively on their Civil War world. Sharing opinions on generals and politicians, the course of the war, the fate of the Confederacy, life at home, and their wavering loyalties, the Whartons explored the shifting gender roles brought on by war, changing relations between slave owners and enslaved people, the challenges of life behind Confederate lines, the pain of familial loss, the definitions of duty and honor, and more.Featuring one of the fullest known sets of correspondence by a high-level officer and his wife, this volume reveals the Whartons' wartime experience from their courtship in the spring of 1863 to June 1865, when Gabriel Wharton swore loyalty to the United States and accepted parole before returning home. William C. Davis and Sue Heth Bell's thoughtful editing guides readers into this world of experience and its ongoing historical relevance.

This collection of original essays reveals the richness and dynamism of contemporary scholarship on the Civil War era. Inspired by the lines of inquiry that animated the writings of the influential historian Gary W. Gallagher, this volume includes nine essays by leading scholars in the field who explore a broad range of themes and participants in the nation's greatest conflict, from Indigenous communities navigating the dangerous shoals of the secession winter to Confederate guerrillas caught in the legal snares of the Union's hard war to African Americans pursuing landownership in the postwar years. Essayists also explore how people contested and shaped the memory of the conflict, from outright silences and evasions to the use of formal historical writing. Other contributors use comparative and transnational history to rethink key aspects of the conflict. The result is a thorough examination of Gallagher's scholarly legacy and an assessment of the present and future of the Civil War history field. Contributors are William A. Blair, Peter S. Carmichael, Andre M. Fleche, Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh, Caroline E. Janney, Peter C. Leubke, Cynthia Nicoletti, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, and Kathryn J. Shively.

This collection of original essays reveals the richness and dynamism of contemporary scholarship on the Civil War era. Inspired by the lines of inquiry that animated the writings of the influential historian Gary W. Gallagher, this volume includes nine essays by leading scholars in the field who explore a broad range of themes and participants in the nation's greatest conflict, from Indigenous communities navigating the dangerous shoals of the secession winter to Confederate guerrillas caught in the legal snares of the Union's hard war to African Americans pursuing landownership in the postwar years. Essayists also explore how people contested and shaped the memory of the conflict, from outright silences and evasions to the use of formal historical writing. Other contributors use comparative and transnational history to rethink key aspects of the conflict. The result is a thorough examination of Gallagher's scholarly legacy and an assessment of the present and future of the Civil War history field. Contributors are William A. Blair, Peter S. Carmichael, Andre M. Fleche, Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh, Caroline E. Janney, Peter C. Leubke, Cynthia Nicoletti, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, and Kathryn J. Shively.