Search results for ""Author Gary W. Gallagher""

In the seventy-three succinct essays gathered in The Enduring Civil War, celebrated historian Gary W. Gallagher highlights the complexity and richness of the war, from its origins to its memory, as topics for study, contemplation, and dispute. He places contemporary understanding of the Civil War, both academic and general, in conversation with testimony from those in the Union and the Confederacy who experienced and described it, investigating how mid-nineteenth-century perceptions align with, or deviate from, current ideas regarding the origins, conduct, and aftermath of the war. The tension between history and memory forms a theme throughout the essays, underscoring how later perceptions about the war often took precedence over historical reality in the minds of many Americans. The array of topics Gallagher addresses is striking. He examines notable books and authors, both Union and Confederate, military and civilian, famous and lesser known. He discusses historians who, though their names have receded with time, produced works that remain pertinent in terms of analysis or information. He comments on conventional interpretations of events and personalities, challenging, among other things, commonly held notions about Gettysburg and Vicksburg as decisive turning points, Ulysses S. Grant as a general who profligately wasted Union manpower, the Gettysburg Address as a watershed that turned the war from a fight for Union into one for Union and emancipation, and Robert E. Lee as an old-fashioned general ill-suited to waging a modern mid-nineteenth-century war. Gallagher interrogates recent scholarly trends on the evolving nature of Civil War studies, addressing crucial questions about chronology, history, memory, and the new revisionist literature. The format of this provocative and timely collection lends itself to sampling, and readers might start in any of the subject groupings and go where their interests take them.

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The two reporters, A.J.L. Fremantle and Whitelaw Reid, one traveling with the Union army and the other with the Confederates, are the authors of these two magnificent firsthand accounts of the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, the pivotal action of the Civil War. Presents engaging firsthand accounts of the battle of Gettysburg Completely updated with a new introduction, references, illustrations and maps Includes a bibliographic essay for further reading Provides students with a unique and engaging look at the most pivotal action of the Civil War

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If one is to believe contemporary historians, the South never had a chance. Many allege that the Confederacy lost the Civil War because of internal division or civilian disaffection; others point to flawed military strategy or ambivalence over slavery. But, argues distinguished historian Gary Gallagher, we should not ask why the Confederacy collapsed so soon but rather how it lasted so long. In The Confederate War he reexamines the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it to show how the home front responded to the war, endured great hardships, and assembled armies that fought with tremendous spirit and determination. Gallagher’s portrait highlights a powerful sense of Confederate patriotism and unity in the face of a determined adversary. Drawing on letters, diaries, and newspapers of the day, he shows that Southerners held not only an unflagging belief in their way of life, which sustained them to the bitter end, but also a widespread expectation of victory and a strong popular will closely attuned to military events. In fact, the army’s “offensive-defensive” strategy came remarkably close to triumph, claims Gallagher—in contrast to the many historians who believe that a more purely defensive strategy or a guerrilla resistance could have won the war for the South. To understand why the South lost, Gallagher says we need look no further than the war itself: after a long struggle that brought enormous loss of life and property, Southerners finally realized that they had been beaten on the battlefield. Gallagher’s interpretation of the Confederates and their cause boldly challenges current historical thinking and invites readers to reconsider their own conceptions of the American Civil War.

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Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg Campaign was the Civil War's longest and among its most complex. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee squared off for more than nine months in their struggle for Petersburg, the key to the Confederate capital at Richmond. Featuring some of the war's most notorious battles, the campaign played out against a backdrop of political drama and crucial fighting elsewhere, with massive costs for soldiers and civilians alike. After failing to bull his way into Petersburg, Grant concentrated on isolating the city from its communications with the rest of the surviving Confederacy, stretching Lee's defenses to the breaking point. When Lee's desperate breakout attempt failed in March 1865, Grant launched his final offensives that forced the Confederates to abandon the city on April 2, 1865. A week later, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.Here A. Wilson Greene opens his sweeping new three-volume history of the Petersburg Campaign, taking readers from Grant's crossing of the James in mid-June 1864 to the fateful Battle of the Crater on July 30. Full of fresh insights drawn from military, political, and social history, A Campaign of Giants is destined to be the definitive account of the campaign. With new perspectives on operational and tactical choices by commanders, the experiences of common soldiers and civilians, and the significant role of the United States Colored Troops in the fighting, this book offers essential reading for all those interested in the history of the Civil War.

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Lens of War grew out of an invitation to leading historians of the Civil War to select and reflect upon a single photograph. Each could choose any image and interpret it in personal and scholarly terms. The result is a remarkable set of essays by twenty-seven scholars whose numerous volumes on the Civil War have explored military, cultural, political, African American, women’s, and environmental history.The essays describe a wide array of photographs and present an eclectic approach to the assignment, organized by topic: Leaders, Soldiers, Civilians, Victims, and Places. Readers will rediscover familiar photographs and figures examined in unfamiliar ways, as well as discover little-known photographs that afford intriguing perspectives. All the images are reproduced with exquisite care. Readers fascinated by the Civil War will want this unique book on their shelves, and lovers of photography will value the images and the creative, evocative reflections offered in these essays.

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Between the end of May and the beginning of August 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee oversaw the transition between the Overland campaign - a remarkable saga of maneuvering and brutal combat - and what became a grueling siege of Petersburg that many months later compelled Confederates to abandon Richmond. Although many historians have marked Grant's crossing of the James River on June 12-15 as the close of the Overland campaign, this volume interprets the fighting from Cold Harbor on June 1-3 through the battle of the Crater on July 30 as the last phase of an operation that could have ended without a prolonged siege. The contributors assess the campaign from a variety of perspectives, examining strategy and tactics, the performances of key commanders on each side, the centrality of field fortifications, political repercussions in the United States and the Confederacy, the experiences of civilians caught in the path of the armies, and how the famous battle of the Crater has resonated in historical memory. As a group, the essays highlight the important connections between the home front and the battlefield, showing some of the ways in which military and nonmilitary affairs played off and influenced one another.Contributors include Keith S. Bohannon, Stephen Cushman, M. Keith Harris, Robert E. L. Krick, Kevin M. Levin, Kathryn Shively Meier, Gordon C. Rhea, and Joan Waugh.

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Was the Confederacy doomed from the start in its struggle against the superior might of the Union? Did its forces fight heroically against all odds for the cause of states' rights? In reality, these suggestions are an elaborate and intentional effort on the part of Southerners to rationalize the secession and the war itself. Unfortunately, skillful propagandists have been so successful in promoting this romanticized view that the Lost Cause has assumed a life of its own. Misrepresenting the war's true origins and its actual course, the myth of the Lost Cause distorts our national memory. In The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying ways in which it falsifies history—creating a volume that makes a significant contribution to Civil War historiography.

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Embroiled in the Civil War, northerners wrote and spoke with frequency about the subject of loyalty. The word was common in newspaper articles, political pamphlets, and speeches, appeared on flags, broadsides, and prints, was written into diaries and letters and the stationary they appeared on, and even found its way into sermons. Its ubiquity suggests that loyalty was an important concept…but what did it mean to those who used it? Contested Loyalty examines the significance of loyalty across fault lines of gender, social class, and education, race and ethnicity, and political or religious affiliation. These differing vantage points reveal the complicated ways in which loyalties were defined, prioritized, acted upon, and related. While most of the scholarly work on Civil War Era nationalism has focused on southern identity and Confederate nationhood, the essays in Contested Loyalty examine the variable, fluid constructions of these concepts in the north. Essays explore the limitations and incomplete nature of national loyalty and how disparate groups struggled to control its meaning. The authors move beyond the narrow partisan debate over Democratic dissent to examine other challenges to and competing interpretations of national loyalty. Today’s leading and emerging scholars examine loyalty through: the frame of politics at the state and national level; the viewpoints of college educated men as well as the women they courted; the attitudes of northern Protestant churches on issues of patriotism and loyalty; working class men and women in military industries; how employers could use the language of loyalty to take away the rights of workers; and the meaning of loyalty in contexts of race and ethnicity. The Union cause was a powerful ideology committing millions of citizens, in the ranks and at home, to a long and bloody war. But loyalty to the Union cause imperfectly explains how citizens reacted to the traumas of war or the ways in which conflicting loyalties played out in everyday life. The essays in this collection point us down the path of greater understanding.

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Edited by Gary Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon, two of the most prominent nineteenth-century American historians in the nation, New Perspectives on the Union War provides a more nuanced understanding of what “Union” meant in the Civil War North by exploring how various groups of northerners conceived of the term. The essays in this volume demonstrate that while there was a broad consensus that the war was fought, or should be fought, for the cause of Union, there was bitter disagreement over how to define that cause—debate not only between political camps but also within them. The chapters touch on economics, politics, culture, military affairs, ethnicity, and questions relating to just war. Contributors: Michael T. Caires, Frank Cirillo, D.H. Dilbeck, Jack Furniss, Jesse George-Nichol, William B. Kurtz, Peter C. Luebke, and Tamika Nunley

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"The Civil War was the most dramatic, violent, and fateful experience in American history. . . . Little wonder that the Civil War had a profound impact that has echoed down the generations and remains undiminished today. That impact helps explain why at least 50,000 books and pamphlets . . . on the Civil War have been published since the 1860s. Most of these are in the Library of Congress, along with thousands of unpublished letters, diaries, and other documents that make this depository an unparalleled resource for studying the war. From these sources, the editors of The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference have compiled a volume that every library, every student of the Civil War—indeed everyone with an interest in the American past—will find indispensable." —From the Foreword by James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

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As the American Civil War recedes into the past, popular fascination continues to rise. Once a matter that chiefly concerned veterans, separately organized North and South, who gathered to refight old battles and to memorialize the heroes and victims of war, the Civil War has gradually become part of a collective heritage. Issues raised by the war, including its causes and consequences, reverberate through contemporary society. Family and community connections with the war exist everywhere, as do battlefields, memorials, and other physical reminders of the conflict. We, as Americans, are fascinated by the sheer magnitude of the war fought over thousands of miles of American soil and resulting in awesome casualties. It was a gigantic national drama enacted by people who seem both contemporary and remote. Here for the first time, leading Civil War scholars gather to sort out the fact and fiction of our collective memories. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark E. Neely, Jr., Alan T. Nolan, John Y. Simon, James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., Gary W. Gallagher, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.

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Edited by Gary Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon, two of the most prominent nineteenth-century American historians in the nation, New Perspectives on the Union War provides a more nuanced understanding of what “Union” meant in the Civil War North by exploring how various groups of northerners conceived of the term. The essays in this volume demonstrate that while there was a broad consensus that the war was fought, or should be fought, for the cause of Union, there was bitter disagreement over how to define that cause—debate not only between political camps but also within them. The chapters touch on economics, politics, culture, military affairs, ethnicity, and questions relating to just war. Contributors: Michael T. Caires, Frank Cirillo, D.H. Dilbeck, Jack Furniss, Jesse George-Nichol, William B. Kurtz, Peter C. Luebke, and Tamika Nunley

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