Lee Moves North

Lee Moves North
Author: Michael A. Palmer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1998-03-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Lee Moves North explains why a commander who won a spectacular success at Chancellorsville in May 1863 could suffer so terrible a defeat only two months later at Gettysburg. In analysis of Lee's generalship, Palmer forcefully argues that the celebrated leader had a penchant for hastily planned offensives undertaken with virtually no logistical preparation.

Retreat from Gettysburg

Retreat from Gettysburg
Author: Kent Masterson Brown, Esq.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2011-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807869422

In a groundbreaking, comprehensive history of the Army of Northern Virginia's retreat from Gettysburg in July 1863, Kent Masterson Brown draws on previously untapped sources to chronicle the massive effort of General Robert E. Lee and his command as they sought to move people, equipment, and scavenged supplies through hostile territory and plan the army's next moves. Brown reveals that even though the battle of Gettysburg was a defeat for the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee's successful retreat maintained the balance of power in the eastern theater and left his army with enough forage, stores, and fresh meat to ensure its continued existence as an effective force.

Meade and Lee After Gettysburg

Meade and Lee After Gettysburg
Author: Jeffrey Wm Hunt
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1611213444

This “very satisfying blow-by-blow account of the final stages of the Gettysburg Campaign” fills an important gap in Civil War history (Civil War Books and Authors). Winner of the Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Book Award This fascinating book exposes what has been hiding in plain sight for 150 years: The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but deep in central Virginia two weeks later along the line of the Rappahannock. Contrary to popular belief, once Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the Potomac back to Virginia, the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit—and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high wooded terrain. Doing so would trap Lee in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley and potentially bring about the decisive victory that had eluded Union arms north of the Potomac. The two weeks that followed resembled a grand chess match with everything at stake—high drama filled with hard marching, cavalry charges, heavy skirmishing, and set-piece fighting that threatened to escalate into a major engagement with the potential to end the war in the Eastern Theater. Throughout, one thing remains clear: Union soldiers from private to general continued to fear the lethality of Lee’s army. Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, the first of three volumes on the campaigns waged between the two adversaries from July 14 through the end of July, 1863, relies on the official records, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other sources to provide a day-by-day account of this fascinating high-stakes affair. The vivid prose, coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature. Named Eastern Theater Book of the Year byCivil War Books and Authors

How the South Could Have Won the Civil War

How the South Could Have Won the Civil War
Author: Bevin Alexander
Publisher: Forum Books
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2008-11-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307450104

Could the South have won the Civil War? To many, the very question seems absurd. After all, the Confederacy had only a third of the population and one-eleventh of the industry of the North. Wasn’t the South’s defeat inevitable? Not at all, as acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander reveals in this provocative and counterintuitive new look at the Civil War. In fact, the South most definitely could have won the war, and Alexander documents exactly how a Confederate victory could have come about—and how close it came to happening. Moving beyond fanciful theoretical conjectures to explore actual plans that Confederate generals proposed and the tactics ultimately adopted in the war’s key battles, How the South Could Have Won the Civil War offers surprising analysis on topics such as: •How the Confederacy had its greatest chance to win the war just three months into the fighting—but blew it •How the Confederacy’s three most important leaders—President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson—clashed over how to fight the war •How the Civil War’s decisive turning point came in a battle that the Rebel army never needed to fight •How the Confederate army devised—but never fully exploited—a way to negate the Union’s huge advantages in manpower and weaponry •How Abraham Lincoln and other Northern leaders understood the Union’s true vulnerability better than the Confederacy’s top leaders did •How it is a myth that the Union army’s accidental discovery of Lee’s order of battle doomed the South’s 1862 Maryland campaign •How the South failed to heed the important lessons of its 1863 victory at Chancellorsville How the South Could Have Won the Civil War shows why there is nothing inevitable about military victory, even for a state with overwhelming strength. Alexander provides a startling account of how a relatively small number of tactical and strategic mistakes cost the South the war—and changed the course of history.

The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee

The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee
Author: John Reeves
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2018-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1538110407

History has been kind to Robert E. Lee. Woodrow Wilson believed General Lee was a “model to men who would be morally great.” Douglas Southall Freeman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his four-volume biography of Lee, described his subject as “one of a small company of great men in whom there is no inconsistency to be explained, no enigma to be solved.” Winston Churchill called him “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived.” Until recently, there was even a stained glass window devoted to Lee's life at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Immediately after the Civil War, however, many northerners believed Lee should be hanged for treason and war crimes. Americans will be surprised to learn that in June of 1865 Robert E. Lee was indicted for treason by a Norfolk, Virginia grand jury. In his instructions to the grand jury, Judge John C. Underwood described treason as “wholesale murder,” and declared that the instigators of the rebellion had “hands dripping with the blood of slaughtered innocents.” In early 1866, Lee decided against visiting friends while in Washington, D.C. for a congressional hearing, because he was conscious of being perceived as a “monster” by citizens of the nation’s capital. Yet somehow, roughly fifty years after his trip to Washington, Lee had been transformed into a venerable American hero, who was highly regarded by southerners and northerners alike. Almost a century after Appomattox, Dwight D. Eisenhower had Lee’s portrait on the wall of his White House office. The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee tells the story of the forgotten legal and moral case that was made against the Confederate general after the Civil War. The actual indictment went missing for 72 years. Over the past 150 years, the indictment against Lee after the war has both literally and figuratively disappeared from our national consciousness. In this book, Civil War historian John Reeves illuminates the incredible turnaround in attitudes towards the defeated general by examining the evolving case against him from 1865 to 1870 and beyond.

The Killer Angels

The Killer Angels
Author: Michael Shaara
Publisher: Modern Library
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2004-11-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0679643249

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “remarkable” (Ken Burns), “utterly absorbing” (Forbes) Civil War classic that inspired the film Gettysburg, with more than three million copies in print “My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.”—James M. McPherson In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war. Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece is unique, sweeping, unforgettable—the dramatic story of the battleground for America’s destiny.

Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg

Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg
Author: Troy D. Harman
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2003-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 081174101X

For almost 100 years, analysis of the Gettysburg Campaign has centered around an oversimplified view of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's goals for the battle. Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg presents a provocative new theory regarding Lee's true tactical objectives during this pivotal battle of the American Civil War.

Robert E. Lee and Me

Robert E. Lee and Me
Author: Ty Seidule
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250239273

"Ty Seidule scorches us with the truth and rivets us with his fierce sense of moral urgency." --Ron Chernow In a forceful but humane narrative, former soldier and head of the West Point history department Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacy—and explores why some of this country’s oldest wounds have never healed. Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Ty Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning. In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy—that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans—and directly challenges the idea of honoring those who labored to preserve that system and committed treason in their failed attempt to achieve it. Through the arc of Seidule’s own life, as well as the culture that formed him, he seeks a path to understanding why the facts of the Civil War have remained buried beneath layers of myth and even outright lies—and how they embody a cultural gulf that separates millions of Americans to this day. Part history lecture, part meditation on the Civil War and its fallout, and part memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the deeply-held legends and myths of the Confederacy—and provides a surprising interpretation of essential truths that our country still has a difficult time articulating and accepting.

Never Call Retreat

Never Call Retreat
Author: Newt Gingrich
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 812
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429904690

The New York Times–bestselling alternative history of the Civil War reaches its thrilling climax in this “swiftly paced and authentically grounded novel” (Booklist). After his great victories at Gettysburg and Union Mills, General Robert E. Lee fails to attain final victory with his attack on Washington, D.C. But even as Union General Dan Sickles secures Washington, he and his valiant Army of the Potomac are trapped and destroyed. For Lincoln there is only one hope left: that General Ulysses S. Grant can save the Union cause. It is now August 22, 1863. Lee must conserve his remaining strength while maneuvering for the killing blow that will take Grant’s army out of the fight. Pursuing the remnants of the defeated Army of the Potomac up to the banks of the Susquehanna, Lee is caught off balance when news arrives that General Ulysses S. Grant, in command of more than seventy thousand men, has crossed that same river, a hundred miles to the northwest at Harrisburg. As General Grant brings his Army of the Susquehanna into Maryland, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia maneuvers for position. Grant first sends General George Armstrong Custer on a mad dash to block Lee’s path toward Frederick and with it control of the crucial B&O railroad. The two armies finally collide in Central Maryland, and a bloody week-long battle ensues along the banks of Monocacy Creek. This must be the “final” battle for both sides.

Confederate Tide Rising

Confederate Tide Rising
Author: Joseph L. Harsh
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780873385800

This analysis of the military policy and strategy adopted by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the first two years of the Civil War, argues that their policies allowed the Confederacy to survive longer than it otherwise could have and were the policies best designed to win Southern independence.