Articles of War Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both During the Civil War

by Castel, Albert

• ISBN13: 9780811736701
• ISBN10: 0811736709
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-09-15
• Publisher: Stackpole Books

Summary

The American Civil War is filled with fascinating characters. This collection of biographical essays on the “winners and losers” of the Civil War covers some of the most intriguing: Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan, Sam Houston, Albert Sidney Johnston, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and William Clarke Quantrill, to name just a few.
In Articles of War you’ll discover:
Some Winners

• Ulysses S. Grant, whose brilliant Vicksburg Campaign was a model of military strategy
• John A. “Black Jack” Logan, one of the war’s few successful political generals
• Nathan Bedford Forrest, a natural military genius despite his “Lost Cause”

Some Losers

• George B. McClellan, whose lack of eagerness cost the Union two opportunities to win the war
• Earl Van Dorn, a victim of sheer bad luck
• Theophilus H. Holmes, the little-known incompetent, called “granny Holmes” by his own men

Some Winners Who Became Losers

• Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederacy’s “General Who Might Have Been”
• Leonidas Polk, whose initial good luck eventually ran out
• William Clarke Quantrill, a winner in death but a loser in life

And Some Losers Who Became Winners

• Sam Houston, who, had he lived longer, could have been a winner in Texas
• William Tecumseh Sherman, an exceptional man; a capable, but flawed, commander

Author Biography

Albert Castel is one of the respected and prolific scholars in the Civil War community. He has won several prizes for his Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Castel previous co-authored Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerilla (Stackpole, 1998).