Gettysburg

by Sears, Stephen W.

• ISBN13: 9780395867617
• ISBN10: 0395867614
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-06-24
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

The greatest of all Civil War campaigns, Gettysburg was the turning point of the turning point in our nations history. Volumes have been written about this momentous three-day battle, but recent histories have tended to focus on the particulars rather than the big picture: on the generals or on single days of battle - even on single charges - or on the daily lives of the soldiers. In Gettysburg Sears tells the whole story in a single volume. From the first gleam in Lees eye to the last Rebel hightailing it back across the Potomac, every moment of the battle is brought to life with the vivid narrative skill and impeccable scholarship that has made Stephen Searss other histories so successful. Based on years of research, this is the first book in a generation that brings everything together, sorts it all out, makes informed judgments, and takes stands. Even the most knowledgeable of Civil War buffs will find fascinating new material and new interpretations, and Searss famously accessible style will make the book just as appealing to the general reader. In short, this is the one book on Gettysburg that anyone interested in the Civil War should own.

Author Biography

STEPHEN W. SEARS is the author of many award-winning books on the Civil War, including Gettysburg and Landscape Turned Red. The New York Times Book Review has called him “arguably the preeminent living historian of the war’s eastern theater.” He is a former editor for American Heritage.

Table of Contents

List of Maps	xi
Introduction	xiii
We Should Assume the Aggressive	1	(17)
High Command in Turmoil	18	(25)
The Risk of Action	43	(16)
Armies on the March	59	(31)
Into the Enemy's Country	90	(35)
High Stakes in Pennsylvania	125	(29)
A Meeting Engagement	154	(29)
The God of Battles Smiles South	183	(43)
We May As Well Fight It Out Here	226	(38)
A Simile of Hell Broke Loose	264	(61)
Determined to Do or Die	325	(47)
A Magnificent Display of Guns	372	(37)
The Grand Charge	409	(50)
A Long Road Back	459	(34)
Epilogue: Great God! What Does It Mean?	493	(23)
The Armies at Gettysburg	516	(28)
Notes	544	(46)
Bibliography	590	(11)
Index	601

Excerpts

1 We Should Assume the AggressiveJohn Beauchamp Jones, the observant, gossipy clerk in the War Department in Richmond, took note in his diary under date of May 15, 1863, that General Lee had come down from his headquarters on the Rappahannock and was conferring at the Department. "Lee looked thinner, and a little pale," Jones wrote. "Subsequently he and the Secretary of War were long closeted with the President." (That same day another Richmond insider, President Daviss aide William Preston Johnston, was writing more optimistically, "Genl Lee is here and looking splendidly s costliest single casualty, of course, was Stonewall Jackson. "It is a terrible loss," Lee confessed to his son Custis. "I do not know how to replace him." On May 12 Richmond had paid its last respects to "this great and good soldier," and this very day Stonewall was being laid to rest in Lexington. Yet the tides of war do not wait, and General Lee had come to the capital to try and shape their future course. For the Southern Confederacy these were days of rapidly accelerating crisis, and seen in retrospect this Richmond strategy conference of May 15, 1863, easily qualifies as a pivotal moment in Confederate history. Yet the record of what was discussed and decided that day by General Lee, President Davis, and Secretary of War James A. Seddon is entirely blank. No minutes or notes have survived. Only in clerk Joness brief diary entry 1 are the participants even identified. Nevertheless, from recollections and from correspondence of the three men before and after the conference, it is possible to infer their probable agenda and to piece together what must have been the gist of their arguments and their agreements - and their decisions. Their decisions were major ones. It was the Vicksburg conundrum that triggered this May 15 conference. The Federals had been nibbling away at the Mississippi citadel since winter, and by mid-April Mississippis governor, John J. Pettus, was telling Richmond, "the crisis in our affairs in my opinion is now upon us." As April turned to May, dispatches from the Confederate generals in the West became ever more ominous in tone. In a sudden and startling move, the Yankee general there, U. S. Grant, had landed his army on the east bank of the Mississippi below Vicksburg and was reported marching inland, straight toward the state capital of Jackson. On May 12 John C. Pemberton, commanding the Vicksburg garrison, telegraphed President Davis, "with my limited force I will do all I can to meet him.... The enemy largely outnumbers me...." Pemberton offered little comfort the next day: "My forces are very inadequate.... Enemy continues to re-enforce heavily." Grants march toward Jackson threatened to drive a wedge between Pemberton in Vicksburg and the force that Joseph E. Johnston was cobbling together to go to Pembertons support. On May 9 Johnston had been put in overall charge of operations against the Federal invaders of Mississi

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Excerpted from Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears
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