Lees Lieutenants 3 Volume Abridged: A Study in Command - Softcover

Freeman, Douglas Southall

 
9781451656435: Lees Lieutenants 3 Volume Abridged: A Study in Command
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1451656432 ISBN 13: 9781451656435
Verlag: Scribner, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

A towering landmark in Civil War literature, long considered one of the great masterpieces of military history -- now available in a one-volume abridgment.

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command is the most colorful and popular of Douglas Southall Freeman's works. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee.

Dr. Freeman describes the early rise and fall of General Beauregard, the developing friction between Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston, the emergence and failure of a number of military charlatans, and the triumphs of unlikely men at crucial times. He also describes the rise of the legendary "Stonewall" Jackson and traces his progress in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign and into Richmond amid the acclaim of the South.

The Confederacy won resounding victories throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties. Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who survived -- among them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell -- developed as commanders and men. Lee's Lieutenants follows these men to the costly battle at Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the South's declining military might, and finally to the collapse of Lee's command and his formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation.

Accessible at last in a one-volume edition abridged by noted Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears, Lee's Lieutenants is essential reading for all Civil War buffs, students of war, and admirers of the historian's art as practiced at its very highest level.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Douglas Southall Freeman, the son of a Confederate soldier, was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1886. He was commissioned to write a one-volume biography of Lee in 1915, but his research and writings over two decades produced four large volumes. Freeman won another Pulitzer Prize for his six-volume definitive biography of George Washington. He died in 1953.

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Chapter 1

Opening Guns

1. "Old Bory's Come!"

He would go at once. The request from the President that he come to Richmond offered an opportunity as surely as it conveyed an order. Federal troops had crossed the Potomac. A battle that would assure the triumph of the new Confederacy would be fought ere long in Virginia. At the same time, departure from South Carolina would be regrettable. From the hour of his arrival there, March 6, 1861, the patriots of Charleston had welcomed him. After he forced the surrender of Fort Sumter on April 14, without the loss of a man, they had acclaimed and adopted him. Some of them seemed to find a certain Huguenot kinship in his name -- Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard -- and all of them united to do him honor.

General and staff left on May 29 for Richmond, the newly selected capital of the Confederate States. Multitudes gathered at every station to have a look at the "Hero of Sumter." The journey confirmed everything Beauregard had been told of the incredible popularity he had won by his success in Charleston Harbor. How quickly fame had come to him! When he had resigned from the United States army, February 20, 1861, he had been fifth-ranking captain in the Corps of Engineers and had a brevet as major for gallant conduct in the Mexican War. In his profession he was esteemed; outside of it he was little known till hostilities had been opened at Charleston. Now, seven weeks after the fall of Sumter, he had received the thanks of Congress and the laudation of the Southern press as one of the greatest soldiers in the world. Napoleonic myths had grown up about him. He was said to have warned President Lincoln to remove all noncombatants from Washington by a given date, as if he were determined forthwith to take the city. Not one doubt of his military genius was admitted.

On May 30, ere his train puffed importantly into the station, hundreds of townfolk had gathered there. A carriage and four were waiting to carry the general to the Spotswood Hotel, where a suite had been reserved for him. All the honors that had been paid President Davis upon arrival two days previously were to be repeated for General Beauregard. He was most grateful when he stepped from the car; but, if the committee would permit, he would take a simpler carriage and go quietly to the hotel. Quickly he was wheeled up the hill to the Spotswood. Music and cheers and appeals for a speech were in vain. His mission was war. He must waste no time in needless words.

The next day he conferred with the President and with General R. E. Lee who, in an ill-defined manner, was responsible for military operations in Virginia. Old friends they were, old and admiring. Davis as United States secretary of war had known Beauregard well and, in March 1861, had commended the general to Governor Pickens of South Carolina as "full of talent and of much military experience." In planning immediate steps to combat the fast-developing Federal threat against Virginia, Jefferson Davis felt that he could rely on Beauregard.

No less did the President have self-reliance. He had hurried to Richmond in answer to earnest representations that he and he only could direct aright the defense of the frontier. Montgomery newspapers had reported that Mr. Davis was having his old Mexican War sword sharpened at a gunsmith's in Market Street. A man having his blade made ready of course intended using it. Little doubt was expressed that the President would take the field in person. With others the soldiers would fight and perhaps would win, said the Richmond Examiner, but "with him, the victory would be certain, and chance would become certainty."

The new President felt, as he sat down with Beauregard and Lee, that he had been trained as a soldier and as a commander he had been tried. To his four years of administrative experience as secretary of war he had added that of chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate. Who had so diversified an equipment, who a better reason for self-reliance? He was confident he could discharge in more than a perfunctory sense his prerogative as commander-in-chief of the military forces of the Confederacy.

The third man at the council of May 31 was in public estimation the least distinguished of the three. Robert Lee was the son of a renowned Revolutionary soldier and had enjoyed the high admiration of Winfield Scott. In the Mexican War, Lee's work as an engineer had been brilliant, and when he resigned from the old army he had reached the rank of colonel of cavalry; but he had no such reputation as Beauregard had won at Sumter and no prestige, other than social, that compared with that of Davis.

Inasmuch as Lee had just returned from Manassas, he was asked by the President to explain what had been done to prepare that important railroad junction against the Federals, who, on the night of May 23-24, had crossed the Potomac and seized Alexandria. When Lee explained the situation in northern Virginia, Davis decided that Beauregard should have the post of instant danger, that of the Alexandria line. Beauregard exhibited neither concern nor satisfaction. If that was the post the President wished him to have, he would proceed immediately to Manassas. By way of Hanover Junction, Gordonsville, Orange, and Rappahannock Station, names destined to be written red, he traveled on June 1 to Manassas and assumed command. "Old Bory's Come!" cried the South Carolina troops who had served under him at Charleston. The Virginia recruits, hearing the cheers, sought this first opportunity of observing him.

If they expected a theatrical personality, they were disappointed. What they saw was a small man, forty-three years of age and five feet seven inches in height. He weighed about 150 pounds and had much strength in his slight frame, though often he fell sick. With graying hair, cropped mustache, a good brow, high cheekbones, a belligerent chin, and sallow olive complexion, he was as surely French in appearance as in blood. Imaginative Southern writers already pictured him as the reincarnation of one of Napoleon's marshals, but they said that his eyes, which were his most pronounced physical characteristic, were those of a bloodhound, large, dark, and melancholy. In manner he was quiet but cordial. Privately talkative, he was officially uncommunicative. His tongue manifestly was his ally; it was not equally apparent that his pen was his enemy.

Beauregard proceeded to inspect his troops. In command was Milledge L. Bonham, who had fought the Seminoles and the Mexicans as a citizen-soldier and had resigned his seat in Congress to defend his native South Carolina. Under Bonham were two fine regiments, more than 1,500 of the best young men of the Palmetto State. A regiment of Virginians was being organized by Colonel J. F. Preston, another was being recruited rapidly by Colonel R. S. Ewell, and a third by Colonel Samuel Garland, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. From Alexandria had arrived in retreat a few companies under Colonel G. H. Terrett. At Culpeper, collecting men as rapidly as possible, was Colonel Philip St. George Cocke, a rich planter who had been graduated from West Point in 1832 and had been for two years a lieutenant in the United States army.

The smallness of this force alarmed Beauregard. His position, he explained to the President, his troops, and his service of supply alike were inadequate. "I must therefore," he said, "either be re-enforced at once...or I must be prepared to retire, on the approach of the enemy, in the direction of Richmond...." It would not suffice, Beauregard concluded, merely to exhort the President. The populace must be aroused. To that end, he issued on June 5 a proclamation: "A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil. Abraham Lincoln, regardless of all moral, legal, and constitutional restraints,...

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Verlag
Scribner
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1451656432
ISBN 13 
9781451656435
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
912
Herausgeber
Sears Stephen W.
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

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Hamburg
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