By Stephen Hood
John Bell Hood was one of the Confederacy's most
successful-and enigmatic-generals. He died at 48 after a brief illness in
August of 1879, leaving behind the first draft of his memoirs Advance and
Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States
Armies. Published posthumously the following year, the memoirs immediately
became as controversial as their author. A careful and balanced examination of
these "controversies," however, coupled with the recent discovery of
Hood's personal papers (which were long considered lost) finally sets the
record straight in John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a
Confederate General.
Outlived by most of his critics, Hood's published version of many of the major
events and controversies of his Confederate military career were met with scorn
and skepticism. Some described his memoirs as nothing more than a polemic
against his arch-rival Joseph E. Johnston. These unflattering opinions persisted
throughout the decades and reached their nadir in 1992, when an influential
author described Hood's memoirs as "merely a bitter, misleading, and
highly distorted treatise" replete with "distortions,
misrepresentations, and outright falsifications." Without any personal
papers to contradict them, many historians and writers portrayed Hood as an
inept and dishonest opium addict and a conniving, vindictive cripple of a man.
One writer went so far as to brand him "a fool with a license to kill his
own men." What most readers don't know is that nearly all of these authors
misused sources, ignored contrary evidence, and/or suppressed facts sympathetic
to Hood.
Stephen M. "Sam" Hood, a distant relative of the general, embarked on
a meticulous forensic study of the common perceptions and controversies of his
famous kinsman. His careful examination of the original sources utilized to
create the broadly accepted "facts" about John Bell Hood uncovered
startlingly poor scholarship by some of the most well-known and influential
historians of the 20th and 21st centuries. These discoveries, coupled with his
access to a large cache of recently discovered Hood papers-many penned by
generals and other officers who served with Hood-confirm Hood's account that
originally appeared in his memoir and resolve, for the first time, some of the
most controversial aspects of Hood's long career.
"Blindly accepting historical 'truths' without vigorous challenge,"
cautions one historian, "is a perilous path to understanding real history."
The shocking revelations in John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of
a Confederate General will forever change our perceptions of Hood as both a man
and a general, and those who set out to shape his legacy.
ISBN 978-1611211405, Savas Beatie, © 2013, Hardcover, 336
Pages, Photographs & Illustrations, Maps, Footnotes, Appendices,
Bibliography & Index. $32.95. To Purchase the book click HERE.
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