Edited by Steven E.
Woodworth and Charles D. Grear
Contributors include Stewart
Bennett, Andrew S. Bledsoe, John J. Gaines, John R.
Lundberg, Jennifer M. Murray, Paul L. Schmelzer, Brooks D.
Simpson, Timothy B. Smith, Scott L. Stabler, Jonathan M.
Steplyk, D. L. Turner, and William Lee White.
Few American Civil War operations matched the controversy,
intensity, and bloodshed of Confederate general John Bell Hood’s ill-fated 1864
campaign against Union forces in Tennessee. In the first-ever anthology on the
subject, The Tennessee Campaign of 1864, edited by Steven E. Woodworth
and Charles D. Grear, fourteen prominent historians and emerging scholars
examine the three-month operation, covering the battles of Allatoona, Spring
Hill, and Franklin, as well as the decimation of Hood’s army at Nashville.
Contributors explore the campaign’s battlefield action, including how Major
General Andrew J. Smith’s three aggressive divisions of the Army of Tennessee
became the most successful Federal unit at Nashville, how vastly outnumbered
Union troops held the Allatoona Pass, why Hood failed at Spring Hill and how
the event has been perceived, and why so many of the Army of Tennessee’s
officer corps died at the Battle of Franklin, where the Confederacy suffered a
disastrous blow. An exciting inclusion is the diary of Confederate major
general Patrick R. Cleburne, which covers the first phase of the campaign.
Essays on the strained relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and George H.
Thomas and on Thomas’s approach to warfare reveal much about the personalities
involved, and chapters about civilians in the campaign’s path and those miles
away show how the war affected people not involved in the fighting. An
innovative case study of the fighting at Franklin investigates the emotional
and psychological impact of killing on the battlefield, and other implications
of the campaign include how the courageous actions of the U.S. Colored Troops
at Nashville made a lasting impact on the African American community and how
preservation efforts met with differing results at Franklin and Nashville.
Canvassing both military and social history, this well-researched volume offers
new, illuminating perspectives while furthering long-running debates on more
familiar topics. These in-depth essays provide an expert appraisal of one of
the most brutal and notorious campaigns in Civil War history.
ISBN 978-0809334520, Southern Illinois University Press, ©
2016, Hardcover, 280 pages, Photographs, Maps, Notes at the end of each essay
& Index. $34.50. To purchase this book click HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment