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Originally published forty years ago, Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Road to Appomattox marked one of the first efforts by a Civil War scholar to identify the internal causes of the South’s defeat. Today this elegant little book remains one of the most penetrating, thought-provoking works on the subject. In the book’s three chapters, Wiley treats three broad reasons for the failure of the Confederacy: weak political leadership, low morale among the populace, and four “internal influences” in the South. Those four shortcomings stemmed from traits apparently endemic to southerners in general, Wiley explains, and they included disharmony among and between political and military leaders; the government’s failure to provide adequate public information systems; rigidity in outlook and course of action; and poor judgment, especially of the North’s strength, the South’s own strength, and Europe’s dependence on cotton. Recent years have witnessed a number of significant studies dealing with Confederate defeat, particularly with the failings of Davis as war leader and with the complex issue of the South’s dedication to the cause. Wiley was one of the first historians to raise these issues and discuss them trenchantly. Those familiar with The Road to Appomattox will cheer the reissue of this resonant work; first-time readers will see why.
A description of the military operations of the Civil War includes analyses of the leadership and strategies of both sides of the conflict.
A vivid account of the early battles, first in the Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy: “One of America’s foremost Civil War authorities” (Kirkus Reviews). The first book in Bruce Catton’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln’s Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan. Following the secession of the Southern states, a beleaguered President Abraham Lincoln entrusted the dashing, charismatic McClellan with the creation of the Union’s Army of the Potomac and the responsibility of leading it to a swift and decisive victory against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Although a brilliant tactician who was beloved by his troops and embraced by the hero-hungry North, McClellan’s ego and ambition ultimately put him at loggerheads with his commander in chief—a man McClellan considered unworthy of the presidency. McClellan’s weaknesses were exposed during the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history, which ended in a stalemate even though the Confederate troops were greatly outnumbered. After Antietam, Lincoln ordered McClellan’s removal from command, and the Union entered the war’s next chapter having suffered thousands of casualties and with great uncertainty ahead. America’s premier chronicler of the nation’s brutal internecine conflict, Bruce Catton is renowned for his unparalleled ability to bring a detailed and vivid immediacy to Civil War battlefields and military strategy sessions. With tremendous depth and insight, he presents legendary commanders and common soldiers in all their complex and heartbreaking humanity.
When Chicago lawyer Thomas Osborn set out to form a Union regiment in the days following the attack on Fort Sumter, he could not have known it was the beginning of a 6000-mile journey that would end at Appomattox Courthouse four years later. With assistance from Governor Richard Yates, the 39th Illinois Infantry--"The Yates Phalanx"--enlisted young men from Chicago, its (modern-day) suburbs, and small towns of northern and central Illinois. While most Illinois regiments fought in the west, the 39th marched through the Shenandoah Valley to fight Stonewall Jackson, to Charleston Harbor for the Second Battle of Fort Sumter and to Richmond for the year-long siege at Petersburg. This book chronicles day-to-day life in the regiment, the myriad factors that determined its path, and the battles fought by the Chicagoans--including two Medal of Honor recipients--who fired some of the last shots before the Confederate surrender.
Even after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, the Civil War continued to be fought, and surrenders negotiated, on different fronts. The most notable of these occurred at Bennett Place, near Durham, North Carolina, when Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Union General William T. Sherman. In this first full-length examination of the end of the war in North Carolina, Mark Bradley traces the campaign leading up to Bennett Place. Alternating between Union and Confederate points of view and drawing on his readings of primary sources, including numerous eyewitness accounts and the final muster rolls of the Army of Tennessee, Bradley depicts the action as it was experienced by the troops and the civilians in their path. He offers new information about the morale of the Army of Tennessee during its final confrontation with Sherman's much larger Union army. And he advances a fresh interpretation of Sherman's and Johnston's roles in the final negotiations for the surrender.
The Army of Northern Virginia's chaotic dispersal began even before Lee and Grant met at Appomattox Court House. As the Confederates had pushed west at a relentless pace for nearly a week, thousands of wounded and exhausted men fell out of the ranks. When word spread that Lee planned to surrender, most remaining troops stacked their arms and accepted paroles allowing them to return home, even as they lamented the loss of their country and cause. But others broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men who had yet to surrender. But the shock of Lincoln's assassination led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport, even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom. In this dramatic new history of the weeks and months after Appomattox, Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee's surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney takes readers from the deliberations of government and military authorities to the ground-level experiences of common soldiers. Ultimately, what unfolds is the messy birth narrative of the Lost Cause, laying the groundwork for the defiant resilience of rebellion in the years that followed.
“This thoughtful, engaging examination of the Reconstruction Era . . . will be appealing . . . to anyone interested in the roots of present-day American politics” (Publishers Weekly). The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. In many ways, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners forged a national identity that united three very different regions into a country that could become a world power. A sweeping history of the United States from the era of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this engaging book tracks the formation of the American middle class while stretching the boundaries of our understanding of Reconstruction. Historian Heather Cox Richardson ties the North and West into the post–Civil War story that usually focuses narrowly on the South. By weaving together the experiences of real individuals who left records in their own words—from ordinary Americans such as a plantation mistress, a Native American warrior, and a labor organizer, to prominent historical figures such as Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, and Sitting Bull—Richardson tells a story about the creation of modern America.
The ferocious final weeks of the Civil War come alive in Judgment at Appomattox, the final novel of New York Times bestselling author Ralph Peters's breathtaking, Boyd Award-winning series A great war nears its end. Robert E. Lee makes a desperate, dramatic gamble. It fails. Ulysses S. Grant moves. Veteran armies clash around Petersburg, Virginia, as Grant seeks to surround Lee and Lee makes a skillful withdrawal in the night. Richmond falls. Each day brings new combat and more casualties, as Lee’s exhausted, hungry troops race to preserve the Confederacy. But Grant does not intend to let Lee escape... In one of the most thrilling episodes in American history, heroes North and South, John Brown Gordon and Phillip Sheridan, James Longstreet and Francis Channing Barlow, battle each other across southern Virginia as the armies converge on a sleepy country court house. Written with the literary flair and historical accuracy readers expect from Ralph Peters, Judgment at Appomattox takes us through the Civil War’s last grim interludes of combat as flags fall and hearts break. Capping the author’s acclaimed five-novel cycle on the war in the East, this “dramatized history” pays homage to all the soldiers who fought, from an Irish-immigrant private wearing gray, to the “boy generals” who mastered modern war. This is a grand climax to a great, prize-winning series that honors—and reveals—America's past. Battle Hymn Cycle Cain at Gettysburg Hell or Richmond Valley of the Shadow The Damned of Petersburg Judgment at Appomattox At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEA New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' ChoiceThomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong. Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife. Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.
The last days of fighting in the Civil War's eastern theater have been wrapped in mythology since the moment of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. War veterans and generations of historians alike have focused on the seemingly inevitable defeat of the Confederacy after Lee's flight from Petersburg and recalled the generous surrender terms set forth by Grant, thought to facilitate peace and to establish the groundwork for sectional reconciliation. But this volume of essays by leading scholars of the Civil War era offers a fresh and nuanced view of the eastern war's closing chapter. Assessing events from the siege of Petersburg to the immediate aftermath of Lee's surrender, Petersburg to Appomattox blends military, social, cultural, and political history to reassess the ways in which the war ended and examines anew the meanings attached to one of the Civil War's most significant sites, Appomattox. Contributors are Peter S. Carmichael, William W. Bergen, Susannah J. Ural, Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, William C. Davis, Keith Bohannon, Caroline E. Janney, Stephen Cushman, and Elizabeth R. Varon.