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The War for the Common Soldier

The War for the Common Soldier PDF Author: Peter S. Carmichael
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469643103
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war. Digging deeply into his soldiers' writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was "a common soldier" but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers' experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.

The War for the Common Soldier

The War for the Common Soldier PDF Author: Peter S. Carmichael
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469643103
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war. Digging deeply into his soldiers' writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was "a common soldier" but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers' experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.

The Civil War Diary of a Common Soldier

The Civil War Diary of a Common Soldier PDF Author: Terrence J. Winschel
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807125939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
William Wiley was typical of most soldiers who served in the armies of the North and South during the Civil War. A poorly educated farmer from Peoria, he enlisted in the summer of 1862 in the 77th Illinois Infantry, a unit that participated in most of the major campaigns waged in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. Recognizing that the great conflict would be a defining experience in his life, Wiley attempted to maintain a diary during his years of service. Frequent illnesses kept him from the ranks for extended periods of time, and he filled the many gaps in his diary after the war. When viewed as a postwar memoir rather than a period diary, Wiley's narrative assumes great importance as it weaves a fascinating account of the army life of Billy Yank. Rather than focus on the noble and heroic aspects of war, Wiley reveals how basic the lives of most soldiers actually were. He describes at length his experiences with sickness, both on land and at sea, and the monotony of daily military life. He seldom mentions army leaders, evidence of how little private soldiers knew of them or the larger drama in which they played a part. Instead, he writes fondly of his small circle of regimental friends, fills his pages with refreshing anecdotes, records troop movements, details contact with civilians, and describes the appearance of the countryside through which he passed. In the epilogue, Terrence J. Winschel recounts Wiley's complex and often frustrating struggle to obtain his military pension after the war. Wiley was an ingenious misspeller, and his words are transcribed just as he wrote them more than 130 years ago. Through his simple language, we come to know and care for this common man who made a common soldier. His story transcends the barriers of time and distance, and places the reader in the midst of men who experienced both the horror and the tedium of war. Winschel's rich annotation fleshes out Wiley's narrative and provides an enlightening historical perspective. Scholars and buffs alike, especially those fascinated by operations in the lower Mississippi Valley and along the Gulf Coast, will relish Wiley's honest portrait of the ordinary serviceman's Civil War.

The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865

The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 PDF Author: Leander Stillwell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Book Description
The Story of a Comman Soldier is the description of Leander Stillwell's experiences as an average soldier in the Union Army.

Nature's Civil War

Nature's Civil War PDF Author: Kathryn Shively Meier
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469610760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
In the Shenandoah Valley and Peninsula Campaigns of 1862, Union and Confederate soldiers faced unfamiliar and harsh environmental conditions--strange terrain, tainted water, swarms of flies and mosquitoes, interminable rain and snow storms, and oppressive

Motivation in War

Motivation in War PDF Author: Ilya Berkovich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107167736
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Explains the motivation of ordinary soldiers to enlist, serve and fight in the armies of eighteenth-century Europe.

Friendly Enemies

Friendly Enemies PDF Author: Lauren K. Thompson
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496202457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
Fraternity and resistance -- Discourse -- Trade -- Information -- Ceasefires -- Memory -- Conclusion.

Soldiers North and South

Soldiers North and South PDF Author: Paul Alan Cimbala
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823233922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Originally published: The Civil War. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2008.

For Cause and Comrades

For Cause and Comrades PDF Author: James M. McPherson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199741050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.

Civil War Soldiers

Civil War Soldiers PDF Author: Reid Mitchell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140263330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The soldiers on both sides of the Civil War were united by a common history, and yet the legacy of this past was ambiguous, upholding both rebellion and union. Union and Confederate men went to war as Americans, convinced they fought an un-American, savage enemy. The war they fought was as emotional and catastrophic as any in history, a violent crucible that forged a new national identity. Civil War Soldiers is a fresh and compelling attempt to fathom the war's significance—then and now—and makes immediate the charged issues and bitter ironies of a nation torn by a conflict over the common ideals of liberty and justice. Drawing on diaries and letters, the focus of this pioneering study is on the men who fought, caught up in a conflict whose causes and consequences seemed as complex and contradictory to the soldiers themselves as they do to us. Reid Mitchell re-creates their experience and discusses the questions one would have most wanted to ask them: Why did you fight? How did you feel about slavery and race? What did you take home from the war? What legacy have you left us? "Fresh insights, startling descriptions, and poignant human detail about the war from the men who fought it."—Chicago Tribune

The Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier

The Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier PDF Author: Joseph Plumb Martin
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Book Description
Joseph Plumb Martin (1760 – 1850) was a soldier in the Continental Army and Connecticut Militia during the American Revolutionary War, holding the rank of private for most of the war. His published narrative of his experiences has become a valuable resource for historians in understanding the conditions of a common soldier of that era, as well as the battles in which Martin participated. "My intention is to give a succinct account of some of my adventures, dangers and sufferings during my several campaigns in the revolutionary army." Contents: Campaign of 1776. Campaign of 1777. Campaign of 1778. Campaign of 1779. Campaign of 1780. Campaign of 1781. Campaign of 1782. Campaign of 1783.