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Cargando... The Stonewall Brigade (1963)por James I. Robertson
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James I. Robertson, Jr. is the author or editor of numerous books about the Civil War, including the award-winning Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend; General A.P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior; Soldiers Blue and Gray; Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography; and The Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister. A native Virginian and a former executive director of the United States Civil War Centennial Commission, he is Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the great-grandson of a Confederate soldier who served as cook for General Robert E. Lee. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)973.742History and Geography North America United States Administration of Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865 Civil War General military history Southern sideClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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To clarify: This is a book about the Virginia regiments in the Civil War that were originally under the command of Thomas J. Jackson, and they and he both received the nickname "Stonewall" at the First Battle of Bull Run. Jackson went on to great fame, success, and death -- and, for the most part, so did the brigade, which saw so much hard fighting that it had only a few hundred survivors by 1865. Hence this book.
Author Robertson considers it the most successful and most famous brigade in Robert E. Lee's army. I'm not sure that's true -- I think most people would consider Hood's Texas Brigade the greatest of all Army of Northern Virginia units, and the two were at least close in terms of fame -- but certainly the Stonewall Brigade was one of the most noteworthy. It deserves a unit history.
But a unit history needs some historical background. This book has a lot of information about the men and officers in the brigade, making it very valuable in that regard. But it lacks context. There are several examples of this; I'll offer what I consider the last.
At the beginning of 1864, the Stonewall Brigade was under the command of Brigadier General James A. Walker. It was one of the brigades of Edward Johnson's division. Johnson's was one of three divisions in Richard S. Ewell's Second Corps, the other two being the divisions of Jubal A. Early and Robert Rodes. Then came the Battle of the Wilderness, and then the Battle of Spotsylvania. At Spotsylvania, Walker was wounded in the elbow. Killed, wounded, disabled? Page 225 doesn't tell us; it only tells us that he was wounded. (As it turns out, he survived, but his arm was crippled, and he and the brigade never reunited.) The brigade, already depleted, was ruined at Spotsylvania, and Johnson captured; at about the same time, Ewell was found too weak for field command and went to a less stressful post. So Early rose to corps command, and John B. Gordon took over... some division. Early's? Johnson's? Page 228 says that Gordon recommended that William Terry have command of the Stonewall Brigade, but Gordon had been a brigadier in Early's division, not Johnson's. As a matter of fact, a lot of reorganizing had gone on to try to keep the Second Corps effective despite its losses, and that reorganizing dramatically affected the Stonewall Brigade (which eventually was combined with two others). But you can't learn that from this book; you need something like Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants. And you really can't understand the history of the Stonewall Brigade without that.
So: This is a good, useful supplement if you have a better structural history of Lee's army; you can find out what life was actually like to be in the Stonewall Brigade during its long and distinguished service. But if you want to know what the Stonewall Brigade actually did, you'll need something more. And that's truly sad, because this book wouldn't have had to be too much longer to supply that little bit of additional detail. ( )