From the acclaimed Civil War historian, a brilliant new history the most
intimate and richly readable account we have had of the climactic
three-day battle of Gettysburg (July 1 3, 1863), which draws the reader
into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary
soldier, and depicts the combination of personalities and circumstances
that produced the greatest battle of the Civil War, and one of the
greatest in human history.
Of the half-dozen full-length histories of the battle of Gettysburg
written over the last century, none dives down so closely to the
experience of the individual soldier, or looks so closely at the sway of
politics over military decisions, or places the battle so firmly in the
context of nineteenth-century military practice. Allen C. Guelzo shows
us the face, the sights, and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat:
the lay of the land, the fences and the stone walls, the gunpowder
clouds that hampered movement and vision; the armies that caroused,
foraged, kidnapped, sang, and were so filthy they could be smelled
before they could be seen; the head-swimming difficulties of marshaling
massive numbers of poorly trained soldiers, plus thousands of animals
and wagons, with no better means of communication than those of Caesar
and Alexander.
What emerges is an untold story, from the trapped and terrified
civilians in Gettysburg s cellars to the insolent attitude of
artillerymen, from the taste of gunpowder cartridges torn with the teeth
to the sounds of marching columns, their tin cups clanking like an anvil
chorus. Guelzo depicts the battle with unprecedented clarity, evoking a
world where disoriented soldiers and officers wheel nearly blindly
through woods and fields toward their clash, even as poetry and hymns
spring to their minds with ease in the midst of carnage. Rebel soldiers
look to march on Philadelphia and even New York, while the Union
struggles to repel what will be the final invasion of the North. One
hundred and fifty years later, the cornerstone battle of the Civil War
comes vividly to life as a national epic, inspiring both horror and
admiration.
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