Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed GroundThe Civil War generation saw its world in ways startlingly different from our own. In these essays, Glenn W. LaFantasie examines the lives and experiences of several key personalities who gained fame during the war and after. The battle of Gettysburg is the thread that ties these Civil War lives together. Gettysburg was a personal turning point, though each person was affected differently. Largely biographical in its approach, the book captures the human drama of the war and shows how this group of individuals—including Abraham Lincoln, James Longstreet, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, William C. Oates, and others—endured or succumbed to the war and, willingly or unwillingly, influenced its outcome. At the same time, it shows how the war shaped the lives of these individuals, putting them through ordeals they never dreamed they would face or survive. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 18 | |
Tragic Hero of the Union | 35 |
3 Becoming Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain | 49 |
4 Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the American Dream | 68 |
5 Finding William C Oates | 90 |
6 An Alabamians Civil War | 102 |
7 Hell in Haymarket | 119 |
10 Lincoln and the Gettysburg Awakening | 160 |
11 Memories of Little Round Top | 172 |
12 Ike and Monty Take Gettysburg | 192 |
13 The Many Meanings of Gettysburg | 207 |
14 Feeling the Past at Gettysburg | 217 |
Notes | 229 |
Index | 271 |
back cover | 281 |
8 William C Oates and the Death of General Farnsworth | 132 |
9 Mr Lincolns Victory at Gettysburg | 148 |
Common terms and phrases
15th Alabama 20th Maine Abraham Lincoln Adams Alabamians American Army of Northern Bachelder Battle of Gettysburg battlefield berlain Big Round Top Bowdoin brigade brother Bruce Catton burg camp cavalry Cemetery Ridge Cham Chamberlain Autobiography Chamberlain Papers Civil Colonel command commission comrades Confederacy conflict death difficult Edward Porter Alexander Eisenhower enemy Farnsworth Federal field fight fighting finally find fire first flank fought Frances Fanny general’s Gettys Gettysburg Address GNMP Haskell Haskell’s Haymarket hill historians History honor ibid James Longstreet John Joshua Chamberlain Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain July later Lee’s army letter Lincoln at Gettysburg Little Round Top Longstreet Manassas Meade memory ment Montgomery Monty monument never Nicholson Northern Virginia Oates Correspondence Oates’s office officer Paul’s Pennsylvania perfect heroes Potomac president president’s regiment Robbins seemed Sept soldiers South Southern Spear story tion told took Trulock Union and Confederate veterans wanted Washington William Oates words wounded wrote York
Popular passages
Page 153 - In one word, I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.
Page 35 - More than half a mile their front extends ; more than a thousand yards the dull gray masses deploy, man touching man, rank pressing rank, and line supporting line. Their red flags wave ; their horsemen gallop up and down ; the arms of eighteen thousand men, barrel and bayonet, gleam in the sun, — a sloping forest of flashing steel.
Page 153 - If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?
Page 153 - I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point. If he comes towards the upper Potomac, follow on his flank, and on the inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him and fret him.
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Page 86 - Officer at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth...
Page 44 - All depths of passion are stirred, and all combatives fire, down to their deep foundations. Individuality is drowned in a sea of clamor, and timid men, breathing the breath of the multitude, are brave. The frequent dead and wounded lie where they stagger and fall— there is no humanity for them now, and none can be spared to care for them. The men do not cheer or shout; they growl, and over that uneasy sea, heard with the roar of musketry, sweeps the muttered thunder of a storm of growls. Webb,...
Page 74 - At that crisis, I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough. It ran like fire along the line, from man to man, and rose into a shout, with which they sprang forward upon the enemy, now not 30 yards away.
Page 226 - And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them...