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As one of the few higher-ranking officers in the Army of Tennessee to avoid controversy, General Alexander P. Stewart (1821–1908) was an outstanding, but not outrageous, leader. In this masterful biography, Sam Davis Elliott traces the life of this undeservedly obscure general, from his early years at West Point through his involvement in nearly all of the battles fought by the Army of Tennessee to his postwar career as an educator and Civil War park commissioner. More than the story of one man, Soldier of Tennessee poignantly conveys the triumphs and failures of the Confederate effort in the West and a divided nation’s efforts at reconciliation.
Trained as a physician and ordained an Episcopal priest, Charles Todd Quintard (1824--1898) was a remarkable man by the standard of any generation. Born, raised, and educated in the North, he migrated to the South to pursue a medical career but was inspired by the bishop of Tennessee to serve the church. When Tennessee seceded from the Union in May 1861, Quintard joined the Confederate 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment as its chaplain and during the maelstrom of the Civil War kept a diary of his experiences. He later penned a memoir, which was published posthumously in 1905. Sam Davis Elliott combines a previously unpublished portion of the diary with Quintard's memoir in Doctor Quintard, Chap...
An award-winning biography of one of the Confederacy’s most successful—and most criticized—generals. Winner of the 2014 Albert Castel Book Award and the 2014 Walt Whitman Award John Bell Hood died at forty-eight after a brief illness in August 1879, leaving behind the first draft of his memoirs, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies. Published posthumously the following year, the memoirs immediately became as controversial as their author. A careful and balanced examination of these controversies, however, coupled with the recent discovery of Hood’s personal papers—which were long considered lost—finally sets the record strai...
The Battle of Nashville was a two-day battle fought on December 15-16, 1864; this is a spellbinding account of the Confederates' retreat after their crushing defeat, with Union forces in hot pursuit, during one of the worst winters on record.
Judith Brockenbrough McGuire's Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War is among the first of such works published after the Civil War. Although it is one of the most-quoted memoirs by a Confederate woman, James I. Robertson's edition is the first to present vital details not given in the original text. His meticulous annotations furnish references for poems and quotations, supply the names of individuals whom McGuire identifies by their initials alone, and provide an in-depth account of McGuire's extraordinary life. Throughout the war years, McGuire made poignant entries in her diary. She wrote incisive commentaries on society, ruminated on past glories, and detailed her hardships. Her entries are a highly personal, highly revealing mixture of family activities; military reports and rumors; conditions behind the battle lines; and her observations on life, faith, and the future. In providing illuminating background and references that significantly enhance the text, Robertson's edition adds considerably to our understanding of this important work.
In the 1980s, the Army Chaplain Corps adopted the credo 'Nurture the living/Care for the wounded/Honor the dead'. It summarizes more than 200 years of chaplain ministry with soldiers during war and peace. This title presents an expression of the hope and faith on which the credo is built.
For more than a century, the American medical profession insisted that doctors be rigorously trained in medical science and dedicated to professional ethics. Patients revered their doctors as representatives of a sacred vocation. Do we still trust doctors with the same conviction? In Trusting Doctors, Jonathan Imber attributes the development of patients' faith in doctors to the inspiration and influence of Protestant and Catholic clergymen during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He explains that as the influence of clergymen waned, and as reliance on medical technology increased, patients' trust in doctors steadily declined. Trusting Doctors discusses the emphasis that Protesta...
When the Confederates emerged as victors in the Chickamauga Campaign, the Union Army of the Cumberland lay under siege in Chattanooga, with Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee on nearby high ground at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. A win at Chattanooga was essential for the Confederates, both to capitalize on the victory at Chickamauga and to keep control of the gateway to the lower South. Should the Federal troops wrest control of that linchpin, they would cement their control of eastern Tennessee and gain access to the Deep South. In the fall 1863 Chattanooga Campaign, the new head of the western Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant, sought to break the Confederate siege. His success cre...
When Gen. Robert E. Lee fled from Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865, many observers did not realize that the Civil War had reached its nadir. A large number of Confederates, from Jefferson Davis down to the rank-and-file, were determined to continue fighting. Though Union successes had nearly extinguished the Confederacy’s hope for an outright victory, the South still believed it could force the Union to grant a negotiated peace that would salvage some of its war aims. As evidence of the Confederacy’s determination, two major Union campaigns, along with a number of smaller engagements, were required to quell the continued organized Confederate military resistance. In Sprin...