John Bell Hood

John Bell Hood, a native of Kentucky bred on romantic notions of the Old South and determined to model himself on Robert E.Lee, had a tragic military career, no less interesting for being calamitous.

No aspect of Civil War history is more fascinating than the two major campaigns that took place in the western theater in late 1864. The opposing generals, William T. Sherman and John Bell Hood, took armies that had been fighting for months and headed them away from each other: Hood marched north into Tennessee, and Sherman marched south into Georgia. As Sherman himself noted, "It surely was a strange event; two hostile armies marching in opposite directions, each in the full belief that it was achieving a final and conclusive result in a great war". Hood went on to catastrophic defeat at Franklin and Nashville, while Sherman successfully moved through Georgia to the coast.

Many books deal with either Sherman's march or Hood's Tennessee campaign, but although they unfolded simultaneously and concluded the main fighting in the western theater, no recent volume analyzes the two together. In her groundbreaking study, Anne J. Bailey assesses how military events in Georgia and Tennessee intertwined and affected the political, social, and economic conditions in those areas and throughout the nation.

Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard once wrote that "no people ever warred for independence with more relative advantages than the Confederates." If there was any doubt as to what Beauregard sought to imply, he later chose to spell it out: the failure of the Confederacy lay with the Confederate president Jefferson Davis. In Jefferson Davis' Generals, a team of the nation's most distinguished Civil War historians present fascinating examinations of the men who led the South through our nation's bloodiest conflict, focusing in particular on Jefferson Davis' relationships with five key generals who held independent commands: Joseph E. Johnston, Robert E. Lee, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, and John Bell Hood. Craig Symonds examines the underlying implications of a withering trust between Johnston and his friend Jefferson Davis. And was there really harmony between Davis and Robert E. Lee? A tenuous harmony at best, according to Emory Thomas. Michael Parrish explores how Beauregard and Davis worked through a deep and mutual loathing, while Steven E. Woodworth and Herman Hattaway make contrasting evaluations of the competence of Generals Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood. Taking a different angle on Davis' ill-fated commanders, Lesley Gordon probes the private side of war through the roles of the generals' wives, and Harold Holzer investigates public perceptions of the Confederate leadership through printed images created by artists of the day. Pulitzer Prize-winner James M. McPherson's final chapter ties the individual essays together and offers a new perspective on Confederate strategy as a whole. Jefferson Davis' Generals provides stimulating new insights into one of the most vociferously debated topics in Civil War history.

Atlanta 1864 brings to life this crucial campaign of the Civil War, as federal armies under William T. Sherman contended with Joseph E. Johnston and his successor, John Bell Hood, and moved steadily through Georgia to occupy the rail and commercial center of Atlanta. Sherman's efforts were undertaken as his former commander, Ulysses S. Grant, set out on a similar mission to destroy Robert E. Lee or drive him back to Richmond. These struggles were the millstones that Grant intended to use to grind the Confederacy's strength into dust. By fall, Sherman's success in Georgia had assured the re-election of Abraham Lincoln and determined that the federal government would never acquiesce in the independence of the Confederacy. Richard M. McMurry examines the Atlanta campaign as a political and military unity in the context of the greater struggle of the war itself.

This study challenges both the accepted convention that the American Civil War was the first "modern war" and the myth that Civil War leaders were guided by foreign and American military thought in fighting their war. Wood's work takes an innovative approach by selecting three typical higher level commanders on each side, Union and Confederate, and then "pairing them off" in the campaigns and battles in which they actually confronted each other. While readers gain insight into the nature and character of a commander, they can, at the same time, observe how each put his art of command into practice. Civil War commanders at the operational level had to confront not only their opponents on campaign and in battle, they also had to develop--even create--their own method of command through their personal on-the-job training, while actually engaged in combat operations.

John Bell Hood may be the South's most famously unfortunate soldier. With his reckless charges that broke Union defenses at Gaines's Mill, Second Bull Run, South Mountain and Antietam, Hood became the beau ideal of the Southern cavalier. However, his heroics contained the seeds of his own downfall: trusting too much in sheer courage and dash, Hood schemed against General Joseph E. Johnston and supplanted him as commander of the Army of Tennessee in the defense of Atlanta; Hood's suicidal charges at Franklin and Nashville destroyed his army. Hood was, if nothing else, fiercely courageous; he lost both an arm and a leg in combat, and finally had to be strapped to his horse to ride. In Hood's recollections, we find his unwavering loyalty to the Confederate cause and his unshakable admiration for Lee and Davis. We can follow his implacable dislike for his former friend and comrade, Joe Johnston, as well as his penchant for blaming reverses on his subordinates. Like many of the surviving Confederate generals, Hood believed that somehow the Confederacy would have triumphed were it not for the mistakes and negligence of others. In 1879, bankrupt and the father of eleven children, he lost his wife and eldest daughter, and later his own life, to the same yellow fever that had ruined his business. General P. G. T. Beauregard arranged for the publication of Hood's memoirs to benefit Hood's orphaned children.

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.

The Civil War was barely over before Southerners and other students of the war began to examine the Confederate high command in search of an explanation for the South's failure. Although years of research failed to show that the South's defeat was due to a single, overriding cause, the actions of the Southern leaders during the war were certainly among the reasons the South lost the war.

In No Band of Brothers, Steven Woodworth explores, through a series of essays, various facets of the way the Confederacy waged its unsuccessful war for secession. He examines Jefferson Davis and some of his more important generals, including Pierre G. T. Beauregard, Leonidas Polk, Joseph E. Johnston, Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and Winfield Scott; the Confederacy's strategic plans; and the South's success in making competent officers out of men with very little military preparation.

Woodworth particularly looks at the personalities and personal relationships that affected the course and outcome of the war. What made a good general? What could make an otherwise able man a failure as a general? What role did personal friendships or animosities play in the Confederacy's top command assignments and decisions? How successful was the Confederacy in making competent generals out of its civilian leaders? In what ways did Jefferson Davis succeed or fail in maximizing the chances for the success of his cause?

In analyzing the Confederate leadership, Woodworth reveals some weaknesses, many strengths, and much new information. No Band of Brothers will be an important addition to Civil War scholarship and will be welcomed by professional historians, amateur historians,students, and the general reader alike.

"Combining a broad knowledge of the period with a skillful pen, Dufour has written a lively, reliable, enjoyable narrative. . . . [He] describes his subjects accurately and forcefully. The reader sees men of flesh and blood, not monuments. Each man's contribution to the Confederate cause is evaluated realistically."--Civil War HistoryPorter Alexander is not a household name today, but he should be remembered as one of Robert E. Lee's most valuable officers. Bold and imaginative, Alexander was an artillerist whose service was requested by every Confederate army commander. He and eight other "men in gray" come to life in vivid sketches by Charles L. Dufour. Singled out are Dick Taylor, the handsome son of former president Zachary Taylor who led the Louisiana Brigade; Turner Ashby, an expert horseman whose death in battle typified the doomed gallantry of the Rebels; Pat Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee, who was called "the Stonewall of the West"; "Savez" Read, a navy man who terrorized the Atlantic seaboard in a one-gun sailing vessel; Willie Pegram, a shy Virginian who was a bold cannoneer; Lucius B. Northrop, whose abrasive personality complicated his task of feeding the army; William Mahone, whose ferocious fighting spirit belied his bantam size; and Henry Hotze, who served brilliantly as a Confederate agent and propagandist.Charles L. Dufour's other books include The Night the War Was Lost (1960). Introducing Nine Men in Gray is Gary W. Gallagher, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Fighting for the Confederacy: Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander (1989) and the editor of Lee the Soldier (Nebraska, 1996).