Confederate Generals Of North Carolina

A look at the generals who were either born in the state or directly commanded its troops, including Braxton Bragg, Louis Addison Armistead, and others. Confederate Generals of North Carolina provides a brief but compelling biography of each of the forty-six Confederate Generals who served from North Carolina during the Civil War. Each biography includes, in addition to the war service, a summary of a general’s prewar and postwar careers. Author Joe Mobley (editor of the North Carolina Historical Review) also discusses the generals collectively: how many were killed or wounded, who attended West Point before the war, who achieved the highest levels of success both on and off the battlefield, and more. “The Old North State could also boast some of the finest general officers in the Confederate army. Mobley provides a biographical sketch of each general’s life with emphasis on his Confederate service record—as well as a wartime image of each.” —Civil War News

As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817–1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general's military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer. While Hess analyzes Bragg's many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army--including Bragg's superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates--reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general's personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.

A renown military historian and frequent television commenter brings to life the generalship of the South during the Civil War in sparkling, information-filled vignettes. For both the Civil War completist and the general reader! Anyone acquainted with the American Civil War will readily recognize the names of the Confederacy’s most prominent generals. Robert E. Lee. Stonewall Jackson. James Longstreet. These men have long been lionized as fearless commanders and genius tacticians. Yet few have heard of the hundreds of generals who led under and alongside them. Men whose battlefield resolve spurred the Confederacy through four years of the bloodiest combat Americans have ever faced. In The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals, veteran Civil War historian, Samuel W. Mitcham, documents the lives of every Confederate general from birth to death, highlighting their unique contributions to the battlefield and bringing their personal triumphs and tragedies to life. Packed with photos and historical briefings, The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals belongs on the shelf of every Civil War historian, and preserves in words the legacies once carved in stone.

On May 8, 1861, Matt Ransom resigned from the North Carolina House of Commons and accepted a commission as a Confederate officer. Like many North Carolinians, Ransom had been reluctant to see his state leave the Union; though he owned slaves at the onset of the war, he strongly believed that slavery was a doomed institution. However, the action at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, had made his course of action all but inevitable. Despite the fact he was without military experience or training, Ransom saw it as his duty to join the Confederate forces. He left behind a young family and courageously fought Union forces until the end of the war; his brigade was present at Appomattox for Robert E. Lee's surrender. He was twice wounded in battle and was widely recognized as an effective and highly competent leader by enlisted men and officers alike. After the war, he returned to his beloved North Carolina, and following considerable hardship, rebuilt his plantation.

This volume is the latest in the North Carolina Troops series, which is published by the State of North Carolina, with the aim of presenting the history of each North Carolina unit in the Civil War, and a service record for each soldier. The histories are compiled from the Official Records of the armies, and other primary and secondary sources; histories in Volumes 12-20 are footnoted. The rosters are compiled from the National Archives Compiled Service Records, which contain abstracts of muster rolls, hospital records, prisoner-of-war records, as well as original documents. Other sources include census records, pension records, newspapers, and records of the North Carolina Adjutant General. This volume contains a roster of the 32 Confederate Generals from North Carolina, and an essay and roster of Confederate staff officers and non-regimental troops from North Carolina. It also contains a roster of unassigned enlistees. It contains a thorough history of the North Carolina Militia, followed by a roster of Militia Generals and staff, and rosters of regiments 1 through 61 of the Militia. The rosters of regiments 62 through 121 of the Militia will be presented in Volume 21 of this series.

This is a compilation of the medical histories of 425 Confederate generals. It does not analyze the effects of an individual's medical problems on a battle or the war, but provides information about factors that may have contributed to the wound, injury, or illness, and the outcome.

This is the story of Collett Leventhorpe (1815-1889), an Englishman and former captain in the 14th Regiment of Foot. Leventhorpe came to North Carolina about 1843, settled there, and later served the Confederacy as a colonel in the 34th and 11th N.C. and brigadier general commanding the Home Guard in eastern North Carolina. Though he trained as a physician at the College of Charleston in the late 1840s, he never practiced and was a restless man, endlessly in search of fortune--before the war in the gold fields of North Carolina and Georgia, and after it in the pursuit of lost estates, art treasures and inventions. But he excelled first and foremost as a Confederate soldier. As a field commander he was never defeated in battle, and his record was marred only by his own rejection of a much deserved but very late promotion to CSA brigadier. He lies buried in the beautiful Happy Valley section of Caldwell County.