Generals In Blue

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21 Union generals come to life in Volume One. Examine their character, personality, military skills.

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Contains 1,396 photographs of the 1400 Brevet Brigadier Generals as well as alphabetical biographical information on each man which includes various ranks and regiments served, wounds received, education, occupation, honors, when and where born and died, where buried. This revised edition has new photos of a number of the Generals and updated data.

The twenty-one profiles of Confederate generals in this volume chronicle the South's war effort. Familiar leaders such as Lee, Jackson, and Stuart are each covered, as are the notorious Nathan Bedford Forrest, Episcopalian bishop Leonidas Polk, and John C. Breckinridge, who ran against Lincoln in 1860 and briefly served in the U.S. Senate. With the same accessible style of the first volume, Jones shows how the outcome of battles, campaigns, and even entire theaters often depended on individual commanders.

This volume uses biographical sketches of twenty-one Union generals to tell the story of the Civil War and examine the implementation of Northern strategy. Among these generals are prominent figures like Ulysses S. Grant, George McClellan, and William T. Sherman, as well as Daniel Sickles, whose actions sparked intense controversy at Gettysburg, and the lesser known John McClernand, a congressman who lobbied for his own appointment. In Wilmer Jones's accounts, which focus on character, personality, leadership ability, military skill, and politics, each general comes starkly to life.

Make no mistake, the Confederacy had the will and valor to fight. But the Union had the manpower, the money, the matriel, and, most important, the generals. Although the South had arguably the best commander in the Civil War in Robert E. Lee, the North's full house beat their one-of-a-kind. Flawed individually, the Union's top officers nevertheless proved collectively superior across a diverse array of battlefields and ultimately produced a victory for the Union. Now acclaimed author Albert Castel brings his inimitable style, insight, and wit to a new reconsideration of these generals. With the assistance of Brooks Simpson, another leading light in this field, Castel has produced a remarkable capstone volume to a distinguished career. In it, he reassesses how battles and campaigns forged a decisive Northern victory, reevaluates the generalship of the victors, and lays bare the sometimes vicious rivalries among the Union generals and their effect on the war. From Shiloh to the Shenandoah, Chickamauga to Chattanooga, Castel provides fresh accounts of how the Union commanders--especially Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Meade but also Halleck, Schofield, and Rosecrans--outmaneuvered and outfought their Confederate opponents. He asks of each why he won: Was it through superior skill, strength of arms, enemy blunders, or sheer chance? What were his objectives and how did he realize them? Did he accomplish more or less than could be expected under the circumstances? And if less, what could he have done to achieve more--and why did he not do it? Castel also sheds new light on the war within the war: the intense rivalries in the upper ranks, complicated by the presence in the army of high-ranking non-West Pointers with political wagons attached to the stars on their shoulders. A decade in the writing, Victors in Blue brims with novel, even outrageous interpretations that are sure to stir debate. As certain as the Union achieved victory, it will inform, provoke, and enliven sesquicentennial discussions of the Civil War.