The Army Of Tennessee In Retreat

“Impressively informative…essential”—Midwest Book Review “One of the most sustained discussions of this chapter of the war…often providing a novelist’s dramatic and poetic flourishes…[Hood] can be a gifted storyteller…riveting and compelling”—The Civil War Monitor Following the Battle of Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee was in full retreat, from the battle lines south of Nashville to the Tennessee River at the Alabama state line. Ferocious engagements broke out along the way as Hood’s small rearguard, harried by Federal Cavalry brigades, fought a 10-day running battle over 100 miles of impoverished countryside during one of the worst winters on record.

The military autobiography of the Confederacy's most controversial general, from his 1853 graduation from West Point and subsequent duty in California and Texas (mainly on exploratory missions). Born a southern aristocrat, Hood unswervingly supported the Confederacy but was widely viewed as reckless with his commands. Hood lost an arm at Gettysburg, a leg at Chickamauga and Atlanta to Sherman.

"Generally, volumes in the Voices of the Civil War series are edited diaries, letter collections, or journals by a single soldier or civilian. In Christopher Thrasher's unique contribution to the series, Suffering in the Army of Tennessee, the author draws upon diaries, letters, newspapers, memoirs, official reports, and genealogical sources to capture from as many points of view as possible the experiences of ordinary soldiers in the Army of Tennessee from the Atlanta Campaign to the end of the war. In addition to extensive primary documentation, Thrasher provides context for understanding how events developed from 1864 to the total collapse of General John Bell Hood's forces. While volumes have been written on the Atlanta Campaign or the Battles of Nashville and Franklin, no previous historian has constructed what amounts to a sweeping social history of the Army of Tennessee"--

Includes Civil War Map and Illustrations Pack – 224 battle plans, campaign maps and detailed analyses of actions spanning the entire period of hostilities. “When John Bell Hood entered into the services of the Confederate Army, he was 29 years old, a handsome man and courageous soldier, loyal to the ideal of Confederate Independence and eager to fight for it. He led his men bravely into the battles of Second Manassas, Gaines’s Mill, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga. He rose fast, attaining the temporary rank of full general, only to fall faster. Hood emerged from the war with his left arm shattered and useless, his right leg missing, his face aged far beyond his 33 years, and with his military reputation in disgrace. Blamed by contemporaries for contributing to the defeat of his beloved Confederacy, Hood struggled to refute their accusations. His most vehement critic, General Johnston, charged Hood with insubordination while serving under him and, after succeeding him in command, of recklessly leading Confederate troops to their “slaughter” and “useless butchery.” Sherman, too, in his Memoirs, took a harsh view of Hood. Born of controversy, Advance and Retreat is of course a highly controversial book. It is also full of invaluable information and insights into the retreat from Dalton in early 1864, the fighting around Atlanta, and the disastrous Tennessee Campaign in winter of that year. Far from being a careful, sober, objective account, this book is the passionate, bitter attempt of a soldier to rebut history’s judgment of himself as general and man.”-Print ed.

This assessment of the performance of the southern soldiers in the American Civil War of 1861 deals with every aspect of an army from its senior officer to the lowliest private, following every process as the soldier tried to adapt to military life, train, and overcome the enemy.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1880.

Did Confederate armies attack too often for their own good during the Civil War? Was the relentless, sometimes costly effort to preserve territory a blunder? These questions about Confederate strategy have dogged historians since Appomattox. Many have come to believe that the South might have won the Civil War if it had only avoided head-on battles, conducted an aggressive guerrilla campaign, and manoeuvred across wide swaths of territory. This volume offers a consideration of this widely-held theory.

Nowhere in the annals of United States military history is there a more tragic, yet valorous, story than that of the Army of Tennessee. Unlike its companion fighting unit, the Army of Northern Virginia which was commanded throughout the Civil War by one of the great military figures of all time, Robert E. Lee, the history of the Army of Tennessee is one of ever-changing commanders, of bickering and wrangling among its leaders, and a discouraging succession of disappointments and might-have-beens.