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Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War
Linderman traces each soldier's path from the exhilaration of enlistment to the disillusionment of battle to postwar alienation. He provides a rare glimpse of the personal battle that raged within soldiers then and now.
357 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Gerald F. Linderman
9 books1 followerGerald Floyd Linderman earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University and his MA and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. A former foreign service officer at the State Department, he taught at the University of Michigan from 1969 until his retirement in 1995.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 4, 2025
Two Faces Of Civil War Courage
Gerald Linderman's "Embattled Courage" (1987) is an outstanding study of the motivation of soldiers during the American Civil War and of the values of the society to which they responded.
The book is in two broad sections. The first part of the book, titled "Courage's War" covers the early years of the war to about mid-1863 (the time of the climactic Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg). During these years, Linderman sees the primary motivating factor of the war as courage and of individual effort. The soldier enlisting in the war effort -- and during the early years volunteers bore the overwhelming brunt of the effort- had concepts of personal bravery in the face of danger, fearlessness and commitment to duty and to a purpose. He believed that the actions of an individual mattered and could make a difference to the result of a battle. This was an idealistic concept and Linderman shows well how it was reinforced and complemented by concepts of manliness, comradeship, godliness and morality, chivalry, and the brotherhood of soldiers, which assumes a certain degree of respect for the enemy on the other side of the line. Linderman points out that the Civil War may have been the last conflict in which these ideals were taken seriously. They were dashed in WW I, and in the later phases of the Civil War itself.
The second part of the book, titled "A Perilous Education" shows how the initial idealism underlying the soldiers' war effort became hardened and tarnished with the stark reality of combat. The concept of courage didn't disappear but it changed and the soldiers became tougher and more realistic. On occasion cynicism and disillusion set in. The factors leading to this change in perspective were the horrors and deaths on the battlefield, resulting largely from the increased range of Civil War weaponry which helped make the traditional offensive charge (as at Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor) ineffective and death-dealing to the aggressor. Other factors include the crude Civil War hospitals, with blood and amputation on every side, the long forced marches, the toll of disease in the camps, which led to twice as many deaths as did combat, the boredom of camp life, imprisonment in camps such as Andersonville, the lengthy character of the war, the conflict between volunteers and draftees, and the lack of food and supplies which led soldiers to "forage" from civilians and to strip valuables and clothes from the bodies of dead comrades and enemies. The civil war became a total, brutal war in the final two years. Stonewall Jackson early in the war, and Grant and Sherman subsequently, understood the total nature of the effort that was required to pursue this war.
The idealism with which the volunteers entered the war and their concept of individual effort changed radically when faced with the harshness of the war. This changed their understanding of themselves, the war effort, and their relationship to the civilian population.
A lengthy "epilogue' to the book discusses the fate of the concept of courage following the war and how it evolved through the end of the 19th century. Broadly speaking, a certain nostalgia set in beginning in the 1880's when the original ideals of courage revived in memory and the hardships of the war effort receded.
Linderman's book is well documented with contemporaneous accounts from the soldiers and with subsequent memoirs. It taught me a great deal about motivation in combat and how it changes with experience. Those interested in pursuing the subject further might be interested in James McPherson's "For Cause and Comrades", which takes issue with Linderman on certain points, and in David Blight's "Race and Reunion". The latter book develops the theme sketched in Linderman's epilogue by showing the effects of time on how people in the United States perceived the conflict of 1861 - 1865.
Robin Friedman
Gerald Linderman's "Embattled Courage" (1987) is an outstanding study of the motivation of soldiers during the American Civil War and of the values of the society to which they responded.
The book is in two broad sections. The first part of the book, titled "Courage's War" covers the early years of the war to about mid-1863 (the time of the climactic Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg). During these years, Linderman sees the primary motivating factor of the war as courage and of individual effort. The soldier enlisting in the war effort -- and during the early years volunteers bore the overwhelming brunt of the effort- had concepts of personal bravery in the face of danger, fearlessness and commitment to duty and to a purpose. He believed that the actions of an individual mattered and could make a difference to the result of a battle. This was an idealistic concept and Linderman shows well how it was reinforced and complemented by concepts of manliness, comradeship, godliness and morality, chivalry, and the brotherhood of soldiers, which assumes a certain degree of respect for the enemy on the other side of the line. Linderman points out that the Civil War may have been the last conflict in which these ideals were taken seriously. They were dashed in WW I, and in the later phases of the Civil War itself.
The second part of the book, titled "A Perilous Education" shows how the initial idealism underlying the soldiers' war effort became hardened and tarnished with the stark reality of combat. The concept of courage didn't disappear but it changed and the soldiers became tougher and more realistic. On occasion cynicism and disillusion set in. The factors leading to this change in perspective were the horrors and deaths on the battlefield, resulting largely from the increased range of Civil War weaponry which helped make the traditional offensive charge (as at Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor) ineffective and death-dealing to the aggressor. Other factors include the crude Civil War hospitals, with blood and amputation on every side, the long forced marches, the toll of disease in the camps, which led to twice as many deaths as did combat, the boredom of camp life, imprisonment in camps such as Andersonville, the lengthy character of the war, the conflict between volunteers and draftees, and the lack of food and supplies which led soldiers to "forage" from civilians and to strip valuables and clothes from the bodies of dead comrades and enemies. The civil war became a total, brutal war in the final two years. Stonewall Jackson early in the war, and Grant and Sherman subsequently, understood the total nature of the effort that was required to pursue this war.
The idealism with which the volunteers entered the war and their concept of individual effort changed radically when faced with the harshness of the war. This changed their understanding of themselves, the war effort, and their relationship to the civilian population.
A lengthy "epilogue' to the book discusses the fate of the concept of courage following the war and how it evolved through the end of the 19th century. Broadly speaking, a certain nostalgia set in beginning in the 1880's when the original ideals of courage revived in memory and the hardships of the war effort receded.
Linderman's book is well documented with contemporaneous accounts from the soldiers and with subsequent memoirs. It taught me a great deal about motivation in combat and how it changes with experience. Those interested in pursuing the subject further might be interested in James McPherson's "For Cause and Comrades", which takes issue with Linderman on certain points, and in David Blight's "Race and Reunion". The latter book develops the theme sketched in Linderman's epilogue by showing the effects of time on how people in the United States perceived the conflict of 1861 - 1865.
Robin Friedman
September 24, 2025
A good book, but at times quite redundant. Paints the picture of the early days of the war and soldiers perceptions of what that would be, and what makes them good soldiers. Touches on the concepts of courage and a sense of duty that soldiers felt going into the war, what made them courageous, hero's, things like that. Also touches on hope, and camaraderie between soldiers within the two armies, at first prisoners of war were treated cordially and with respect. Then, as the story progresses it paints a story of soldiers dive into utter madness that the brutal nature of the war brought out of them, there perceptions on the war changed and so did there feelings about what the war meant for them and what being a soldier meant to them. Talks about some of the generals, and how there men viewed them and how courage applied to them and the battle tactics they used. Good book but dead at some spots.
March 8, 2021
I read this for a college class on the civil war. The first half was rough. I was like how many times can he say they fought cause they had to show their courage. 100 pages over and over of the same thing. Then there was like 10 pages of sexist drivel of how men were driven to enlist because women were emasculating them if they didn’t enlist. The last half was considerably better, but it felt like his explanation for their experiences weren’t much different from any other war veterans experience. I do think the civil war veterans had a different, harsh experience, but this book didn’t hit on it enough in my opinion.
March 13, 2021
Interesting look at not the history of the Civil War, but how the soldier thought about that war. The process follows Courage will save me, God will save me to I will save me works its way in the disillusionment of the soldiers on both sides. Interesting read with a very different take, although on the downside, the book's chapters and the organization of the book seem conflicted and forced.
March 22, 2022
A readable depiction of the Civil War battle experience.
October 4, 2014
Linderman argues Union and Confederate soldiers began the Civil War with a deep ideological commitment to values such as courage and honor. They believed in the power of the individual to determine his own fate and the course of battles. Various aspects of the war disillusioned most soldiers of these beliefs by the end of the war. These included the helplessness of the individual in the face of new weaponry and industrial warfare, omnipresent death, monotony, brutality, disease, injuries, and resentment towards civilians. Many soldiers maintained their old views in softer forms, but developed new practices to adjust themselves to reality. The civilian world, however, maintained the old views much longer than most soldiers, leading to deep resentment among soldiers but also a desire to shield civilians from the horror of their experiences. When the war ended, soldiers were not encouraged to share their stories and emotions as the nation went through a period of healing and amnesia. Interest in the Civil War rose again in the 80’s and 90’s as the Civil War took on new political meanings, including a romanticized response to industrialism and materialism. Strangely enough, by the 1890’s, veterans and others had revived the 1861 belief system, so soldiers in the SPAM War went into that conflict believing very much what their fathers believed when they started the Civil War.
This basic case holds together pretty well, but I'm left with some lingering questions. Granted, the book is about the experience of combat, but it does leave out political views as ideological motivators for soldiers. Furthermore, once you bring in politics it might be harder to sustain Linderman's treatment of Union and Confederate soldiers as a homogenous group. This method is useful, but it's potentially flawed for a bunch of reasons. What about the experiences of immigrant soldiers, of which the North had far more? What about racial views? Was defending slavery a major motivation for Confederate troops? Was opposing slavery a motivation for Northern troops? Joseph Glatthaar's "General Lee's Army" does a much better job with these details because he considers the Confederates separately from Northerners. Finally, Lindermann's sources are clearly biased towards officers and the wealthy, which makes me wonder the extent to which poor soldiers embraced lofty ideas like chivalric courage and honor.
In spite of these concerns, this is a fascinating and gripping book. Linderman digs up dozens of great anecdotes and quotes. His descriptions of the meanings and uses of courage are downright engrossing, given how far our society has come from those views in a relatively short time. Readers of this book will at times feel an intimate connection to these soldiers, as in their experiences of horror and revulsion, and at other times feel remarkably estranged, as in their ostensible wishes for an honorable death. The most shocking part of the book to me was the epilogue, which discusses how veterans eventually came around to believe once more in the values of 1861 and imparted those values to their sons, who took them off to the Philippines and Cuba. I found this to be a predictable but tragic abdication of responsibility on the part of the veterans. Given what they had been through, they should have been more honest with their past selves and with the dead by not embracing romantic militarism again. To some extent, each generation must learn the lessons of the past generation over again in a tragic cycle of history, despite the past generation's attempts to educate their children. However, it's particularly disappointing when the past generation mythologizes their experiences to the extent that they fundamentally mislead their children, forcing them to undergo the same disillusionment and suffering.
This basic case holds together pretty well, but I'm left with some lingering questions. Granted, the book is about the experience of combat, but it does leave out political views as ideological motivators for soldiers. Furthermore, once you bring in politics it might be harder to sustain Linderman's treatment of Union and Confederate soldiers as a homogenous group. This method is useful, but it's potentially flawed for a bunch of reasons. What about the experiences of immigrant soldiers, of which the North had far more? What about racial views? Was defending slavery a major motivation for Confederate troops? Was opposing slavery a motivation for Northern troops? Joseph Glatthaar's "General Lee's Army" does a much better job with these details because he considers the Confederates separately from Northerners. Finally, Lindermann's sources are clearly biased towards officers and the wealthy, which makes me wonder the extent to which poor soldiers embraced lofty ideas like chivalric courage and honor.
In spite of these concerns, this is a fascinating and gripping book. Linderman digs up dozens of great anecdotes and quotes. His descriptions of the meanings and uses of courage are downright engrossing, given how far our society has come from those views in a relatively short time. Readers of this book will at times feel an intimate connection to these soldiers, as in their experiences of horror and revulsion, and at other times feel remarkably estranged, as in their ostensible wishes for an honorable death. The most shocking part of the book to me was the epilogue, which discusses how veterans eventually came around to believe once more in the values of 1861 and imparted those values to their sons, who took them off to the Philippines and Cuba. I found this to be a predictable but tragic abdication of responsibility on the part of the veterans. Given what they had been through, they should have been more honest with their past selves and with the dead by not embracing romantic militarism again. To some extent, each generation must learn the lessons of the past generation over again in a tragic cycle of history, despite the past generation's attempts to educate their children. However, it's particularly disappointing when the past generation mythologizes their experiences to the extent that they fundamentally mislead their children, forcing them to undergo the same disillusionment and suffering.
November 12, 2015
Linderman argues that both Confederate and Union soldiers began the Civil War with similar value systems—primarily courage and honor—that prescribed their actions in combat, under duress, while wounded, and before death. Over the course of the war, and especially as changing technologies turned the battlefield from one of individualistic action to indiscriminate killing, soldiers became disillusioned with these value systems and began to rely on camaraderie, perseverance, and mitigating the potential of death and maiming to sustain them over periods of intense violence. Meanwhile, Linderman suggests, the public perception of the war remained essentially unchanged and therefore their commitment to pre-war and 1861 values persisted throughout the conflict, causing a severe intellectual and moral rift between frontline soldiers and larger society. Frontline soldiers after the war returned home with their faith in courage, individualism, and honor shattered and yet were not able to influence popular ideals because a) their voices were largely silenced (civilians didn't want to hear "camp talk") and veterans did not want to mentally revisit and relive moments of sheer terror. Thus, by the Spanish-American War of 1898 the sons of Confederate and Union veterans were writing about pre-1861 ideals (chivalry, honor, courage) and thus embarked for Cuba with a similar constellation of values.
Linderman's work suffers from some source weaknesses, because primarily he draws on the postwar writings and diaries of officers and the well-educated. Thus, he has some limitations when talking broadly about how Union and Confederate soldiers felt about or conceptualized their role in the conflict. Moreover, it's implausible that the soldiers composing the Confederate and Union truly cohered so homogeneously in their belief systems. There is almost nothing about African-American soldiers, recent immigrants (Union), or differences lying in one's commitment to slavery.
Nevertheless, Embattled Courage sets up Linderman's thesis in his subsequent text on World War II, The World Within War. In a way, Linderman is trying to understand the relationship between technological and tactical change and parallel shifts in soldier culture and soldier psychology—that is the psychological rift opened up between "pre-modern" warfare fought with linear tactics and the "modern" style of combat replete with artillery, mortars, and trench warfare. Linderman's important sub-argument in the final chapters is that Union and Confederate soldiers, disillusioned with "modern" warfare, increasingly turned toward each other for support and companionship—even to the extent that Union and Confederate soldiers felt more affinity for one another (witnessed through informal truces as late as the Petersburg campaign) than they did for their own societies. That reasoning is the crux of Linderman's argument about how the combat experience in World War II was fundamentally isolating for the infantrymen. The major difference between Linderman's conclusions for the Civil War and his conclusions for World War II is that the same affinity between opposing armies did not occur in the Pacific.
In short, Linderman is trying to impose the seemingly universals of human psychology upon the technological, ideological, and moral particularities of the Civil War and Victorian period.
Linderman's work suffers from some source weaknesses, because primarily he draws on the postwar writings and diaries of officers and the well-educated. Thus, he has some limitations when talking broadly about how Union and Confederate soldiers felt about or conceptualized their role in the conflict. Moreover, it's implausible that the soldiers composing the Confederate and Union truly cohered so homogeneously in their belief systems. There is almost nothing about African-American soldiers, recent immigrants (Union), or differences lying in one's commitment to slavery.
Nevertheless, Embattled Courage sets up Linderman's thesis in his subsequent text on World War II, The World Within War. In a way, Linderman is trying to understand the relationship between technological and tactical change and parallel shifts in soldier culture and soldier psychology—that is the psychological rift opened up between "pre-modern" warfare fought with linear tactics and the "modern" style of combat replete with artillery, mortars, and trench warfare. Linderman's important sub-argument in the final chapters is that Union and Confederate soldiers, disillusioned with "modern" warfare, increasingly turned toward each other for support and companionship—even to the extent that Union and Confederate soldiers felt more affinity for one another (witnessed through informal truces as late as the Petersburg campaign) than they did for their own societies. That reasoning is the crux of Linderman's argument about how the combat experience in World War II was fundamentally isolating for the infantrymen. The major difference between Linderman's conclusions for the Civil War and his conclusions for World War II is that the same affinity between opposing armies did not occur in the Pacific.
In short, Linderman is trying to impose the seemingly universals of human psychology upon the technological, ideological, and moral particularities of the Civil War and Victorian period.
March 30, 2013
Started very slow, but wasn't until getting to the 2nd half of this book did I then understand what Linderman was after. He does a great job showing the stark contrast and changes in the soldier's perceptions of valor and bravery, between the first two, and the last two years of the war. Linderman does a good job of showing the Civil War infantrymen taking to the changes, and the changes in attitude in the mindset of the individual soldier that brought about. This is a theme I keep looking for, how the Civil War tactic marked the end of the Napoleonic era, and the beginning of the modern, mechanized and trench based era.
May 7, 2013
An early and foundational treatment of the motivations of Civil War soldiers, Linderman's work looks at conceptions of courage and manhood as central to explaining the average experience. He focuses a great deal on the disillusionment that set in for soldiers as the war dragged on, finally making some interesting, if somewhat conjectural claims that men in blue and gray by and large gave up hope of surviving the conflict. His description of the typical soldier's experience carries into the postwar "hibernation" period and beyond.
November 4, 2009
This civil war book is unique, in that we see the war from the perspective of those who were involved. Linderman includes excerpts from letters and diaries of the men who fought this horrible war. The reader gets a true feel for what this period in history must have been like for the men and women who lived through it.
July 11, 2011
The author attempts to describe the war by collecting primary accounts of the soldiers involved and bypassing a lot of the bigger picture information. Because the big picture is lacking in many places, the book feels a bit disjointed. It is clear that he did his research, but the book itself is very dense.
April 26, 2016
An often interesting, but rarely gripping study of the effect of war on the perceptions of men who fight it. Linderman looks at the volunteer soldiers of America's civil war and shows how, as with so many soldiers in so many wars, their attitudes to the hardships and horrors of battle, to their enemy, to their friends, comrades and families change with deepening experience.
July 4, 2007
Skillful, gruesome, if a bit congratualatory.
August 6, 2011
School read, and a worthwhile one to keep! Well-written and makes history interesting to those of us that hate reading about it.
October 11, 2012
One of the best books I have read on Civil War combat and getting inside the head of a Civil War soldier.
April 2, 2016
The best book I've ever read on why men fought in America's Civil War.
October 15, 2016
Tried to finish it. I really did! But there was only point to be made... men try to be brave when faced with danger so their peers don't make fun of them. Oh, and war is hell.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews