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Group Reads: Moderator's Choice
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Final Impressions: Shiloh, by Shelby Foote – February 2020
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Tom, "Big Daddy"
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Jan 25, 2020 10:12PM
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Here is a review by Diane: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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I finished this one up the other day. It was my first Shelby Foote novel, and won't be my last! I was not really familiar with the Battle of Shiloh, so this was a great history lesson for me. I liked the structure of the novel, allowing us to see both sides of the battle. What each side thought of the other. Interesting that often times the soldiers did not 'recognize' the other side as anything like themselves. Having Metcalfe start and end the narrative was very effective - and quite telling, I thought.
I had a little trouble keeping the generals and other big guys apart, but that's due mostly to my meager education on the subject. I went back through all my highlights/notes after reading this and everything came together much more clearly for me.
Another book I would never have come across without this wonderful group! We have 42 libraries in our system, and only 1 had a hard copy of this book!
Here's my review:
Candi's Review
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Oh, that's a great idea, Diane. I was quite impressed with the physical descriptions of those men. I definitely had an image in my mind of what they looked like, and I should see how close my own picture was to the real thing!
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Does anyone's copy have another word between 'most' and 'man'?
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I didn’t pick up on that. Forrest was such an extraordinary leader, I assumed it was a colloquialism of the time and was charmed by it.“I knew I was looking at the most man in the world.” I mean, even when Forrest is SHOT in his enemy’s MIDST; does he fall out of his saddle?; but no, he rides out of there; like Dilsey said, he endures!
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Johnston was the only Four Star General to be killed in the Civil War. It is possible Johnston was hit by friendly fire. He led from the front.
A ball clipped an artery behind his knee. Application of a tourniquet would have saved his life. Ironically, Johnston had a tourniquet in his pocket.
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From WIKI Following a brief appointment as superintendent at West Point in 1861, and after the South seceded, he resigned from the United States Army and became the first brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. He commanded the defenses of Charleston, South Carolina, at the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Three months later he won the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia.
Beauregard commanded armies in the Western Theater, including at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, and the Siege of Corinth in northern Mississippi. He returned to Charleston and defended it in 1863 from repeated naval and land attacks by Union forces. His greatest achievement was saving the important industrial city of Petersburg, Virginia, in June 1864, and thus the nearby Confederate capital of Richmond, from assaults by overwhelmingly superior Union Army forces.
His influence over Confederate strategy was lessened by his poor professional relationships with President Jefferson Davis and other senior generals and officials. In April 1865, Beauregard and his commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, convinced Davis and the remaining cabinet members that the war needed to end. Johnston surrendered most of the remaining armies of the Confederacy, including Beauregard and his men, to Major General William Tecumseh Sherman.
Following his military career, Beauregard returned to Louisiana, where he advocated black civil rights and black suffrage, served as a railroad executive, and became wealthy as a promoter of the Louisiana Lottery.
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Thanks for sharing those pics, Lawyer. That's a real shame about Johnston and that tourniquet. I'm assuming that this sort of unfortunate occurrence happened a lot more than it should have out on the battlefield.
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Full disclosure: My great-great grandfather fought in this battle with the 18th Wisconsin. I would really like to know who they served under and where they were on the battlefield.
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Full disclosure: My great-great grandfather fought in this battle ..."
Here you go, Tom. From the Library of Congress. "Wisconsin at Shiloh, Shiloh Monument Commission, 1909. https://archive.org/details/wisconsin...
274 pages. Includes rosters, maps, battle reports. Photographs of battle cites taken in 1909. YOWZA!
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Thanks, Diane. I hope to upload additional images of the main officers involved. The photo html works sometimes and sometimes not.
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274 pages. Includes rosters, maps, battle reports. Photographs of battle cites taken in 1909. YOWZA!."
Fascinating. So the regiment was under Prentiss on the extreme left flank with no one to the left of them but the rebs. They ended up fighting in the Hornet's Nest. 40 were killed, almost 100 were wounded and 174 were taken prisoner, yet Company K suffered only three men injured. It makes me think that maybe they had been sent out to get coffee.
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274 pages. Includes rosters, maps, ba..."
😁
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Braxton Bragg 1817-1876
Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat: Volume 1 by Grady McWhiney says it all. Bragg was among the worst of generals.
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Bragg did win at Chickamauga. BUT, only because James Longstreet was on the field with two divisions. Otherwise, battles under his leadership were inconsequential or were defeats.
At Shiloh, Bragg repeatedly launched frontal assaults at the Hornet's Nest. Steadily increasing casualties among his men. As Don Carlos Buell was reinforcing Grant.
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BWAHHAHAH!
Lawyer wrote: "Diane wrote: "From what I've read, Bragg screwed up in almost every battle he fought."Bragg did win at Chickamauga. BUT, only because James Longstreet was on the field with two divisions. Otherwis..."
OMG
