Portland Public Library

Gettysburg, the last invasion, Allen C. Guelzo

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 483-599) and index

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index present

non fiction

Gettysburg

bibliography

813539868

Allen C. Guelzo

the last invasion

Though the Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, never before has a book dived down so closely to the individual soldier to explore the experience of the three days of intense fighting for the people involved, or looked so closely at the way politics swayed military decisions, or placed the battle in the context of nineteenth-century military practice. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett's Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story: from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks, to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny the cornerstone battle of the Civil War is given extraordinarily vivid new life

The march up. People who will not give in -- There were never such men in an army before -- This campaign is going to end this show -- A perfectly surplus body of men -- Victory will inevitably attend our arms -- A goggle-eyed old snapping turtle -- A universal panic prevails -- You will have to fight like the devil to hold your own -- The first day. The devil's to pay -- You stand alone, between the Rebel Army and your homes! -- The Dutch run and leave us to fight -- Go in, South Carolina! -- If the enemy is there to-morrow, we must attack him -- The second day. One of the bigger bubbles of the scum -- You are to hold this ground at all costs -- I have never been in a hotter place -- The supreme moment of the war had come -- Remember Harper's Ferry! -- We are the Louisiana Tigers! -- Let us have no more retreats -- The third day. The general plan of attack was unchanged -- Are you going to do your duty today? -- The shadow of a cloud across a sunny field -- As clear a defeat as our army ever met with -- There is bad faith somewhere -- To sweep & plunder the battle grounds