Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Quick and Easy Sign Up!

It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.

Sign Up Browse

Popular Genres

Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

  • Download on iOS
  • Download on Android
  • Download on iOS

The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

Peter S. Carmichael
4.2/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war.

Digging deeply into his soldiers' writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was "a common soldier" but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers' experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.
Pages
400
Format
Hardcover
Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Release
November 19, 2018
ISBN
146964309X
ISBN 13
9781469643090

The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

Peter S. Carmichael
4.2/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience--the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances. Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, morality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, and bravery or cowardice were blurred by war.

Digging deeply into his soldiers' writing, Carmichael resists the idea that there was "a common soldier" but looks into their own words to find common threads in soldiers' experiences and ways of understanding what was happening around them. In the end, he argues that a pragmatic philosophy of soldiering emerged, guiding members of the rank and file as they struggled to live with the contradictory elements of their violent and volatile world. Soldiering in the Civil War, as Carmichael argues, was never a state of being but a process of becoming.
Pages
400
Format
Hardcover
Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Release
November 19, 2018
ISBN
146964309X
ISBN 13
9781469643090

More books from Peter S. Carmichael

The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862

4/5 ( ratings)

The Last Generation: Young Virginians In Peace, War, And Reunion

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Lee's Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee

4/5 ( ratings)

"Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail": Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee (an article from Southern Cultures 17:3, The Memory Issue)

4/5 ( ratings)

Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee

4/5 ( ratings)

A Gunner in Lee's Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter (Civil War America)

4/5 ( ratings)

The War That Made America: Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher (Civil War America)

4/5 ( ratings)

The War That Made America: Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher (Civil War America)

4/5 ( ratings)

The War That Made America: Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher (Civil War America)

4/5 ( ratings)

The Purcell, Crenshaw, And Letcher Artillery

4/5 ( ratings)

Slavery in North America Vol 4: From the Colonial Period to Emancipation

4/5 ( ratings)

Slavery in North America Vol 3: From the Colonial Period to Emancipation

4/5 ( ratings)

Slavery in North America Vol 2: From the Colonial Period to Emancipation

4/5 ( ratings)

Slavery in North America Vol 1: From the Colonial Period to Emancipation

4/5 ( ratings)

The Whartons' War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865 (Civil War America)

4/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?

loader