The History Book Club discussion

Another;
Release date: June 1, 2023

Horse Soldiers at Gettysburg: The Cavalryman's View of the Civil War's Pivotal Campaign

by Daniel Murphy (no photo)

Synopsis:

Cavalry operations during the Gettysburg campaign have been well covered, but never like this. Most cavalry treatments of the campaign and battle have focused on strategy, operations, and tactics and zoomed in on particular episodes: the Battle of Brandy Station in June 1863 (the largest cavalry engagement on American soil), Jeb Stuart’s controversial ride-for-glory that deprived Lee of important intelligence for days, Union cavalry general’s John Buford’s role in the start of the battle on July 1, and the cavalry battle involving not only Stuart but also George Armstrong Custer east of Gettysburg on July 3. Daniel Murphy’s book covers the grand sweep of cavalry in the Gettysburg campaign, from Lee’s crossing of the Rappahannock in early June 1863, through the epic three-day clash in Pennsylvania, to the conclusion of Lee’s retreat in July 1863. But more than that, in a book blending strategy and tactics and campaign narrative with deep research in primary sources and an equestrian’s sense for what it’s like to ride and manage horses, Daniel Murphy brings a horseman’s eye to the story of the campaign: how individual cavalrymen experienced the campaign from the saddle and how horses—with special needs for care and maintenance—were in fact weapons that helped shape battles.

In this new narrative of Civil War cavalry, author Daniel Murphy gets into the saddle and explores what it was like to be a cavalryman during the Gettysburg campaign. Horse-soldiering was a unique way of doing battle, and Murphy gives it more justice and nuanced description than any author has yet given it.

Another interesting slant.

I recently finished another biography of a General at Gettysburg, probably the General most famous for being at Gettysburg:

by Edward G. Longacre (no photo)

I've read other books by Longacre and his writing is very engaging and not dry like other non-fiction biographies. This book shed a lot more detail into Pickett's life and tried to get into his state of mind, particularly during that famous charge.

An upcoming book:
Release date: May 20, 2025

Surgeons of Gettysburg: The Fight to Save the Wounded at the Civil War's Greatest Battle

by Barbara Franco (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the Civil War’s turning points―and one of its bloodiest clashes of arms. At places now etched in history―Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, Cemetery Ridge―the carnage was horrific: some 50,000 men became casualties, about half of them wounded in need of medical care. During the battle’s three days, and for months after, a thousand surgeons―military as well as civilian, southern but mostly northern―provided care to the wounded in conditions that beggared the imagination and stretched the limits of nineteenth-century medicine. Drawing on nearly a decade of research, historian Barbara Franco stitches together medical history, military history, and Civil War history to highlight the work of the surgeons of Gettysburg.

The medical staff of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia had their hands―and medical tents and wagons―full even before the battle started. On the march for nearly a month, from central Virginia to southern Pennsylvania, soldiers fell out of the ranks daily with heat stroke, exhaustion, dehydration, malnutrition, injuries to feet and legs, wounds from skirmishes with the enemy, and a gut-wrenching array of illnesses, from dysentery to typhoid fever, whose causes were still poorly understood. Doctors and surgeons treated the sick and hurt while on the move themselves, working around the clock to keep the armies in fighting condition.

Once the shooting started on the morning of July 1, 1863, the situation became chaotic as medical personnel hurried to Gettysburg, where the fallen littered fields, woods, and town and makeshift hospitals opened in churches, barns, and other buildings. As surgeons settled in overnight, so did the armies, who unleashed hell on each other on July 2 and July 3, culminating in the devastation of Pickett’s Charge. Chaos became nightmare as the wounded flooded hospital tents and surgeons went about the grisly work of treating bloodied and mangled soldiers, triaging patients, amputating limbs, and performing a narrow range of other surgeries, such as trephination of the skull. Surgeons worked in primitive field conditions with little rest or sleep while the battle still raged around them, the wounded groaned and cried, and gruesome scenes unfolded by the minute. Ether and chloroform were available for anesthesia, and morphine for pain, but the era did not yet have antibiotics or an understanding of germs, hygiene, and the need for sterile equipment. The work of surgeons continued long after the two armies left. A massive hospital camp was established, and thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers were treated until the facility finally closed the following November.

Another:
Release date: October 21, 2025

Three Roads to Gettysburg: Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation

by Tim McGrath (no photo)

Synopsis:

By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg. The epic three-day battle that followed proved to be the turning point in the war, and provided Lincoln the perfect opportunity to give the defining speech of the war—and a challenge to each generation of Americans to live by.

These men came from different parts of the country and very different Robert E. Lee, son of the aristocratic and slaveholding South; George Gordon Meade, raised in the industrious, straitlaced North; and Abraham Lincoln, from the rowdy, untamed West. Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860 split the country in two and triggered the Civil War. Lee and Meade found themselves on opposite sides, while Lincoln had the Sisyphean task of reuniting the country.

With a colorful supporting cast second to none, Three Roads to Gettysburg tells the story of these consequential men, this monumental battle, and the immortal address that has come to define America.

Thank you, Jerome.

Get out the hankies, Jerome. These books on the Civil War always make me cry … Such tragic waste … those graves at Arlington, and elsewhere … That Mammoth, Marble Statue in the Lincoln.Memorial .. that Mammoth, Marble Plinth just foot-steps away at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial … Will it ever end? Maybe not till Judgment Day …
Regards,
Andrea