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Covering both the great military leaders and the critical civilian leaders, this book provides an overview of their careers and a professional assessment of their accomplishments. Entries consider the leaders' character and prewar experiences, their contributions to the war effort, and the war's impact on the rest of their lives. The entries then look at how history has assessed these leaders, thus putting their longtime reputations on the line. The result is a thorough revision of some leaders' careers, a call for further study of others, and a reaffirmation of the accomplishments of the greatest leaders.
Analyzing the leaders historiographically, the work shows how the leaders wanted to be remembered, how postwar memorists and biographers saw them, the verdict of early historians, and how the best modern historians have assessed their contributions. By including a variety of leaders from both civilian and military roles, the book provides a better understanding of the total war, and by relating their lives to their times, it provides a better understanding of historical revisionism and of why history has been so interested in Civil War lives.
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Historiography and the Making and Meaning of Greatness
Biographies
Joseph Reid Anderson
Clara Barton
Henry Ward Beecher
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Judah Philip Benjamin
Thomas Stanley Bocock
Braxton Bragg
Joseph Emerson Brown
Joseph Lawrence Chamberlain
Salmon Portland Chase
Jay Cooke
Charles Anderson Dana
Jefferson Finis Davis
Varina Howell Davis
Dorothea Lynde Dix
Frederic Douglass
Josiah Gorgas
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Henry Wager Halleck
John Bell Hood
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter
Thomas Jonathan Jackson
Andrew Johnson
Joseph Eggleston Johnston
Robert Edward Lee
Abraham Lincoln
James Longstreet
George Brinton McClellan
Steven Russell Mallory
George Gordon Meade
Christopher Gustavus Memminger
Oliver Perry Morton
Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Edward Alfred Pollard
David Dixon Porter
James Alexander Seddon
Raphael Semmes
William Henry Seward
Philip Henry Sheridan
William Tecumseh Sherman
Edwin McMaster Stanton
Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Thaddeus Stevens
Charles Sumner
George Henry Thomas
Walt Whitman
Louis Tresevant Wigfall
Index
About the author
CHARLES F. RITTER is Professor and Chairperson of History at the College of Notre Dame in Maryland. He is coauthor, with Jon L. Wakelyn, of
American Legislative Leaders, 1850-1910 (Greenwood, 1989).
JON L. WAKELYN is Professor of History at Kent State University. He is the author of several books, including
Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy (Greenwood, 1977),
Web of Southern Social Relations (1985), and
Southern Pamphlets on Secession (1996).
