Pickett's Charge in History and Memory (Civil War America)
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Pickett's Charge--the Confederates' desperate (and failed) attempt to break the Union lines on the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg--is best remembered as the turning point of the U.S. Civil War. But Penn State historian Carol Reardon reveals how hard it is to remember the past accurately, especially when an event such as this one so quickly slipped into myth. She writes, "From the time the battle smoke cleared, Pickett's Charge took on this chameleonlike aspect and, through a variety of carefully constructed nuances, adjusted superbly to satisfy the changing needs of Northerners, Southerners, and, finally, the entire nation." With care and detail, Reardon's fascinating book teaches a lesson in the uses and misuses of history.
The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
Whoever defined history as an agreed-upon lie was not acquainted with the aftermath of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. Journalists could see no more than a fraction of the action, if they saw any at all. Participants saw even less. It took five days for definite word of Lee's defeat to reach Richmond (in bootlegged northern papers) and longer for it to travel south. Newspapers were filled with melodramatic babble, and battle survivors, when consulted, contradicted one another. Even the duration of the initial Confederate artillery attack remains in dispute; estimates range from minutes to hours. Such discrepancies are not, however, the real focus of Ms. Reardon's investigation. She examines the mixture of local patriotism (Virginia), local resentment (North Carolina, et al.), Reconstruction politics, campaigns for reconciliation, and moonlight-and-magnolia fiction that eventually made Gettysburg the best-known battle of the Civil War and Pickett's Charge the heroic high point of the Rebel cause. Ms. Reardon's text is well supplied with anecdote and quotation and covers events as recent as a 1922 Marine Corps re-enactment of the action to see "What would have happened at Gettysburg if the armies of Meade and Lee had met with modern weapons and equipment?" The conclusion: Lee would have lost, but given air observation, he probably would not have launched an attack against "the entire Army of the Potomac." Quite apart from its notable historical interest, Ms. Reardon's work is a splendidly lively study of the manipulation, not necessarily deliberate or malign, of public opinion.
Pickett's Charge in History and Memory (Civil War America)
Pickett's Charge in History and Memory (Civil War America),Carol Reardon,University of North Carolina Press,0807823791,(George Edward),,1825-1875,Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysb,Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863,Historiography,History,History - Military / War,History: American,Military - General,Military History - U.S. Civil War,Pickett, George E,Pickett, George E.,United States - Civil War
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