Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools: Courts-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
"Well-conceived and well-written, this volume's greatest value lies in its rich portrayal of how an army of civilian volunteers lived, fought, and died-real men with all the virtues and failings of real men. It is a great resource for understanding the realities of the Civil War."-North & South.
"Lowry has taken the genre of the historical underside to its proper scholarly limits; he has coupled the lurid and the weird with excellent research and analysis."-Civil War Times.
During the Civil War, a Union colonel was five times more likely to be court-martialed than a private. Worse, courts-martial of all ranks increased by 400 percent in the winter months. Among the court-martialed transgressors presented in this volume are an officer nicknamed "Stumpy" because he tended to hide behind tree stumps during combat and a man tried for calling his superior a "miserable reptile." The gallery of offenders also includes a Vermont colonel who became a chloroform addict and a New York colonel who rode his horse into a barroom, ordered a brandy for himself and one for his horse, then fired his pistol through the ceiling. The stories of fifty misdeeds, along with a statistical exploration of twenty-two thousand other courts-martial, provide a pioneering study of the little-known world of Civil War misbehavior and clarify the often-bewildering dynamics between volunteer soldiers and their professional superiors.
About the Author
Thomas P. Lowry is a retired associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of several books, including The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War and The Civil War Bawdy Houses of Washington D.C.
Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools: Courts-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels,Thomas P. Lowry,William C. Davis,Bison Books,0803280246,19th century,Army,Courts-martial and courts of i,Courts-martial and courts of inquiry,History,History - General History,History - U.S.,History: American,Military,Officers,Trials (Military offenses),United States,United States - Civil War,United States - General,United States.
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