Civil War America
2 total works
A fearsome general is born.The battle of Belmont was the first battle in the western theater of the Civil War and, more important, the first battle of the war fought by Ulysses S. Grant. At first successful, the Federals were eventually driven from the field and withdrew up the Mississippi to safety. The battle cost some twenty percent of Grant's troops, but as a result of this engagement he became known as an audacious fighting general. Nat Hughes provides the only full-length tactical study of the battle that catapulted Grant into prominence. Throughout the narrative, Hughes draws sketches of the lives and fates of individual soldiers who fought on both sides, especially of the colorful and enormously dissimilar principal actors, Grant and Polk.
This work talks about the Confederate army's last throes. Nathaniel Hughes offers a full-length tactical study of the battle of Bentonville, the only major Civil War battle fought in North Carolina and the Confederacy's last attempt to stop the devastating march of Sherman's army north through the Carolinas. In careful detail, Hughes lays out Confederate and Union troop movements and places the engagement within the larger military framework of the last months of the war. Analyzing the reasons for the initial success and eventual failure of General Joseph E. Johnston's offensive, Hughes maintains that Sherman showed great restraint by remaining committed to the larger goal of reaching Goldsboro rather than stopping to pursue or destroy the defeated Confederates.