Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. Volume Two: Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946.
Reason read: to continue the series started in January in honor of Lee’s birth month.
Whenever I read Douglas Southall Freeman’s books my senses come alive. In my mind’s eye, I can see the battlefields and the courage of young soldiers. I can hear the cannons volleying across enemy lines; the men yelling their battle cries. I can smell gunpowder, blood and mud. The campaigns from Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville took place between 1862 and 1863. I can feel the pounding of the horse artillery’s hooves. I swear I can taste the victories and losses as Freeman describes every detail. Like Freeman’s first volume, Manassas to Mulvern Hill, Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville is a minute by minute, battle by battle recounting of the Civil War. Every detail is well researched and described; using military papers, scrapbooks, memoirs, letters and official correspondence, court martial orders, and diaries and journals. A great deal of the narrative relies on Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s journals and official papers. As an aside, one of the most difficult passages to read was the death of “Stonewall” Jackson after his amputation. He had just become a new father and was well respected by his troops. his death was a blow to Robert E. Lee’s armies.
As another aside, Can you imagine being saved from a sure death by a hardened biscuit, baked without salt or fat, that caught and stopped a bullet meant for your heart?
Author fact: I just discovered that Freeman was born in 1886. The end of the Civil War was not that long before his birth. I imagine he heard a great deal about the conflict growing up.
Book trivia: As with volume one, Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville has great black and white portraits of some of the soldiers.
Music: “Old Joe Hooker”.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Civil War Nonfiction” (p 58).
~*LunaSea*~ 