
Civil War Blunders
Description
Alles über E-Books | Antworten auf Fragen rund um E-Books, Kopierschutz und Dateiformate finden Sie in unserem Info- & Hilfebereich.
There was little funny about a war in which 620,000 humans died. But it was finding humor amid devastation that kept Civil War soldiers marching toward the enemy. Union or Confederate, those in command proved adept at making mistakes. Many leaders were drunkards, couldn't speak English, didn't know a cannon's breech from its muzzle. Among the galleries of heroes were: Colonel Edward Baker, who told his Federals to follow the plume of his hat if they wanted to find war-and sent them over a cliff in a panicked retreat; General Felix Zollicoffer, who wore a white raincoat so opposing Federals could see him-but not his eyeglasses so he could see them; Thomas Selfridge of the Union navy, who "found two torpedoes and removed them by placing his vessel over them"; Colonel Alfred Rhett, a captured Southern blue blood whose fancy boots proved too small for every Union officer who coveted them; rum-drinking James Ledlie and dance-instructing Edward Ferrero, generals who kept each other company in a Union bombproof while their men faced slaughter. From Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Civil War Blunders traces the war according to its amusing, often deadly miscues. Lurking behind every significant action, as readers will discover, was someone with a red face.
Clint Johnson is a native of Fish Branch, Florida, who has written eight books about the Civil War, as well as biographies and newspaper and magazine articles. He received his journalism degree from the University of Florida, and now lives in North Carolina.
More details
Person
Clint Johnson is a native Southerner whose Scots-Irish and Welsh ancestors first settled in North Carolina in the 1730s and 1760s. One of those ancestors owned more than 100 acres on Manhattan Island, New York in the early 1760s, which he leased to the island's government for 99 years. When a grandson tried to reclaim the land for the family, those New York Yankees claimed their deed book had been lost in a fire and they would not honor the legitimate claim. As late as the 1920s, members of Clint's family were trying to sue New York City for the return of their property. Clint counts Confederate soldiers from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama among his more recent ancestors. He is a native of Fish Branch, Florida, an unmapped community of orange groves, cypress bayheads, cattle ranches, panthers, bobcats, alligators, and friendly neighbors. Fish Branch is what Florida was before Walt Disney World changed the state. He graduated from high school in Arcadia, Florida, the cow town whose wild and wooly residents inspired many of the cowboy paintings of Frederick Remington. He then graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in journalism. Fascinated with The War for Southern Independence (Northern readers can call it The Civil War if you wish) since the fourth grade, Clint has written eight books on The War. One of his favorite projects was helping Clarence "Big House" Gaines, one of the nation's best basketball coaches, write his autobiography. Clint has also written two corporate biographies, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles on business, history and travel. Clint, his wife Barbara, their cats, dog, and horse live in the mountains of North Carolina near where the Overmountain Men gathered to go fight the Tories at Kings Mountain, South Carolina, in the American Revolution.
Content
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1861
- A Perfumed Letter Almost Starts the War
- General David Twiggs and the "Old Woman with a Broomstick"
- The Seward-Meigs-Porter Affair
- "Entirely Unfit to Meet the Enemy": Carelessness and Stupidity at Fort Sumter
- The Union Abandons Gosport Navy Yard
- A Cry of "Boston!" at Big Bethel
- First Manassas: "You Are All Green Together"
- Shanks Evans and His Fellow Drunken Generals
- "A Perfect Stampede If There Ever Was One"
- "Sudden, Bold, Forward, Determined War," Ball's Bluff-Style
- The Stone Fleet
- Double-Barreled Cannons and Greek Fire: The Bad-Weapons Follies
- 1862
- "A Name in Song and Story": The Death of Felix Zollicoffer
- The Selfridge Jinx
- The Baptism of Colonel Zebulon Vance
- A Scraped Shin Fells a Great General
- A Well-Concealed Wound
- Two Governors Find Death at Shiloh
- "Sam" Blalock and the "She Dragoon": Female Soldiers Who Posed As Males
- "Plucky Africans" Steal a Confederate Ship
- Little Mac and the Private Eye
- How Stovepipe Johnson Got His Name
- Ericsson's River Monitors Suffer a Redesign
- Brigadier General Thomas Williams Experiences Payback
- "Poor Kearny": The Embarrassing Death of a Glorious Fighter
- "If I Can't Whip Bobbie Lee with This ."
- The Southern-Talking Colonel of the Eighth New York Cavalry
- Colonel John T. Wilder Calls in a Consultant
- The Day Twenty-Five Hundred Confederates Could Have Captured Ten Thousand Federals
- 1863
- The Mud March
- Burnside's Whistle-Blowers Tempt Their Fate
- "I Fear It Will Do Infinite Mischief: A Lincoln Appointee Gives His Opinion of the Emancipation Proclamation
- The "Black Terror," Scourge of Vicksburg
- Grant and Butler Tinker with Mother Nature
- The Battle of the Clotheslines
- Dueling Officers
- A Case of Déjà Vu
- Forrest's Big Bluff
- Major General Earl Van Dorn, "the Terror of Ugly Husbands"
- "I Will Take My Division . and Get Those Shoes": Henry Heth Brings On Gettysburg
- The Cruise of the Floating Brothel
- The Battling Buck-Nakeds
- A Boastful Confederate Gives Up Cumberland Gap
- The Charmed Life of an Accident-Prone General
- The Buckland Races
- The Bloodiest Dress Parade
- 1864
- Stale Air and Elbow Grease: The Attack of the CSS Hunley
- "Crazy Bet" and the Spies in Richmond
- "Commissary" Banks and the Red River Campaign
- An Unlucky Ricochet Finds Charles W. Flusser
- The Mighty Neuse Grounds on Her First Mission
- "They Couldn't Hit an Elephant at This Distance"
- "I Fights mit Siegal!": Lincoln Names Mediocre Foreign-Born Generals
- The Untimely End of a Bishop Major General
- "He Did Not Show Me a Fair Fight": Old Beeswax Bristles at Losing the Alabama
- Lieutenant Oliver Wendell Holmes Insults the President
- "It Mounted toward Heaven with a Detonation of Thunder"
- William Dwight, the General in the Lunch Line
- Bloody Bill Anderson Rides into a Trap
- 1865
- Ship Bombs and Naval Land Assaults: The Fort Fisher Debacle
- "In His Nether Garments": Generals Caught in Their Underwear
- A "Black Powder Jollification" Goes Bad
- Lieutenant Rambo and the Fighting Seminarians
- Kilpatrick's Shirttail Skedaddle
- "A Devil in Human Shape": Alfred Rhett Fails to Impress the Yankees with His Excellent Breeding
- The Five Forks Shad Bake
- Captured after Appomattox: Bad-Luck Brigadier General William Payne
- The Home Guard's Runaway Cannon
- Confederate Cherokees Surrender to Defeated Federals
- Bibliography
- Index
System requirements
File format: ePUB
Copy protection: Watermark-DRM (Digital Rights Management)
System requirements:
- Computer (Windows; MacOS X; Linux): Use a reading software that can process the file format ePUB: e.g., Adobe Digital Editions or FBReader – both free (see eBook Help).
- Tablet/Smartphone (Android; iOS): Before downloading, install the free app Adobe Digital Editions (see eBook Help).
- E-reader: Bookeen, Kobo, Pocketbook, Sony, Tolino and many more (not Kindle).
The file format ePUB works well for novels and non-fiction books – i.e., „flowing” text without complex layout. On an e-reader or smartphone, line and page breaks automatically adjust to fit the small displays.
This eBook uses Watermark-DRM, a „soft” copy protection. This means that there are no technical restrictions to prevent illegal distribution. However, there is a personalised watermark embedded in the eBook that can be used to identify the purchaser of the eBook in the event of misuse and to provide evidence for legal purposes.
For more information, see our eBook Help page.