Five thumbnail portraits of the most consistently victorious generals of the American Civil War; three Union and two Confederate:
- from Amazon
 
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Phillip Kearny
• George B. Thomas
• Thomas J. Jackson
• Robert E. Lee
Attached herein is a list the five lamest Generals of the American Civil War.
This two page compilation is made up of thumbnail descriptions outlining just how far from awesome these men were, and why, one hundred years later, they continue to be recognized as failures to the succeeding generations of Civil War historians.
The second portion of Bruce Catton's article (see above) concerning the necessary knowledge required in order to justifiably call your self a "Civil War Buff" was this short piece listing the greatest battles of the war. Accompanying the five brief thumb-nail summaries is a map of the South Eastern U.S., highlighted with red stars, which serve to identify where the blood poured.
"It has been said that the Confederate States passed the most drastic conscript law on record, which may be true; but it is a mistake to suppose that this law was successfully executed."
"The [Conscription] act, April 16, 1862, embraced men between eighteen and thirty-five years; the second, of September 27 1862, men between eighteen and forty-five; the third and last, of February 17, 1864, men between seventeen and fifty."
Click here to read about the American South during the Great Depression.
The two page article attached herein served to alert the 1922 subscriber-base of Confederate Veteran Magazine that Boy Soldiers of the Confederacy (1905) - was no longer in print and isn't that too bad and just in case no one shared the reviewers feelings on this matter, she recalled some of the Civil War experiences of the boys who fought throughout that war.
One nice moment recorded for all posterity concerned a young rebel as he lay dying in a field hospital; a nurse approached him asking:
"Don't you think you had better make your peace with God?" He answered
"When a boy dies in defense of his country, he has made his peace with God already."
Read about a boy who fought for the Union...
An anonymous reviewer tells his readers about the mournful spirit that dominated each room at the Matthew Brady Gallery where he attended a unique exhibit of the photographer's Civil War pictures:
"At the door of his gallery hangs a little placard 'The Dead of Antietam'. Crowds of people are constantly going up the stairs; follow them...there is a terrible fascination about it that draws one near these pictures, and makes you loath to leave them. You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men's eyes."
It was on the first day at Gettysburg that the Confederates made a terrible mistake. Read about it here.
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