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David A. Schwinghammer, click here
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Everything you always wanted to know about the Battle of Gettysburg.
Trudeau's GETTYSBURG is pretty much a blow-by-blow account of what happened at the great battle. Sometimes the book is overwhelming, too many names, too many brigades and battalions. But Trudeau does have a rather unique perspective on what happened. For instance, he's not as down on General Daniel Sickles as most historians. He feels that Sickles' positioning of his Corps in the Peace Orchard on the second day of the battle wore down Lee's men. This notion is somewhat validated by the fact that Sickles won the Medal of Honor. Trudeau also portrays General Lee as indecisive in that he waited too long to commit to a full-scale battle and ignored Longstreet's suggestion that the Army go around the Union army and look for a defensive position. The Union's left flank was never properly scouted and Longstreet was surprised by Sickles' positioning of his Corps.
Trudeau also casts doubt on Joshua Chamberlain's famous "right wheel" command during the struggle on Little Round Top. He agrees that there was a bayonet charge but that Chamberlain had embellished matters in "subsequent recountings of the fight."
I was a bit disappointed by the absence of pictures. God knows, thanks to Matthew Brady, there are enough of them. I also had a hard time with the maps. Many of them ignore place names and I had trouble orienting myself.
One selling point was the afterward which told us what happened to the many, many people mentioned in the book. One surprise was General Pickett, whom I had thought of as a dandy and a typical southern cavalier. Trudeau says that notion was due to his letters which were published (heavily edited or fictionalized) posthumously by his wife. I also liked Trudeau's liberal sprinkling of reactions from Gettysburg townspeople. Teenager Daniel Skelly, for instance, seemed to be overjoyed at the possibility of a full-scale battle in his own backyard.
This book was definitely worth the time it took to read it and brought the three days of battle into clearer focus.
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