The Hour of Our Nation's Agony offers a revealing look into the life of a Confederate soldier as he is transformed by the war. Through these literate, perceptive, and illuminating letters, readers can trace Lt. William Cowper Nelson's evolution from an idealistic young soldier to a battle-hardened veteran. Nelson joined the army at the age of nineteen, leaving behind a close-knit family in Holly Springs, Mississippi. He served for much of the war in the Third Corps of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. By the end of the conflict, Nelson had survived many major battles, including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, as well as the long siege of Petersburg. In his correspondence, Nelson discusses in detail the soldier's life, religion in the ranks, his love for and heartbreak at being separated from his family, and Southern identity. Readers will find his reflections on slavery, religion, and the Confederacy particularly revealing. Seeing and participating in the slaughter of other human beings overpowered Nelson's romantic idealism. He had long imagined war as a noble struggle of valor, selflessness, and glory. But the sight of wounded men with "blood streaming from their wounds," dying slow, lonely deaths showed Nelson the true nature of war. Nelson's letters reveal the conflicting emotions that haunted many soldiers. Despite his bitter hatred of the "ruthless invaders of our beloved South," the sight of wounded Union prisoners moved him to compassion. Nelson's ability to write about irreconcilable moments when he felt both kindness and cruelty toward the enemy with introspection, candor, and sensitivity makes The Hour of Our Nation's Agony more than just a collection of missives. Jennifer Ford places Nelson squarely in the middle of the historiographic debate over the degree of disillusionment felt by Civil War soldiers, arguing that Nelson-like many soldiers-was a complex individual who does not fit neatly into one interpretation. Jennifer W. Ford is head of special collections and associate professor at the J. D. Williams Library at the University of Mississippi, where the where the collection containing Lt. Nelson's letters and other family documents is held.
A biography of Stand Watie, a Cherokee leader and Confederate general.
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T. Belsham, March 2, 1801; in Ibid., p.455; Please see also Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello, by Andrew Burstein, (Basic Books, New York), 2005, p.242. 61 Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Joseph Priestley, March 21, 1801, ...
Feasts of Fear and Agony
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31, P.) The first paragraph of the sheet with the title was stated: CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS, That I Thomas Peters of the State of Tennessee as principal, and George B. Peters, Wm. G. Ford, ...
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Eugene D. Genovese. The Mind of the Master Class: ...
Spanning 350 years of American history and culture, a collection of more than two hundred letters, many never before published, reveals the personalities and feelings of Americans great and small, from Amelia Earhart to Elvis Presley to ...
See also Confederate States of America (Confederacy): policies toward USCT; Halleck, Henry W.; laws of war; Lieber, Francis; military necessity; Sherman, William T.; Vattel, Emmerich de Jackson, Andrew, 43, 46–47, 85–86 Jacobinism, 37, ...
22. since the work of S. L. A. Marshall on nonfirers in World War II. See Grossman's response to these debates on p. 333. See also S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York: Morrow, ...