Death of a Nation Essay

Clifford Dowdeys Death of a Nation The Story of lee(prenominal) and His Men at Gettysburg is a host history examining the Confederate firing at this epic battle, particularly the decision-making process and the grey com hu bit beingsders failure to set up to their emf. Partly a fawning defense of Robert E. lee(prenominal) and partially an insightful study of why the South even dared invade the North, it demonstrates the causations Southern bias without trying to justify slavery, as come up as Dowdeys fusion of history and storytelling.The book looks almost just at the Civil Wars largest battle, in which downwinds Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North in hopes of scaring capital of Nebraska into halting the state of war and recognizing the Confederacy. Instead, as Dowdeys title implies, it proved the Confederacys elevation as a military power, beginning its two-year decline and final kick downstairs.Dowdey, a native of Richmond, Virginia, who produced numerous his tories and novels closely the Civil War, takes a indomitable pro-Southern stance and offers a sort of generous view both of the Confederacy, neer ascending its defense of slavery, and of downwind, the inventive, chance-taking commander who proved the Souths great leader. The first chapter, Rendezvous with Disaster, conveys in its title how Dowdey sees the battle, yet he is indisposed(p) to blame lee(prenominal) for the loss.He opens with an account of Confederate force attack Pennsylvania, depicting them non as a menacing enemy yet as a somewhat merry band The Confederate soldiers had non committed acts of vandalism or abused the inhabitants. On the contrary, the troops had been exceedingly good-humored in the face of taunts and insults (3). The author then introduces the command as a striking, almost godlike figure, quoting an officer who deemed him a kingly man whom all men who came into his presence expected to obey (5) this description recurs end-to-end the book .Subsequent chapters describe the buildup and the battle itself. In chapter two, The Opening Phase, Dowdey portrays the decision-making process that conduct to Lees invasion of Pennsylvania as a Jefferson Davis-engineered travesty, a necessary expedient in the policy of static, scattered defensiveness (27). The author considers Lee almost a victim of Davis vanity, rigidity, and inability to admit his own inadequacy of military expertise, and he absolves the man he believes embodied the image of the patriarchal planter who, as military leader, assumed benevolent responsibility for his cranial orbit (33).Throughout the battle, which dominates much of the book, Dowdey introduces Lees subordinates as characters in a novel or drama, describing their personalities in lively, even somewhat chatty detail. Jeb Stuart, whose gymnastic horse failed in its reconnaissance duties before the fighting began, appears as a confident soldier who refused to believe he erred Richard Ewell is a cr usty precisely soft-hearted geek whose marriage softened his fighting skills and John B. Hood is a fighter, not a thinker (174).He reserves his harshest criticisms for James Longstreet, deeming the l unity general to openly question Lees decision to wage the foolish assault best known as Picketts Charge, a duplicity defeatist. Dowdey submits that objective historians and Longstreet partisans prevail tried to re-evaluate him outside the text of controversy. This is almost impossible. . . . galore(postnominal) other men performed below their potential at Gettysburg, barely provided James Longstreet absolved himself by blaming Lee (340).By the end of the book, bingle realizes that Dowdey will not concede that the figure he admires may have simply made fatal errors at Gettysburg. Dowdeys descriptions of the battle tag the three days in a generally accurate but not original manner. He alternates between blanket(a), sweeping portrayings of dramatic competitiveness and close -up accounts of individual Confederate units and soldiers. (He gives little mention to married couple action passim the book, making clear that his sole interest is depicting Lees army and not providing a holistic history of the battle.) though his approach provides reliable but not groundbreaking information, Dowdey makes clear that he considers Lees defeat not the venerable commanders open frame (despite his own tendency to take long chances against the larger and better-armed Union Army), but rather his subordinates inability to perform as competently as they had in previous battles. In this account, Stuarts ego kept him from realizing he failed in his scouting duties, A. P.Hill lost his usually strong will, Richard Anderson staged a poor excuse for an assault on Cemetery Ridge with undisciplined, poorly-led Carolinian troops (rather than the Virginians that Dowdey, the Virginian, favors), and Ewell did not adequately prepare his troops for their attack. While Dowdey concedes that Lee, alone in the center of the vacuum, could not have been less aware of the total collapse of co-ordination (240). However, he implies, Lees unawareness was not his fault, but that of usually-reliable subordinates who particularly failed all at once.The work ends somewhat abruptly, with Lees humbled army withdrawing from Pennsylvania after Picketts failed charge (in which the general whose surname it bears appears as a minor figure) and returning to Virginia the author offers no broad conclusion or explanation of the battles meaning inwardly a larger context. Dowdey, primarily a fiction writer and college instructor who also produced numerous histories of the Army of Northern Virginia, approaches the work with a bank clerks vigor and flair, writing this history with a novelists oversight to visual details and his characters personalities and quirks.Frequently, he aims to stir the readers maintenance by adding what his characters may have said or thought in rich, occas ionally overstated terms. For example, he deems Ewell this quaint and lovable character (121) Jubal early becomes the bitter man who became as passionate in his hate for the Union as he had formerly been in its defense (123) and Union general Daniel Sickles (one of the few figures for whom he shows genuine scorn) is an unsavory, showy, and pugnacious character from newborn York who went foster on brassy self-confidence and politicking .. . than many a better man went on ability (203). In trying give his characters personality, Dowdey writes often elegant and lively prose but also offers a somewhat distorted picture that more detached academic historians may find objectionable. For example, magical spell Lee can do no wrong, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacys much-reviled president, appears as nearly as much a villain as Longstreet. Of Davis, Dowdey writes The crisis in the Souths military fortunes was caused largely by the defense policies of the president.. . . Among the limit ations of this self-aware gentleman was an inability to acknowledge himself in the wrong (14). As a Lee apologist, Dowdey implicitly blames David for the Souths collapse, though he wavers on this by adding Lincoln had at his disposal unlimited wealth, the organized machinery of government, a navy, the war potential of heavy industry, and a four-to-one manpower superiority.Davis led a disorganized execution in self-determinism composed of proud and fiercely individualistic provincials (15-16). Dowdey comments little well-nigh the South in general and does not directly glorify the Southern cause, though he also refrains from any mention of slavery or racism. He seems to simply accept the South as it was, writing his whole kit and boodle to illustrate a particularly regionalist sense of pride, if not in its plantation past, then certainly in Lee, its most shining example of military leadership and manhood.He reveals, perhaps unintentionally, his own sense of romance about the South w hen he writes In a land where the age of valor was perpetuated, the military leader embodied the gallantry, the glamour, and the privilege of the aristocrat in a feudal society (15). Characters like Lee, he implies, gave the South respectability and nobility, while lesser individuals, like the supposedly duplicitous, disloyal Longstreet and the rigid, arrogant Davis, somehow stain it and failed to match its ideals. Despite Dowdeys biases, he cannot be faulted for failing to do research.He includes a short bibliographic essay at the end, explaining his sources strengths and limitations. In addition to using many secondary sources, he relies heavily on participants personal documents, such(prenominal) as letters and memoirs, though he concedes that the eyewitness accounts are subject to the fallibility of memory, and many of the articles suffer the distortion of advocacy or indictment (353). This last comment is telling, because Dowdey himself neither advocates nor indicts the Old S outh, but rather aims to depict the military aspects.The result is a work that shows clear fantasy for the Souths self-image as an embattled land of chivalry, but to his credit, Dowdey does not excoriate the North or its leaders. Lincoln scarcely appears in this multitude, but the author pays some compliments to Union generals whom historians have seen less favorably, such as Joseph Hooker (whom Lee soundly defeated at Chancellorsville) or George Meade (who won at Gettysburg but failed to pursue and destroy the remains of Lees army as it withdrew).Death of a Nation is not a comprehensive history of the battle of Gettysburg, but neither does it claim to be. Instead, it is an often-entertaining, well-researched account of the Southern sides participation, including its ill-starred behind-the-scenes cookery and the personal dynamics among the commanders who underperformed at this key point in the war.Though Dowdeys conclusion is so brief as to be unsatisfactory, one can draw ones ow n conclusion from this volumes title and the battle it describes that defeat at Gettysburg meant the Confederacys failure to win its nationhood. Dowdey does not openly lament this fact, but instead shows the process that made this failure a reality. Dowdey, C. (1958). Death of a Nation. New York Alfred A. Knopf.