Death of a Nation Essay

Clifford Dowdeys Death of a Nation The Story of Lee and His custody at Gettysburg is a troops news report examining the Confederate loss at this heroic poem betrothal, particularly the decision-making forge and the in the southern com musical compositionders misfortune to perform up to their potential. Partly a fawning defense of Robert E. Lee and parti all(prenominal)y an insightful study of why the sulfur even dared invade the North, it demonstrates the authors conspiracyern bias without trying to release thrall, as well as Dowdeys fusion of bill and storytelling.The book looks just about exclusively at the Civil fights largest battle, in which Lees Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North in hopes of scaring Lincoln into halting the warfare and recognizing the cabal. Instead, as Dowdeys title implies, it proved the Confederacys apex as a military power, beginning its two-year lessen and ultimate collapse.Dowdey, a native of Richmond, Virginia, who produced nume rous histories and unuseds about the Civil War, takes a trenchant pro-southwardern stance and offers a preferably liberal view both of the Confederacy, never approach shot its defense of slavery, and of Lee, the inventive, chance-taking commander who proved the southwesterns greatest leader. The first chapter, r abateezvous with Disaster, conveys in its title how Dowdey sees the battle, yet he is loath to blame Lee for the loss.He opens with an work out of Confederate serviceman trespassing(a) Pennsylvania, tieing them non as a menacing enemy tho as a clean merry tie The Confederate soldiers had non committed acts of hooliganism or abused the inhabitants. On the contrary, the troops had been highly good-humored in the expect of taunts and insults (3). The author thence introduces the oecumenic as a striking, to the highest degree god standardised figure, quoting an officer who deemed him a kingly man whom all men who came into his presence expected to accompany (5) this description recurs throughout the book.Subsequent chapters let out the buildup and the battle itself. In chapter two, The Opening Phase, Dowdey portrays the decision-making process that led to Lees trespass of Pennsylvania as a Jefferson Davis-engineered travesty, a necessary expedient in the insurance of static, scattered defensiveness (27). The author considers Lee almost a victim of Davis vanity, rigidity, and in force to nonice his own lack of military expertise, and he absolves the man he believes embodied the cypher of the patriarchal planter who, as military leader, assumed benevolent responsibility for his subject area (33).Throughout the battle, which dominates more than of the book, Dowdey introduces Lees subordinates as characters in a novel or drama, describing their personalities in lively, even approximately chatty detail. Jeb Stuart, whose cavalry failed in its reconnaissance duties before the fighting began, appears as a capable soldier who refused t o believe he erred Richard Ewell is a crusty yet soft-hearted nonconcentric whose marriage s a good dealed his fighting skills and conjuration B. Hood is a fighter, not a thinker (174).He reserves his harshest criticisms for mob Longstreet, deeming the l oneness general to openly examination Lees decision to rent the unwise assault best cognize as Picketts Charge, a deceit defeatist. Dowdey claims that objective historians and Longstreet partisans keep back tried to re-evaluate him immaterial the text of controversy. This is almost impossible. . . . Many new(prenominal) men performed below their potential at Gettysburg, hardly only James Longstreet decipherable himself by blaming Lee (340).By the end of the book, one realizes that Dowdey will not surrender that the figure he admires whitethorn have simply made fatal errors at Gettysburg. Dowdeys descriptions of the battle cover the cardinal days in a mostly accurate solely not accredited manner. He alternates between broad, sweeping views of dramatic combat and close-up accounts of individual Confederate units and soldiers. (He gives miniature mention to yoke action throughout the book, making clear that his sole pursuance is depicting Lees phalanx 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 transmutation (despite his own tendency to take unyielding chances against the larger and better-armed Union Army), but rather his subordinates softness to perform as ably as they had in previous battles. In this account, Stuarts ego kept him from realizing he failed in his scouting duties, A. P.Hill baffled 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 adequa tely prepare his troops for their attack. period Dowdey concedes that Lee, alone in the center of the vacuum, could not have been less aware of the sum total collapse of co-ordination (240). However, he implies, Lees unawareness was not his fault, but that of usually-reliable subordinates who interrogatively failed all at once.The ferment ends somewhat abruptly, with Lees broken army withdra evolveg from Pennsylvania after Picketts failed bursting charge (in which the general whose name it bears appears as a minor figure) and returning to Virginia the author offers no broad conclusion or history of the battles meaning in spite of appearance a larger context. Dowdey, primarily a fiction writer and college instructor who likewise produced numerous histories of the Army of Northern Virginia, approaches the take a shit with a storytellers pizzaz and flair, writing this history with a novelists attention to visual details and his characters personalities and quirks.Frequently, he aims to stir the readers attention by adding what his characters may have express or thought in rich, at times overstated terms. For example, he deems Ewell this quaint and loving character (121) Jubal Early becomes the bitter man who became as passionate in his shun for the Union as he had one time 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 unsmooth character from raw York who went further on brassy self-confidence and politicking .. . than many a(prenominal) a better man went on ability (203). In trying give his characters personality, Dowdey writes often picturesque and lively prose but in like manner offers a somewhat distorted picture that more detached academic historians may find objectionable. For example, while Lee bath do no wrong, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacys much-reviled president, appears as nearly as much a villain as Longstreet. Of Davis, Dowdey write s The crisis in the secs military fortunes was caused largely by the defense policies of the president.. . . Among the limitations 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 organization unlimited wealth, the organized machinery of government, a navy, the war potential of heavy industry, and a four-to-one custody superiority.Davis led a disorganized bm in self-determinism composed of proud and fiercely individualistic provincials (15-16). Dowdey comments little about the South in general and does not today glorify the Southern cause, though he also refrains from any mention of slavery or racism. He seems to simply sham the South as it was, writing his kit and caboodle to illustrate a particularly regionalist whiz of pride, if not in its plantation past, then certainly in Lee, its most shimmer example of military leadership and manhood.He reveals, perhaps unintentionally, his own sense of butterfly about the South when he writes In a land where the age of valorousness was perpetuated, the military leader embodied the gallantry, the glamour, and the perquisite 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 stained it and failed to match its ideals. Despite Dowdeys biases, he cannot be faulted for failing to do research.He includes a short bibliographical essay at the end, explaining his sources strengths and limitations. In access to using many secondary sources, he relies heavily on participants personal documents, much(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 distor tion of advocacy or indictment (353). This last comment is telling, because Dowdey himself neither advocates nor indicts the Old South, but rather aims to depict the military aspects.The result is a work that shows clear fondness 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 volume, but the author pays some compliments to Union generals whom historians have seen less favorably, such as Joseph Hooker (whom Lee soundly discomfited at Chancellorsville) or George Meade (who won at Gettysburg but failed to pursue and destroy the form 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 unredeemed behind-the-scenes planning 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 own conclusion from this volumes title and the battle it describes that defeat at Gettysburg meant the Confederacys blow 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.