352 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 10 halftones, 3 charts, 10 graphs
History / United States - Civil War Period | History / United States - Southern History
Andrew S. Bledsoe, assistant professor of history at Lee University, is the author of Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War.
“A rich and well-designed study that develops categories for understanding why these men fought, how they became leaders, and how they were changed by their wartime experiences. . . . As the first scholarly work to study these men as a distinct group with certain defining characteristics, it will be a starting point for all future discussions of officers in the Civil War armies.”—Journal of Military History
“Commendations go to Bledsoe in tackling junior officers in both blue and gray, who had differences but shared points in common. . . . Bledsoe examines a large variety of sources from the Civil War era, and he is familiar with several studies by modern historians. His work also offers valuable appendixes with information on officers’ backgrounds, employment, and other characteristics.”—Journal of Southern History
“Bledsoe’s contribution is valuable to all who study Civil War soldiers, providing numerous primary sources as evidence to sustain an argument that shows how junior officers were the mortar that held together both armies in the American Civil War. . . . It is a book that engages readers in the heart of the Civil War, preferring to allow the voices of the soldiers to drive a narrative of significance to both national and regional history.”—Civil War Book Review
“No other book better captures the challenges of command during the Civil War and the transformation of volunteers into a cadre of effective officers. . . . late in the war junior officers were former privates or noncommissioned officers who possessed extensive experience in the ranks and who provided a nucleus of resilient and effective leadership at the end of the war. Thanks to Bledsoe’s book, we have our first vivid portrait of how that leadership actually worked.”—Civil War History
LISTEN: Author Andrew Bledsoe on Civil War Talk Radio (15 March 2017)
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