Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862

Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862

by Thomas Lawrence Connelly
Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862

Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862

by Thomas Lawrence Connelly

Paperback(REPRINT)

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Overview

A companion volume to Autumn of Glory

Most of the Civil War was fought on Southern soil. The responsibility for defending the Confederacy rested with two great military forces. One of these armies defended the “heartland” of the Confederacy—a vital area which embraced the state of Tennessee and large portions of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

This is the story of that army—the first detailed study to be based upon research in manuscript collections and the first to explore the military significance of the heartland.

The Army of Tennessee faced problems and obstacles far more staggering than any encountered by the other great Confederate force. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s army was charged with the defense of an area considerably smaller in size. And while Lee’s line of defense extended only about 125 miles, the front defended by the Army of Tennessee stretched for some 400 miles.

Yet the Army of the Heartland has heretofore been given relatively slight attention by historians. With this volume Thomas Lawrence Connelly, a native Tennessean, has brought Confederate military history more nearly into balance.

Throughout the war the Army of Tennessee was plagued by ineffective leadership. There were personality conflicts between commanding generals and corps commanders and breakdowns in communications with the Confederate government at Richmond. Lacking the leadership of a Lee, the Army of Tennessee failed to attain a real esprit at the corps level. Instead, the common soldiers, sensing the quarrelsome nature of their leaders, developed at regimental and brigade levels their own peculiar brand of morale which sustained them through continuous defeats.

Connelly analyzes the influence and impact of each successive commander of the Army. His conclusions regarding Confederate command and leadership are not the conventional ones.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780807127377
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Publication date: 08/01/2001
Edition description: REPRINT
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 864,911
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Thomas Lawrence Connelly, professor of history at the University of South Carolina for many years, was the author or coauthor of numerous books on the Civil War, including Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865; The Politics of Command: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy; The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society; and God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Legacy of the Heartland3
Part IThe Legacy of the Summer
1The Legacy of Isham Harris25
2A Season of Neglect46
Part IIThe Tempering of the Johnston Influence
3An Uncertain Hand59
4The Land Between the Rivers78
5Tragedy in the Cumberlands86
Part IIIThe Decline of the Johnston Influence
6A Season of Blunders103
7The Death of an Image126
Part IVThe Beauregard Interlude
8In Need of a Napoleon145
9Another Storm, Another Helmsman158
Part VThe Bragg-Kirby Smith Influence
10"All Well in Dixie"187
11"I Am Not Ambitious"205
12A Strange Brand of Cooperation221
13"Your Powerful Chief Magistrate"243
14Some Truths Become Evident262
Bibliography281
Index297
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