Vivid and lively letters from a young Confederate in Lee’s Army.In the spring of 1861 a 22-year-old Alabamian did what many of his friends and colleagues were doing—he joined the Confederate Army as a volunteer. The first of his family to enlist; William Cowan McClellan; who served as a private in the 9th Alabama Infantry regiment; wrote hundreds of letters throughout the war; often penning for friends who could not write home for themselves. In the letters collected in John C. Carter’s volume; this young soldier comments on his feelings toward his commanding officers; his attitude toward military discipline and camp life; his disdain for the western Confederate armies; and his hopes and fears for the future of the Confederacy.McClellan’s letters also contain vivid descriptions of camp life; battles; marches; picket duty; and sickness and disease in the army. The correspondence between McClellan and his family dealt with separation due to war as well as with other wartime difficulties such as food shortages; invasion; and occupation. The letters also show the rise and fall of morale on both the home front and on the battlefield; and how they were closely intertwined.Remarkable for their humor; literacy; and matter-of-fact banter; the letters reveal the attitude a common soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia had toward the day-to-day activity and progression of the war. John C. Carter includes helpful appendixes that list the letters chronologically and offer the regimental roster; casualty/enlistment totals; assignments; and McClellan’s personal military record.
#2477345 in Books 2009-05-07Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .80 x 6.00l; 1.00 #File Name: 0816660794240 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy gld_9My favorite work by Majid.4 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Contemporary Immigrant Haters Have Unsavory AncestorsBy AymanWe Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid is a must-read for all immigrants and civil rights activists in Europe and North America.I've previously reviewed A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America by Professor Anouar. I also have his book; Freedom and Orthodoxy: Islam and Difference in the Post-Andalusian Age; which I now have renewed impetus to read and review.We Are All Moors is organized into an introduction; four chapters and a conclusion. The introduction lays out the thesis that the Iberian Peninsula's unified kingdoms of Aragon and Castile began the modern era of the nation-state with the policy of religious and ethnic purification and that the archetype Moors can represent groups all around Europe and North America which governments have viewed as obstacles to consolidation of the purified policy.Chapter 1 examines the case of the Muslims and Jews in Spain. Professor Anouar amasses documentary evidence of this process. Each is astounding; and this characteristic throughout the entire book makes the book both enjoyable and difficult to summarize. For example; Professor Anouar documents how religion transformed into ethnicity; so that even the Christian descendants of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula were subject to the state's sanctions. I also did not know that the Muslims were not expelled in 1492; but rather they persevered in the Iberian Peninsula openly for decades and secretly for longer and in the fears of the state for centuries.Chapter 2; entitled "New World Moors;" narrates stories of Muslims and those mistaken for Muslims in the Americas. Fascinatingly; the Spanish often considered the native Americans to be "Moors;" as that fit well with the ideology of conquest inherited from the Reconquista. The chapter also address Muslims in the United States; particularly the proto-Islamic movements; most notably the Nation of Islam.Chapter 3; "The Muslim Jews;" shows how the Othering process developed in the Iberian Peninsula provided the tools for the Othering of Europe's other significan religious minority; Jews. Moreover; leading Jews of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often asserted a Muslim identity or affiliation as they were asserting Jews' rights in Europe. In fact; Dr. Anouar writes:If [contemporary conflicting Jews and Muslims] were to bracket off the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a serious but; in the end; political problem and explore the history and bonds they share; perhaps enough goodwill could be generated to help Israelis and Palestinians and other aggrieved Muslims work out a solution.At the very least; I hope this chapter will convince Muslims to refrain from reproducing inane European anti-semetic rhetoric.Chapter 4 is; in my mind; the most important chapter of the book for a general U.S. and European audience. "Undesirable Aliens: Hispanics in America; Muslims in Europe" compares the current anti-immigrant hysteria with previous manifestations; demonstrating that the very same arguments used against primarily Hispanic immigrants in the United States were used against previous Others. In fact; even anti-immigrant intellectuals like Samuel Huntington had their antecedents in the halls of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even more revealing; however; is that the arguments and methods have their antecedents in the Inquisition of the Iberian Peninsula discussed in the introduction and Chapter 1.This whole sad story is only lightened by the resilience of the "Moors" of each age; whose presence each successive wave of persecution fails to erase. Dr. Anouar concludes by relating several instances of acceptance of the "Moor" and the increasing realization that globalization is making the idea of Inquisitorial purity less and less tenable. The United States has a Melville strand of thought upon which it can draw to end its war on its most recent Moors; the largely Hispanic undocumented immigrant population.Should we make a conscious effort to attain a state of irreversible mestizaje; there is no better group than the Mexicans to lead the way. It is not insignificant that it was a Mexican intellectual who coined the expresion "cosmic race" early in the twentieth century. As ... Gregory Rodriguez has shown ...; although Mexicans are the "largest immigrant group in the history of the United States;" the Mexican culture of mestizaje impels them toward inclusion through intermarriage and adaptation. ... Miscgenation; or rather; mestizaje; characterized the birth of modern Mexico; from the moment Spanish conquistadors encountered the Aztec empire.Dr. Anouar movingly concludes:It is far more sensible to start preparing for a new golden age when every human being on earth and every cultural tradition will be embraced with the love and care now accorded to any species threatened with extenction.Lastly; the book has 26 pages of notes and 26 pages of index to facilitate review and further research. The University of Minnesota Press is to be congratulated for including these materials.7 of 10 people found the following review helpful. I chanced on this book and I love itBy Roger GreenI knew nothing about this book; chanced on it on ; and ordered it. I feared the worst - a dry hard to read book written by an academic. But I couldn't put it down. I am now re-reading it to absorb the details. It is well-written. It is well-documented but skillfully. Unobtrusive numbers lead to notes in the back which provide the references. The ones I know are good ones. I should say that I know something about the subject. Though a scientist all my professional life; I have had a side interest in history of religion for a long time and in retirement I have studied it heavily. Last year I led off an Oxford Round Table on a related subject. I thought I knew all about the Islamic period in Spain (Andalusia) and about the "Christian" Reconquest and the shameful events that immediately followed it. I learned a lot more from this book; but I especially learned about the context of it and the pattern of events that grew out of it and affect us right up to today. I knew something about Muslims in early American history; for example I had read Sylvanie Diouf's 1998 book "Servants of Allah: African muslims enslaved in the Americas"; but this book opened my eyes to not only Muslims among black slaves including some whose abilities were recognized by their masters and rose to responsible positions; but also to Muslims among early explorers of the American West and the moorish racial and cultural component of the Spanish in Mexico. His views on current American political dynamics related to actual and imagined Muslims are fascinating and - to me - convincing. Those who don't know of the historical closeness of Jews and Muslims; in their own perceptions and in the prejudices of others toward them; should read this book. I highly recommend this book. I hope that Anouar Majid writes more along this line. By the way; the one negative review here is really dumb but perhaps forgivable given that its author more-or-less admits that his negative reaction prevented him from reading past the Introduction.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above comments were written in 2009; and it is now 2014. I just want to add that (a) I have re-read this book a number of times and in fact am doing so at the moment; (b) the number of stars this book gets is influenced by the four 1-star negative reviews; and (c) those four apparently right-wing reviewers are not very widely read or open to new ideas presented in a well-documented book.
