Gods and Generals Book by Ballantine Books - Civil War History Reading

Gods and Generals is a fictional novel about the beginning of the Civil War from the perspectives of the real life historical figures who lived it. The novel has 4 primary point of view characters. From the Confederacy: Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and from the Union: Winfield Hancock and Joshua Chamberlain.The book chronicles the souring relations between the North and South as Lincoln is elected President and were all 4 men stand on the issue. Lee was famously asked to lead the Union army in putting down the rebel cause. While Lee was skeptical about session and did not particularly support slavery, he could not take up arms against his home state of Virginia so he declined the offer and quickly joined the rebel army. Jackson was a teacher at the Virgina Military Institute and a bad one at that. Completely uncomfortable in having discussions and instead delivering monologues that left his students dumbfounded, Jackson supported the confederate cause and jumped at the chance of participating in battle again. Despite Jackson's portrayal in the film Gods and Generals, Jackson comes off as some kind of fanatical religious introverted psychopath. When in battle he hopes for the death of each and every single member of the Union.In the Union, Hancock is already with the army but lives out in the growing community of Los Angeles, California performing a job as a one man security guard in charge of protecting a military supplies warehouse from the natives. When the succession begins to happen and battle is imminent, Hancock supports the preservation of the Union and makes arrangements to join the battle even causing a divide with his friend Lewis Armistead who has resigned his commission and joined the Confederate army.Chamberlain is a professor in Maine who begins to feel like he should contribute in this war. That he is the only one around him who understands how important this war really is. The older professors scoff at him and his views make them so uncomfortable that he is forced to take an extended leave from work. So Chamberlain decides that he should lead by example and enlists in the army and others recommendation towards his intelligence immediately earns him a Lt. Colonel ranking (after initially turning down a higher rank in order to learn to the business). Chamberlain spends the early years of the war learning to become an good soldier and an effective battle commander.The book does a great job of chronicling the early (and many) successes of the Rebel army led by Lee with Jackson as one of his right hand men (James Longstreet being the other). Lee and Jackson experience so many dominant victories that they begin to think of their army as unstoppable with them only really suffering one setback at the Battle of Antietam.On the other hand, you begin to feel the frustration through the eyes of Hancock, an experienced and decorated soldier, who has to watch multiple opportunities to end the war go by unnoticed and/or ignored. Hancock and others become frustrated with the war early on as they can see plenty of plan's where they can destroy Lee's much smaller army either fail or aren't even attempted either due to politics or incompetence. The first couple years of the war see's several changes in commanders on the Union side, most being political appointees with most being dismissed after a single battle due to a disastrous battle plan or a failure to aggressively pursue the enemy. In the beginning of the war, the only real success was George McClellan (who was already the 3rd or 4th person to lead the Union army) taking on Lee at Antietam and sending him scurrying back after a bloody battle. But he almost immediately loses his job because of his failure to pursue Lee's army South. After McClellan's departure you see the Union go through disastrous defeat after another as new commanders are brought in and dismissed one after another for failure to have any success or real plan on the battle field.Everything builds to the battle of Gettysburg, which is covered in the 2nd book The Killer Angels, and by the time you are done with this you want to pick up the book immediately.