Reviews for Pickett's Charge in History and Memory

The average rating for Pickett's Charge in History and Memory based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-06-15 00:00:00 Andrey Istomin I met the author when she spoke at Weber State University. I'd been out of the 'Civil War Enthusiast' scene for awhile when I attended her lecture. And I'm sad to say that is quite the appropriate term to describe many who study the Civil War. In any case Carol Reardon is a cool and classy historian who knows that one of the most important phrases to say early and often in a historical lecture is "We don't really know exactly what happened." Still, by reading the excellent works of diligent historians we can get a pretty good idea of what happened. By the end of Ms. Reardon's engaging presentation, I remembered why I had been so captivated studying the Civil War during my late teens/early 20s. When it comes to the Civil War, you will never run out of things to study, debate, or ponder deeply. Reardon is also a historian called upon to take new service men and women onto the historical battlefield to consider how wars are fought. Like I said, she's pretty cool. I have a signed copy of this book in my collection, from her hand to mine. I recommend this book to any one who thinks that Pickett's Charge has been talked about enough, or figured out sufficiently.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-07-29 00:00:00 Robert Avila How Americans Have Viewed Pickett's Charge The third day, July 3, 1863, of the Battle of Gettysburg has become immortalized by what is commonly referred to as Pickett's Charge. After an extensive cannonade, a Southern infantry forced crossed about one mile of open ground to attach the Union position on the center of Cemetery Ridge. A small number of Confederate troops reached and briefly penetrated the Union defense. The attack was repulsed with great loss to the Confederate troops. The Battle of Gettysburg was essentially over and the Confederate Army began a long and difficult retreat the next day. These are some of the bare-boned facts about Pickett's charge. General George Pickett, a subordinate of General Longstreet, commanded the right wing of the Confederate assault leading troops from Virginia. The left wing of the assault was under the command of Generals Pettigrew and Trimble from the Corps of Confederate General A.P. Hill. The assault force on the left included troops from North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere in the South. There was also a small column to the right of Pickett's troops that included soldiers from Florida and Georgia. Professor Carol Reardon's study, "Pickett's Charge in History and Memory" (1997) eloquently explores how and why the events of the third day at Gettysburg have assumed legendary, heroic status among so many Americans over the years. Professor Reardon gives only the briefest account of the battle itself and focuses instead on the many imponderables and uncertainties in the historical record. She has some important things to say about skepticism regarding the initial battlefield accounts, some of which were written many years after the event when memories had turned and faded. She has even more important things to say about how and why Pickett's charge became and remains a subject for contention and about why many people still find it a climactic moment of the Civil War and of American history. Professor Reardon describes how Virginians and North Carolinians fought between themselves about which troops had been braver and had carried more of the brunt of the failed assault. She discusses how the Charge became legendary as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy" and how its repulse became viewed as sealing the fate of the Confederacy. Beginning in the mid-1870s Union and Confederate Veterans met on the Gettysburg Battlefield to relive their memories of the Charge. The former enemies had reconciled and become friends. Pickett's Charge became a symbol of the valor, the heroism, and the common bond of soldiering shared by the troops on both sides. The memory of Pickett's charge helped reunite the United States. It also, unhappily, promoted a "Lost Cause", romanticized view of the Old South and tended to draw the Nation's attention away from the issues of slavery and of race relations that had precipitated the Civil War. I found Professor Reardon's descriptions of the reunions at Gettysburg between veterans in 1877 and 1913 the most moving and interesting part of the book, as they showed clearly the symbolic character that Pickett's Charge had assumed. Pickett's Charge became an emblem of the nature of the Civil War and of the subsequent reconciliation between North and South. Professor Reardon also devotes more attention to the Union side of the line than is sometimes accorded in studies of the Charge. Interestingly, she points out that Union veterans of the first and second days of Gettysburg -- the soldiers in Sickle's Third Corps, the defenders of Culp's and Cemetery Hills, among others, sometimes felt slighted at the attention lavished on the third day of the Battle at the expense of their contributions. In recent years, perhaps under the influence of Scharra's novel, "The Killer Angels" the Union defense of Little Round Top under Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine have rivalled Pickett's Charge in accounts of the climactic moment of the Battle. Professor Reardon does not address this revival of interest in Little Round Top. It would be interesting to explore it in a manner analogous to her treatment of the Charge. I think many modern accounts of the Charge tend to emphasize its futility, the highly remote chances it had of success, and the tremendous loss of life that followed in its wake. This is a more modernistic approach to the Charge than the approach based upon a shared valor and heroism that Professor Reardon discusses. The modern sensibility has affected again the way Americans view the Charge. Professor Reardon has written a thoughtful meditation of Pickett's charge and its interpretation and reinterpretation over the years. She views her subject seriously and with reverence. She concludes her book with the words of a Gettysburg veteran writing in 1908 (p.213): "Tradition, story, history -- all will not efface the true, grand epic of Gettysburg." Robin Friedman