Gary W. Gallagher

This selection from Great Courses is an excellent overview of the American Civil War including events leading up to it and the immediate aftermath. It's as comprehensive as it can be for a course of 48 lectures of approximately 30 minutes each. Professor Gallagher is extremely knowledgeable and renowned in this subject matter and has received numerous awards from academia, as well as having authored numerous books, articles and scholastic papers.

I think any American would be well served by show more listening to The American Civil War Great Courses lectures by Professor Gallagher. As well as anyone interested in the topic. I learned so much from this Audible audiobook. While previously I had a very basic and general knowledge about the Civil War, this course filled in so much information and so many details for me; from biographical information about the main participants on both sides, a timeline of battles and the strategy behind them and the politics throughout. Hearing the number of casualities listed from each of the major battles, one by one, is staggering and mind boggling. All of it defies logic. We have many misconceptions surrounding the Civil War and this course dispels those for us. The North was not all abolitionist by any means and many of them were only in the fight to get the Union back together. Lincoln was at times not nearly abolitionist enough himself and often frustrated abolitionists. He also supported transporting freed slaves to Liberia, "to their own native land". I was appalled to learn that an "experimental" boat load of freed slaves was sent to a private Caribbean island, sponsored by a wealthy man full of promises of fulfilling all their needs and providing them with jobs, etc. None of that turned out to be the case and these some 800 former slaves were left on the island under despicable conditions. By the time they were returned to the U.S. after a year, several hundred of them had died. Simply deplorable.

Well, there is so much to be learned from Professor Gallagher in this course. I recommend you listen to it and learn some of this history. I feel it is all the more important at this turning point in United States' history, a critical, crucial moment in the American experiment. At times it feels like we have not come nearly as far as we should have in the years since the Civil War took place, nor have we learned the lessons that one might have expected us to after so much bloodshed. That people now constantly use rhetoric calling for another Civil War in America is beyond belief to me. Why can't we use and expand our intellect instead of warmongering? I see our only hope in education and knowledge. Great Courses like this one from Professor Gallagher can help immensely towards that end. show less

Sometimes it is the others in the smaller spotlight that make the biggest difference. The star can dominate the headlines, receive the most praise and adulation, be critiqued the most and the harshest, but sometimes it comes down to who is playing the other parts that matter in determining the outcome. That is/was the case in the American Civil War with General Lee and the rest of the Confederate commanders who received the rank of full general. The book Leaders of the Lost Cause edited by show more the Civil War heavyweights Gary W. Gallagher and Joseph T. Glatthaar takes a look at just this topic.
The editors of this title, Misters Gallagher and Glatthaar, have gather together some of the brightest minds and authors of all things American Civil War and had each of them take new critical looks and write new biographical essay on those individuals who attained the rank of full general in the short life of the army of the Confederate government. The list is illustrious, a who’s who so to speak of well known individuals in the Amy of the Confederacy: Robert E. Lee, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnson, Joseph E. Johnston, Edmund Kirby Smith, and John Bell Hood. The author list of each essay is just as illustrious: the aforementioned Gary W. Gallagher, Charles P. Roland, James I. Robertson, Jr., William C. Davis, Stephen D. Engle, Robert K. Krick, Glatthaar, and Keith S. Bohannon respectively.
Of course Gallagher’s essay on Lee was mostly a positive one, though no one would doubt it wouldn’t be. What I was more curious about was the story of the other generals who were not as popular, who did not share the bright spotlight with Lee.
The Beauregard story was interesting to me. Here was a man of grand ideas, but what it seemed to me was one who was afraid to act and in turn fail. He seemed to be very comfortable criticizing and finding fault with others, but did not seem to be able to turn the jaundiced eye upon himself. For all his faults, President Davis seemed to find him irreplaceable, like he did with the majority of the others, and when he needed to be disciplined, Davis just seemed to move him to another theater of the war and gave ‘the problem’ to someone else.
Bragg on the other hand, seemed like he had a half-way decent mind on his shoulders. His problem stemmed from the fact that he only had a half-way decent mind on his shoulders as well as a terrible personality. There were not too many out there that liked this guy. The one that did was Davis, who is also the only one that counted.
Samuel Cooper was a mystery to me. I had never heard of this man, but as it turns out not many really have with the exception of some die-hard scholars. He, as it turns out, rarely wore a uniform, never appeared on a field of battle against the Union army, but was very influential in the war as a member of the front office personnel (I envisioned him as someone who would be on the Joint Chiefs of Staff in today’s world). Mr. William C. Davis I thought did a very good job of introducing him to the reader and keeping him interesting even though he isn’t the most romantic story out there.
Albert Sidney Johnson was a general that President Davis though very highly of, maybe more so than even Lee. He was given a huge and almost impossible work load, and died way to early to allow him to live up to any of the hype.
Joseph E. Johnston was similar to Beauregard, but maybe more childish and one who held grudges more so than anyone of the other generals. Krick’s writing reflected a very bitter and small man to a degree that I was unaware of.
I did not know hardly a lick about E. Kirby Smith. In fact, he was one of the main reasons I got the book in the first place. I had heard and seen his name in many places, but never really knew anything about him. His story reminds me of Albert Johnson’s, someone of ability who was given way to much for one man to accomplish successfully.
John Bell Hood was shown to be more of a fighter than a thinker. The title of his essay says it all “’A Bold Fighter’ Promoted Beyond His Abilities”.
I like this book very much. None of the essays were too long to not read in a couple sittings at the most. The authors know how to write which made for exceptional prose for the most part. The essays were filled with much of the high points as well as the low points of each of their subjects lives. What I am not too sure of was the complete and utter negativity of the overall evaluation of the generals (with the exception of Lee and somewhat of Cooper) Confederate careers. What I took away from this read was that one man, Lee, could not do it all for the Southern nation, though even he had his faults. Others that were looked upon to lead did not pull their weight, play their part to the best of their abilities, and accept they had a part to play at times, or were just given Sisyphusian job to do. Which in the end led to the failure of the Confederate experiment.
I would definitely recommend this to others who are interested in gaining more insight into the leadership, if you can call it that, of the Confederates. It has created in me a need to find out more about these intriguing individuals (they can’t be all this negative…can they?). Great, just what I need, another excuse to get more books… show less

f you are interested in how the Civil War is presented in film and art then this is definitely a book you should check out. The book examines the evolution of historical memory in film and art and provides a unique way of thinking about historical concepts. Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War examines the four popular traditions of interpreting the Civil War in popular culture (the Lost Cause, the Union Cause, the Emancipation show more Cause, and the Reconciliation Cause). Gallagher examines how each of these distinctive ideologies has been portrayed in film and art and how this has evolved over time. While each of the four ideologies are examined a large amount of time is spent examining the Lost Cause and the Union Cause. Gallagher argues that film and art have done more to shape the idea of the Lost Cause than professional historians. "More people have formed perceptions about the Civil War from watching Gone with the Wind (GWTW) than from reading all the books written by historians since Selznick’s blockbuster debuted in 1939.”[1] Gallagher stresses that out of all the films which portray the Civil War Gone with the Wind has had the most powerful influence on perceptions of the Civil War. He argues that the film is one of the reasons that the Lost Cause has been allowed to flourish in films with a shift away from this only beginning to take place in the late 1980's. When it comes to the Union Cause, Gallagher asserts that it holds a weak presence in film and art. He doesn't feel that any scene in film or art has been able to capture the devotion to the Union which animated those in the North during the Civil War. He attributes this failure to how popular culture has lost sight of the idea of nationalism as a motivating force. Instead portrayals of Union Cause focus on illustrating comradeship as the factor that bonds Union soldiers together and motivates them to fight. Gallagher argues that films not only suffer to depict this Cause but also have shifted to portraying Union soldiers in a negative ways. He attributes this to Hollywood's choice to cast the United States Army in a post-Vietnam light. While the Lost Cause has captivated Hollywood and popular opinion Gallagher believes that that the Union Cause is “Hollywood’s real lost cause. Lincoln’s vision of a democratic nation devoted to economic opportunity would seem an attractive theme, but it remains largely unexplored in the Civil War genre.”[2] Overall, Gallagher's book provides a concise overview of the history of the Civil War in film and art. Gallagher even manages to highlight how the current reality can and does impact our memory of past events. A point he most clearly illustrates through discussion of the Union Cause.




[1]Gary W. Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008),10.

[2]Gary Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten, 114. show less

Good book - I enjoyed his willingness to engage with the current historical trends. He specifically names historians he disagrees with and says why. This kind of clarity of thought is really engaging. I think he makes a very good "rebound" case that we have swung the pendulum too far away from embracing the idea of Union as a core motivation for the North's willingness to fight in the Civil War.

One key item felt very unsatisfying - he spoke early on of the inability to produce a coherent show more thread of opinion through the voluminous soldier correspondence, yet he attempts exactly that for the second half of the book. It would have been useful for him to give more explanation why his analysis of excerpts from soldiers letters was better than those he criticized earlier.

Still a short, useful, and interesting book show less