Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools: The Courts-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels
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Book Overview
During the Civil War, a Union colonel was five times more likely to be court-martialed than a private. Worse, courts-martial of all ranks increased by 400 percent in the winter months. Among the court-martialed transgressors presented in this volume are an officer nicknamed "Stumpy" because he tended to hide behind tree stumps during combat and a man tried for calling his superior a "miserable reptile." The gallery of offenders also includes a Vermont colonel who became a chloroform addict and a New York colonel who rode his horse into a barroom, ordered a brandy for himself and one for his horse, then fired his pistol through the ceiling. The stories of fifty misdeeds, along with a statistical exploration of twenty-two thousand other courts-martial, provide a pioneering study of the little-known world of Civil War misbehavior and clarify the often-bewildering dynamics between volunteer soldiers and their professional superiors.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0803280246
ISBN13:9780803280243
Release Date:September 2003
Publisher:Unp - Bison Books
Length:258 Pages
Weight:0.84 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"
Customer Reviews
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Colorful anecdotes and a deeper examination
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Drunkards & Outright Fools: Courts-martial Of Civil War Union Colonels by Civil War enthusiast and expert Thomas P. Lowry focuses on illustrative case studies as well as a broad-based statistical exploration to better understand why, or at least how in the Union Army, a colonel during the American Civil War was five times more likely to be court-martialed than a private. Colorful anecdotes and a deeper examination of the severities of the times make Drunkards & Outright Fools a unique and inherently fascinating addition to any civil war reference collections or supplemental reading list.
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