{"title":"Earl J. Hess","description":"EARL J. HESS is Stewart W. McClelland Distinguished Professor in Humanities and an associate professor of history at Lincoln Memorial University. He is the author of nearly twenty books, including The Civil War in the West--Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi and Lincoln Memorial University and the Shaping of Appalachia.","products":[{"product_id":"the-rifle-musket-in-civil-war-combat-reality-and-myth-paperback","title":"The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Civil War's single-shot, muzzle-loading musket revolutionized warfare-or so we've been told for years. Noted historian Earl J. Hess forcefully challenges that claim, offering a new, clear-eyed, and convincing assessment of the rifle musket's actual performance on the battlefield and its impact on the course of the Civil War. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMany contemporaries were impressed with the new weapon's increased range of 500 yards, compared to the smoothbore musket's range of 100 yards, and assumed that the rifle was a major factor in prolonging the Civil War. Historians have also assumed that the weapon dramatically increased casualty rates, made decisive victories rare, and relegated cavalry and artillery to far lesser roles than they played in smoothbore battles. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHess presents a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited than previously supposed and was confined primarily to marginal operations such as skirmishing and sniping. He argues further that its potential to alter battle line operations was virtually nullified by inadequate training, soldiers' preference for short-range firing, and the difficulty of seeing the enemy at a distance. He notes that bullets fired from the new musket followed a parabolic trajectory unlike those fired from smoothbores; at mid-range, those rifle balls flew well above the enemy, creating two killing zones between which troops could operate untouched. He also presents the most complete discussion to date of the development of skirmishing and sniping in the Civil War. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing upon the observations and reflections of the soldiers themselves, Hess offers the most compelling argument yet made regarding the actual use of the rifle musket and its influence on Civil War combat. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, his book will be of special interest to Civil War scholars, buffs, re-enactors, and gun enthusiasts alike.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51366082740447,"sku":"9780700623839","price":26.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/Cn1MgenBEC9780700623839.webp?v=1789080821"},{"product_id":"the-knoxville-campaign-burnside-and-longstreet-in-east-tennessee-paperback","title":"The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Hess's account of the understudied Knoxville Campaign sheds new light on the generalship of James Longstreet and Ambrose Burnside, as well as such lesser players as Micah Jenkins and Orlando Poe. Both scholars and general readers should welcome it. The scholarship is sound, the research, superb, the writing, excellent.\" --Steven E. Woodworth, author of Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the fall and winter of 1863, Union General Ambrose Burnside and Confederate General James Longstreet vied for control of the city of Knoxville and with it the railroad that linked the Confederacy east and west. The generals and their men competed, too, for the hearts and minds of the people of East Tennessee. Often overshadowed by the fighting at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, this important campaign has never received a full scholarly treatment. In this landmark book, award-winning historian Earl J. Hess fills a gap in Civil War scholarship--a timely contribution that coincides with and commemorates the sesquicentennial of the Civil War\u003cbr\u003e The East Tennessee campaign was an important part of the war in the West. It brought the conflict to Knoxville in a devastating way, forcing the Union defenders to endure two weeks of siege in worsening winter conditions. The besieging Confederates suffered equally from supply shortages, while the civilian population was caught in the middle and the town itself suffered widespread destruction. The campaign culminated in the famed attack on Fort Sanders early on the morning of November 29, 1863. The bloody repulse of Longstreet's veterans that morning contributed significantly to the unraveling of Confederate hopes in the Western theater of operations.\u003cbr\u003e Hess's compelling account is filled with numerous maps and images that enhance the reader's understanding of this vital campaign that tested the heart of East Tennessee. The author's narrative and analysis will appeal to a broad audience, including general readers, seasoned scholars, and new students of Tennessee and Civil War history. The Knoxville Campaign will thoroughly reorient our view of the war as it played out in the mountains and valleys of East Tennessee. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEARL J. HESS is Stewart W. McClelland Distinguished Professor in Humanities and an associate professor of history at Lincoln Memorial University. He is the author of nearly twenty books, including The Civil War in the West--Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi and Lincoln Memorial University and the Shaping of Appalachia. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368456454367,"sku":"9781572339958","price":32.35,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/jpw8bV1QeV9781572339958.webp?v=1789128455"},{"product_id":"civil-war-cavalry-waging-mounted-warfare-in-nineteenth-century-america-hardcover","title":"Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Civil War produced the largest cavalry force ever raised in American history. In \u003ci\u003eCivil War Cavalry, \u003c\/i\u003e Earl J. Hess examines that force comprehensively and from new perspectives, challenging standard views of the war's mounted arm. Hess surveys the organization, training, administration, arming, and mounting of cavalry units and examines mounted troops' tactical formations and maneuvers. He addresses the nature of cavalry operations, discussing the mounted charge, dismounted fighting, long-distance raids, the varied types of weapons used by troopers, and the difficulty of supplying horses. Hess also brings concepts from the burgeoning field of animal history to argue that cavalry mounts exercised a degree of agency in shaping their role in the large military machine. \u003ci\u003eCivil War Cavalry\u003c\/i\u003e is a sweeping and innovative history, establishing a new criterion for understanding how Americans waged mounted warfare in the mid-nineteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368492171487,"sku":"9780807184448","price":53.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/OHN19xio8h9780807184448.webp?v=1789128530"},{"product_id":"shattered-courage-soldiers-who-refused-to-fight-in-the-american-civil-war-hardcover","title":"Shattered Courage: Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in the American Civil War - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom renowned Civil War historian Earl J. Hess comes a study of Union and Confederate soldiers as never seen before. \u003ci\u003eShattered Courage\u003c\/i\u003e examines the experience of the men who refused to fight on the day of battle.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen Abraham Lincoln took the oath of presidential office on March 4, 1865, he urged the country to care for those \"who shall have borne the battle\"--a reference to the Union soldiers who successfully met the challenges of combat. But while honoring and helping the good soldier, Americans have forgotten those men who tried but failed to meet the test of battle in the Civil War. \u003ci\u003eShattered Courage\u003c\/i\u003e tells the stories of those previously obscure soldiers and explores the other side of combat courage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this unique and groundbreaking volume, based on decades of research, Earl J. Hess provides the first comprehensive account of soldiers who refused to fight in the midst of combat. Hess charts the limits on combat morale, which affected veterans as well as green troops, officers in addition to enlisted men, and Union along with Confederate armies. Hess is the first historian to identify combat defaulters from personal accounts and official reports and to then examine their service records to discover what happened to them in the military system. He is also the first to compile statistics on defaulters and to reveal that their comrades sometimes reacted with anger, but more often accepted their failure as an unavoidable aspect of engaging in battle. Hess also discovered that the army tried unsuccessfully to stop combat defaulting but managed to contain its effects by efforts to encourage battle spirit. Far from heroes but not deserters, most of these men returned to duty and continued trying to deal with the experience of battle as lived during the Civil War. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368933949663,"sku":"9780700640959","price":64.78,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/laFJHS2X879780700640959.webp?v=1789135898"},{"product_id":"civil-war-camps-and-soldier-health-sanitation-and-military-effectiveness-in-the-union-army-paperback","title":"Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn immersive analysis of camp life and soldiers' well-being during the Civil War\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Civil War was a watershed in public awareness of the many health-related issues soldiers faced while living in camps. Sanitarians among civilians and regular army officers attempted to meet those challenges by addressing a range of topics associated with preventive healthcare in the volunteer army. The US Sanitary Commission, a nongovernmental agency sanctioned by the Federal government, created a massive campaign to study conditions in semipermanent camps and advise unit commanders how to avoid unnecessary illness and curb soldier deaths by disease. Commission inspectors, mostly civilian physicians, examined camps from 1861 to early 1864 and filed more than 1,400 reports of their findings.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEarl J. Hess delves deeply into 280 of those reports, shedding new and startling light on camp conditions. Addressing camp situation, shelter, clothing, personal cleanliness, garbage disposal, latrines, food, cooking, water, alcohol, morale, recruit examination, smallpox vaccination, regimental hospitals, and officer supervision, the camp inspection returns are unique snapshots of what it was like to live in a Union army camp. The reports reveal that sanitation varied widely from unit to unit and across time periods. Volunteer regimental officers and surgeons were often unable to take sanitary principles seriously, and disposing of garbage and human waste was often nonexistent. Overall, the volunteer regiments did well enough to get by, but they did not achieve high marks for military effectiveness when it came to preventive healthcare.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCivil War Camps and Soldier Health is a thought-provoking, impeccably researched volume that enriches our understanding of the sanitation challenges facing the Union army camps as well as how these challenges were recorded and examined by early researchers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368950399199,"sku":"9781606355053","price":64.73,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/wdgx8jj_Wo9781606355053.webp?v=1789135931"},{"product_id":"civil-war-logistics-a-study-of-military-transportation-paperback","title":"Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies by the New York Military Affairs Symposium \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDuring the Civil War, neither the Union nor the Confederate army could have operated without effective transportation systems. Moving men, supplies, and equipment required coordination on a massive scale, and Earl J. Hess's \u003ci\u003eCivil War Logistics\u003c\/i\u003e offers the first comprehensive analysis of this vital process. Utilizing an enormous array of reports, dispatches, and personal accounts by quartermasters involved in transporting war materials, Hess reveals how each conveyance system operated as well as the degree to which both armies accomplished their logistical goals. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn a society just realizing the benefits of modern travel technology, both sides of the conflict faced challenges in maintaining national and regional lines of transportation. Union and Confederate quartermasters used riverboats, steamers, coastal shipping, railroads, wagon trains, pack trains, cattle herds, and their soldiers in the long and complicated chain that supported the military operations of their forces. Soldiers in blue and gray alike tried to destroy the transportation facilities of their enemy, firing on river boats and dismantling rails to disrupt opposing supply lines while defending their own means of transport. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAccording to Hess, Union logistical efforts proved far more successful than Confederate attempts to move and supply its fighting forces, due mainly to the North's superior administrative management and willingness to seize transportation resources when needed. As the war went on, the Union's protean system grew in complexity, size, and efficiency, while that of the Confederates steadily declined in size and effectiveness until it hardly met the needs of its army. Indeed, Hess concludes that in its use of all types of military transportation, the Federal government far surpassed its opponent and thus laid the foundation for Union victory in the Civil War.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368976122079,"sku":"9780807188040","price":37.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/L-8fFd6aAB9780807188040.webp?v=1789135986"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/earl-j-hess.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}