Gods and Generals - Jeff Shaara [0]
Jeff Shaara
The Ballantine Publishing Group • New York
Contents
Cover
Title Page
To The Reader
Introduction
Part One Chapter 1: Lee
Chapter 2: Jackson
Chapter 3: Chamberlain
Chapter 4: Lee
Chapter 5: Jackson
Chapter 6: Hancock
Chapter 7: Lee
Chapter 8: Hancock
Chapter 9: Lee
Chapter 10: Jackson
Chapter 11: Lee
Chapter 12: Hancock
Chapter 13: Lee
Chapter 14: Hancock
Chapter 15: Lee
Chapter 16: Hancock
Chapter 17: Lee
Chapter 18: Hancock
Chapter 19: Lee
Part Two Chapter 20: Lee
Chapter 21: Chamberlain
Chapter 22: Lee
Chapter 23: Chamberlain
Chapter 24: Hancock
Chapter 25: Chamberlain
Chapter 26: Hancock
Part Three Chapter 27: Lee
Chapter 28: Jackson
Chapter 29: Hancock
Chapter 30: Barksdale
Chapter 31: Hancock
Chapter 32: Jackson
Chapter 33: Lee
Chapter 34: Jackson
Chapter 35: Hancock
Chapter 36: Chamberlain
Chapter 37: Lee
Chapter 38: Hancock
Part Four Chapter 39: Chamberlain
Chapter 40: Lee
Chapter 41: Jackson
Chapter 42: Chamberlain
Chapter 43: Hancock
Chapter 44: Lee
Chapter 45: Hancock
Chapter 46: Jackson
Chapter 47: Howard
Chapter 48: Jackson
Chapter 49: Hancock
Chapter 50: Jackson
Chapter 51: Stuart
Chapter 52: Hancock
Chapter 53: Lee
Chapter 54: Jackson
Chapter 55: Lee
Acknowledgments
Afterword
About The Author
Praise for Gods and Generals
Copyright
To Lynne
TO THE READER
In 1974, Michael Shaara published The Killer Angels, a novel about the men who led the fight at the Battle of Gettysburg. It was not an attempt to document the history of the event, nor was it a biography of the characters who fought there. Both have been done, many times, before. What Michael Shaara did was to tell the story of the battle by telling the story of the men, from their points of view, their thoughts, their feelings. It was a very different approach, and it was possibly the first novel of its kind. It also won the Pulitzer Prize. Michael Shaara died in 1988. He was my father.
The impact of his approach, the feeling that the reader truly knows these characters, has drawn an emotional response from a great many people. Over the years, many have expressed their appreciation for my father’s work, whether in letters or in person. They continue to do so. Some have ancestors who shared the battlefields with Lee or Chamberlain, some are people who have simply come to know these characters well, to understand the impact that these men had on the history of this country and on our lives today. And there have been others who have said “I never liked history, but I loved these characters.” It is to all these people, but especially those who learned their American history in often impersonal textbooks, that this story is written.
This is primarily the story of four men: Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, Winfield Scott Hancock, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Woven throughout the story of these men are the stories of many others, their wives and families, the men who served with them on the field, names many of us know well: James Longstreet, Winfield Scott, “Jeb” Stuart, George McClellan, and characters important not just to the telling of this story, but to history as well: Jefferson Davis, Sam Houston. As The Killer Angels gave readers a connection to the characters at Gettysburg, this story takes them further back, to the first rumblings of the Civil War, the tragedies and successes of their personal lives, and their experiences as soldiers, to paint a picture of each character as he might have understood his own world. In 1861 every American was faced with the horror of watching their young nation divide, and every soldier—and a great number of civilians—had to make an extraordinary decision, a question of loyalty, of principles, of duty. Those individual decisions in many ways changed our history as a nation. Each character in this book is faced with the same choice, and each makes his decision for different reasons.
This story begins in late 1858 and concludes in June 1863, just prior to the Battle