Background
McWhiney, Grady was born on July 15, 1928 in Sherveport, Louisiana, United States. Son of Henry Grady and Mayme (Holland) McWhiney.
( Born in 1817 in North Carolina, Bragg ranked high in th...)
Born in 1817 in North Carolina, Bragg ranked high in the graduating class of 1837 at West Point. He served with distinction in both the Seminole War and the Mexican War. Just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Bragg was promoted to major general. In June 1862 Bragg was named Commander of the Army of Tennessee, the principal Confederate force in the West, and was described by Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin as “the greatest General.” Yet less than two years later Bragg was the South’s most discredited commander. Much of this criticism was justified, for he had done as much as any Confederate general to lose the war. Under his direction the army fought four major campaigns before retreating from Kentucky through Tennessee to Georgia. The army’s failures were Bragg’s failures, and after his defeat at Chattanooga in November 1863 Bragg was relieved of field command. Instead of retirement to the obscurity most people believed he so richly deserved, Bragg received a remarkable promotion: he went to Richmond as President Davis’s military adviser. McWhiney intended this work – first published in 1969 – to be the first of two volumes covering the life of the Confederacy’s most problematic general. This reprint edition is issued along with Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat, Volume II by Judith Lee Hallock. McWhiney’s work carries Bragg through the defeat at Murfreesboro in January 1863, and Hallock’s book continues through the staff appointment in Richmond and Bragg’s final days as a private citizen.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817305459/?tag=2022091-20
( This is Grady McWhiney at his finest. Confederate Crack...)
This is Grady McWhiney at his finest. Confederate Crackers and Cavaliers is a collection of seventeen essays on a wide variety of topics relating to Confederate leadership and war-making. The role of culture in the coming of the war is explored in depth as are the differences between Southern "Crackers" and "Cavaliers." Battlefield leadership is also discussed, including pieces on A. P. Hill, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, and Leonidas Polk. Other important essays include work on why the South fired the first shot of the war, how 1862 was actually the "doom year" of the Confederacy, and a treatment of the tactical revolution that occurred between the beginning of the Mexican War and the end of the Civil War. There are more than a few surprises. One chapter, entitled "Sex and Chivalry," investigates the role of West Point in shaping the deportment of America's class of military gentlemen. Jefferson Davis, though, looms largest in this book. From his days along the banks of the Hudson, to his service in Mexico, to an analysis of his war leadership as president of the Confederacy, McWhiney investigates this tarnished American hero whom, the author claims, has been almost as vilified by Americans as Adolf Hitler. McWhiney is known for his unconventional stances. While his work is sometimes controversial, often hotly debated, and nearly always provocative, it can never be ignored. After a long sabbatical from publishing, this astonishing author and historian is back at work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1893114279/?tag=2022091-20
( Spring, 1864 . . . the Civil War's two greatest general...)
Spring, 1864 . . . the Civil War's two greatest generals face each other in the field of battle. Ulysses S. Grant spurs his Army of the Potomac across the Rapidan River as part of a grand offensive plan designed to crush the Confederacy in a single blow. Awaiting Grant and his Federals is the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee who, for two years, has repelled every Union attempt to penetrate south of the Rapidan. Again, Lee foils Federal intentions, swiftly striking Grant's army as it struggles through the tangled darkness of Virginia's most impenetrable forest, known as the Wilderness. With dogged determination uncommon to Federal armies fighting in the East, Grant turns to face off with Lee. For two days the great armies wrestle amid the nightmare landscape that would give this bloody battle its name. An absorbing and detailed account of one of the greatest battles between Grant and Lee, vividly depicted by a distinguished historian.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1886661006/?tag=2022091-20
( Cracker Culture is a provocative study of social life i...)
Cracker Culture is a provocative study of social life in the Old South that probes the origin of cultural differences between the South and the North throughout American history. Among Scotch-Irish settlers the term “Cracker” initially designated a person who boasted, but in American usage the word has come to designate poor whites. McWhiney uses the term to define culture rather than to signify an economic condition. Although all poor whites were Crackers, not all Crackers were poor whites; both, however, were Southerners. The author insists that Southerners and Northerners were never alike. American colonists who settled south and west of Pennsylvania during the 17th and 18th centuries were mainly from the “Celtic fringe” of the British Isles. The culture that these people retained in the New World accounts in considerable measure for the difference between them and the Yankees of New England, most of whom originated in the lowlands of the southeastern half of the island of Britain. From their solid base in the southern backcountry, Celts and their “Cracker” descendants swept westward throughout the antebellum period until they had established themselves and their practices across the Old South. Basic among those practices that determined their traditional folkways, values, norms, and attitudes was the herding of livestock on the open range, in contrast to the mixed agriculture that was the norm both in southeastern Britain and in New England. The Celts brought to the Old South leisurely ways that fostered idleness and gaiety. Like their Celtic ancestors, Southerners were characteristically violent; they scorned pacifism; they considered fights and duels honorable and consistently ignored laws designed to control their actions. In addition, family and kinship were much more important in Celtic Britain and the antebellum South than in England and the Northern United States. Fundamental differences between Southerners and Northerners shaped the course of antebellum American history; their conflict in the 1860s was not so much brother against brother as culture against culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817304584/?tag=2022091-20
(Emphasizes how and why General Bragg, as commander of the...)
Emphasizes how and why General Bragg, as commander of the Army of Tennessee, contributed to Confederate defeat. Gray cloth binding, xi + 421 pages including Selected Bibliography and Index. No ISBN appears in this edition. Columbia University Press, 1969. Hardcover.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000PVH1E2/?tag=2022091-20
( “In the first twenty-seven months of combat 175,000 Sou...)
“In the first twenty-seven months of combat 175,000 Southern soldiers died. This number was more than the entire Confederate military force in the summer of 1861, and it far exceeded the strength of any army that Lee ever commanded. More than 80,000 Southerners fell in just five battles. At Gettysburg three out of every ten Confederates present were hit; one brigade lost 65 percent of its men and 70 percent of its field officers in a single charge. A North Carolina regiment started the action with some 800 men; only 216 survived unhurt. Another unit lost two-thirds of its men as well as its commander in a brief assault.” Why did the Confederacy lose so many men? The authors contend that the Confederates bled themselves nearly to death in the first three years of the war by making costly attacks more often than the Federals. Offensive tactics, which had been used successfully by Americans in the Mexican War, were much less effective in the 1860s because an improved weapon – the rifle – had given increased strength to defenders. This book describes tactical theory in the 1850s and suggests how each related to Civil War tactics. It also considers the development of tactics in all three arms of the service during the Civil War. In examining the Civil War the book separates Southern from Northern tactical practice and discusses Confederate military history in the context of Southern social history. Although the Southerners could have offset their numerical disadvantage by remaining on the defensive and forcing the Federals to attack, they failed to do so. The authors argue that the Southerners’ consistent favoring of offensive warfare was attributable, in large measure, to their Celtic heritage: they fought with the same courageous dash and reckless abandon that had characterized their Celtic forebears since ancient times. The Southerners of the Civil War generation were prisoners of their social and cultural history: they attacked courageously and were killed – on battlefields so totally defended by the Federals that “not even a chicken could get through.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817302298/?tag=2022091-20
( “In the first twenty-seven months of combat 175,000 Sou...)
“In the first twenty-seven months of combat 175,000 Southern soldiers died. This number was more than the entire Confederate military force in the summer of 1861, and it far exceeded the strength of any army that Lee ever commanded. More than 80,000 Southerners fell in just five battles. At Gettysburg three out of every ten Confederates present were hit; one brigade lost 65 percent of its men and 70 percent of its field officers in a single charge. A North Carolina regiment started the action with some 800 men; only 216 survived unhurt. Another unit lost two-thirds of its men as well as its commander in a brief assault.” Why did the Confederacy lose so many men? The authors contend that the Confederates bled themselves nearly to death in the first three years of the war by making costly attacks more often than the Federals. Offensive tactics, which had been used successfully by Americans in the Mexican War, were much less effective in the 1860s because an improved weapon – the rifle – had given increased strength to defenders. This book describes tactical theory in the 1850s and suggests how each related to Civil War tactics. It also considers the development of tactics in all three arms of the service during the Civil War. In examining the Civil War the book separates Southern from Northern tactical practice and discusses Confederate military history in the context of Southern social history. Although the Southerners could have offset their numerical disadvantage by remaining on the defensive and forcing the Federals to attack, they failed to do so. The authors argue that the Southerners’ consistent favoring of offensive warfare was attributable, in large measure, to their Celtic heritage: they fought with the same courageous dash and reckless abandon that had characterized their Celtic forebears since ancient times. The Southerners of the Civil War generation were prisoners of their social and cultural history: they attacked courageously and were killed – on battlefields so totally defended by the Federals that “not even a chicken could get through.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817300732/?tag=2022091-20
McWhiney, Grady was born on July 15, 1928 in Sherveport, Louisiana, United States. Son of Henry Grady and Mayme (Holland) McWhiney.
Bachelor of Science, Centenary College of Louisiana, 1950. Master of Arts, Louisiana State University, 1951. Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1960.
Assistant professor, Troy State University, Alabama, 1952-1954;
assistant professor, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, 1956-1959;
assistant professor, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1960-1965;
associate professor to professor, U.B. C., Vancouver, Canada, 1965-1970;
visiting professor, University of California - Berkeley, 1959-1960, 67-68;
professor, Wayne State University, Detroit, 1970-1975;
visiting professor, Tulane University, New Orleans, summer 1970;
visiting professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1972-1973;
professor of history, director and distinguished senior fellow center for study of southern history and culture, U. Alabama University, 1975-1983;
Lyndon Baines Johnson professor American history, Texas Christian U., Fort Worth, 1983-1996;
emeritus, Texas Christian U., Fort Worth, since 1996;
distinguished historian in residence, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, 1996-1997. Member National Endowment for Humanities Selection Committee, 1973, Jefferson Davis Award Committee, 1970-1972, 75-77. James Murfin Memorial lecturer, 1990, Marian Alexander Blake lecturer,1991.
Conference Memorial speaker, 1991. Visiting distinguished professor McMurry U., Abilene, Texas, since 1997. President McWhiney Research Foundation, since 1997.
( Cracker Culture is a provocative study of social life i...)
(Excerpt from Reconstruction and the Freedmen The CIVIL w...)
(Emphasizes how and why General Bragg, as commander of the...)
(Emphasizes how and why General Bragg, as commander of the...)
(General Braxton Bragg of the Confederate Army is one of t...)
( Born in 1817 in North Carolina, Bragg ranked high in th...)
( “In the first twenty-seven months of combat 175,000 Sou...)
( “In the first twenty-seven months of combat 175,000 Sou...)
( This is Grady McWhiney at his finest. Confederate Crack...)
(Essays on Civil War Leaders)
( Spring, 1864 . . . the Civil War's two greatest general...)
Served with United States Marine Corps, 1945-1947. Fellow St. George Tucker Society. Member Alabama History Association (president 1978-1979), Southern History Association (executive council 1976-1979), Philadelphia Society, St. Louis Civil War Round Table (honorary), Civil War Round Table United Kingdom (honorary), Main St.Com., Phi Beta Kappa.
Son of Henry Grady and Mayme (Holland) McW. M. Sue B. Baca, November 20, 1947.