Scholar and Texas Christian University professor of history Steven E. Woodworth pens this in a new book about the men from Michigan and the rest of the Midwest:
"Grant had shaped and forged the Army of the Tennessee, building on his own personality and the regional character of its men, most of whom came from what was then called the Northwest but is now called the Midwest. The region had been frontier little more than a generation earlier, and the men who served in the ranks of Grant's army had either helped farm land that their fathers had carved out of the wilderness or else had done the carving themselves only a few years before enlisting. They were capable and resourceful and tended to assume that they could handle anything the war brought their way. ... little inclined to stand on ceremony but was prepared to get at the enemy as quickly as possible, hit him as hard as possible, and keep moving on." The Chattanooga Campaign, Southern Illinois Univ. Press, pp. 53-54 (2012)
It is the third in a planned multi-volume "Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland" series that seeks to take the West out of the shadows of the Eastern Theater dominance of Civil War writing. As with the other two, this one is well worth the investment.
Comments