Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools The Courts-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels
Paperback (01 Sep 2003)
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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.
Book information
ISBN: | 9780803280243 |
Publisher: | UNP - Bison Books |
Imprint: | Bison Books |
Pub date: | 01 Sep 2003 |
DEWEY: | 343.730143097409034 |
DEWEY edition: | 21 |
Language: | English |
Number of pages: | 272 |
Weight: | 372g |
Height: | 229mm |
Width: | 152mm |
Spine width: | 15mm |