Top 5 Civil War books for non-Americans?

[Anonymous No.23030813]

What are the basic books to understand this armed conflict?

[Anonymous No.23030817]

Battle Cry of Freedom is the classic

[Anonymous No.23030823]

Anybody read Patriotic Gore? Sounds like a great read.

[Anonymous No.23030827]

>>23030813
Shelby Foote's three volumes is really all you need.

[Anonymous No.23030847]

>>23030813
Why are you interested?

[Anonymous No.23030850]

>>23030847
Wrong side won

[Anonymous No.23030852]

>>23030813
Anyone read Patriotic Gore?

[Anonymous No.23030858]

>>23030847
I want to understand the context because different literary works reference it, or are set before, during or after it. Also, I really like reading about armed conflicts.
>>23030817
>>23030827
I'm ordering them later in the day, thanks!

[Anonymous No.23030881]

>>23030850
NTA
youre hopeless dude, just go read a forum or watch Youtube

[Anonymous No.23031100]

Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography

[Anonymous No.23032074]

>>23030823
It's very good, but it's about literary style, and is not a book to read to learn about the Civil War (although you certainly would learn some things about the war, and America generally, via a read-through).

[Anonymous No.23032101]

>>23030858
>I want to understand the context because different literary works reference it, or are set before, during or after it. Also, I really like reading about armed conflicts.
I have just started reading Hymns of the Republic by S.C. Gwynne -- skipped ahead to the chapter on the mind of U.S. Grant, and the two chapters following that. The writing is first-rate, and gives me confidence that Gwynne is a very good historian. Great analysis of Grant, and in particular his military tactics and strategy. Now I note that this book is only about the last year of the Civil War.

[Anonymous No.23032134]

Melville responded to the Civil War by writing poetry, publishing this book, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, the year after the war had ended. The book is dedicated “to the memory of the three hundred thousand who in the war for the maintenance of the Union fell devotedly under the flag of their fathers.” It offers a lyric history of the war, moving chronologically through battles and other important events.

Here is his poem on the Battle of Shiloh

[Anonymous No.23032167]

War Poetry of the South (1866)

[Anonymous No.23032215]

>>23030881
NTA as well but slavery might have been one reason but not the only reason, states’ rights and Lincoln’s overarching authoritarianism were just as important but history downplays this because society has a white guilt complex.

[Anonymous No.23032228]

>>23030881
Reddit is that way

[Anonymous No.23032239]

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the single most influential literary text in the antislavery cause. It was first published serially in 1851–1852 in the antislavery newspaper the National Era. When it appeared in book form later in 1852, its popularity “had no precedent,” writes critic Elizabeth Ammons. “The book sold more copies than any book except the Bible.”
>In the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible

the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. The sentimental novel to depicted slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome it.

It fueled northern sentiment in support of the war. The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."

Uncle Tom's Cabin exerted an influence equaled by few other novels in history. Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of books in response to the novel)

Of course, white people in the American South were outraged at the novel's release. Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama, being forced to leave town for selling the novel to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing a slave's severed ear). Many Southern writers soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel, most famous were
>The Sword and the Distaff by William Gilmore Simms
>Aunt Phillis's Cabin by Mary Henderson Eastman
>The Planter's Northern Bride by Caroline Lee Hentz,
They tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over childlike enslaved people in a benevolent extended-family-style plantation.

Uncle Tom's Cabin also created great interest in the United Kingdom. The first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies.

Stowe sent a copy of the book to Charles Dickens, who wrote her in response: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is executed."

[Anonymous No.23032267]

Emily Dickinson, “Emancipation”

[Anonymous No.23032284]

Walt Whitman, “Says,” Leaves of Grass (1860)

[Anonymous No.23032456]

Walt Whitman
>As the American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for the Union. Whitman's brother George had joined the 51st New York Infantry Regiment and began sending Whitman detailed letters of the battle front. On December 16, 1862, a listing of fallen and wounded soldiers in the New-York Tribune included "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a reference to his brother George. So, he made his way south immediately to find him, though his wallet was stolen on the way. "Walking all day and night, unable to ride, trying to get information, trying to get access to big people", Whitman later wrote, he eventually found George alive. Whitman, profoundly affected by seeing the wounded soldiers and the heaps of their amputated limbs, left for Washington, D.C., where he volunteered as a nurse in the army hospitals. He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in a New York newspaper in 1863and, 12 years later, in a book called Memoranda During the War. He later worked in the Attorney General's office interviewing former Confederate soldiers for presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary."

On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was captured by Confederate forces in Virginia. On February 24, 1865, George was released from capture and granted a furlough because of his poor health.

In 1865, he wrote his famous "O Captain! My Captain!" on the death of Abraham Lincoln

[Anonymous No.23032509]

>>23030817
>>23030847
What's the next step from Battle Cry of Freedom, if I want to read about the South's internal politics, opposition politics in the North, or how the war affected the West?
Also if I were to travel to the US, and since I'm interested in the American Civil War, would visiting Richmond be worth it?

[Anonymous No.23032603]

>>23032215
>The civil war was about states' rights
>states' rights to do what???
why do people always answer that online?

[Anonymous No.23032617]

>>23030813
I read the journal of Robert E Lee, it was very informative

[Anonymous No.23032623]

>>23032239
Nobody was or is really pro-slavery, who in their right mind in a society of free men would say "yeah, ship some slaves over here lol I could use some farmhands." It's obvious to even the most psychopathic person that it's only going to lead to a dysgenic slave class that you are now burdened with, and for what? 5% extra cotton profits?

The South was tarnished by slavery but it was also a unique "take" on what the United States could have been, and the receptacle of many of the best elements and mentalities that went into the Revolution, while those elements and mentalities were bled out of the North by mammonism, urbanism, and massed industry. The "Southern Agrarian" movement is indication of this. There's a reason that Sam Francis initially went to the Southern tradition to find his "Middle American Radicals" capable of resisting the mammonist North of today, what people now call coastal elites and the managerial state. And there's a reason that Christopher Lasch converged over time on the ideal of an agrarian, yeoman republic, closer to the Founders' intent.

America could have been a great country. Instead we got a new Bank of London governing over a massive hinterland of retards.

[Anonymous No.23032627]

>>23032509
>What's the next step from Battle Cry of Freedom
Freehling, "The Road to Disunion".

[Anonymous No.23033931]

>>23030813
You can read Three Months in the Southern States if you're interested in a non-American's point of view during the war.

[Anonymous No.23035034]

Gone With the Wind

[Anonymous No.23035047]

>>23030813
Interesting book about how the civil war and Lincoln changed the political philosophy of the US. Read it in college.