The American Civil War & Reconstruction
Whistlestop Bookshop’s first store opened in Gettysburg in 1985. Eventually, over 19 years there, our Civil War section grew to be three large wall cases. A disproportionate percentage of it, naturally, was about the battle of Gettysburg and biographies of those who fought there. In addition to this book selling experience, my southern upbringing and Army family life created a lifelong interest in the War Between the States and all of its complexities. It is an understandable national obsession, considering how the first half of our nation’s history contributed to its ferocity, and the second half of our history has been the struggle to live with and understand the consequences.
At the Right Hand of Longstreet: Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer
At the Right Hand of Longstreet: Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer
As a young man in Georgia, G. Moxley Sorrel enlisted in a cavalry unit even before the Civil War erupted, so eager was he to serve his home state. During the war, as an aide-de-camp on Brigadier General James Longstreet’s staff he fought in many battles, including those at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. He was at Longstreet’s side when Longstreet was struck down in 1864. Sorrel’s “rough jottings from memory” provide vivid and detailed descriptions of many of the war’s chief participants and events. His military career was cut short when he was shot in the lungs at Hatcher’s Run. Although he survived, the war ended before he could return to duty. In his declining years he wrote, “For my part, when the time comes to cross the river like the others, I shall be found asking at the gates above, ‘Where is the Army of Northern Virginia? For there I make my camp.’”