Author | Michael Shaara
Rating | 10
Recently, I’ve been reviewing many books on the Second World War. Now we’re moving back to the 1860s, to the American Civil War. Regarding this war, and the Battle of Gettysburg specifically, a novel you can’t miss is The Killer Angels. Never before has there been a historical book quite as special and stunning to me.
Why do I say it’s special? In his book, Shaara recreates the famous battle between Union and Confederate forces at Gettysburg–the turning point in the war. But he doesn’t merely summarize it; nor does he create a fictional character and tell it from their point of view. Instead, he dives into the perspectives of the leading figures–generals and colonels. It’s a fresh point of view for many readers, including me.
Lee, Longstreet, Chamberlain, Buford, Pickett, Armistead… Any of these names sound familiar to you? They were all famous leaders of either the Union or Confederate armies, but through Shaara’s book, we get to feel like we were them, like we were there on the fields that day. The actions of these generals determined the outcome of the arguably most important battle of the war, but through The Killer Angels I was able to empathize with them, feel the struggles of both sides. I especially liked Longstreet–the distant general, second-hand to Lee, opposed the battle from the beginning but in the end could do nothing to prevent the disaster from happening. He is “one of the first of the new soldiers, the cold-eyed men who have sensed the birth of the new war of machines”, as opposed to Lee (and most of the other important leaders in the Confederate), who values honor above everything. They are still gentlemen of old. That is one of the major reasons why the South lost that battle (and as a result, the war)–too many of them were still in the past, believing in massed infantry assaults instead of the tactical defensive warfare that Longstreet advocated. Consequently, Lee ordered Pickett’s Charge, an attack that cost the Confederates over half their men and forced them to retreat. The Killer Angels highlights something I hadn’t considered–the Civil War was the turning point between old and new methods of warfare.
It was a war–a deadly one–but that didn’t mean the North and the South’s people completely loathed one another. In fact, it was the opposite–they were all so similar in their troubles and ideals, except perhaps the idea of slavery. A significant example of this is the tragedy of Armistead and Hancock; best friends before the war, but pitted against each other in the end because of it.
Never before had there been such a war. Such devastation, such bloodiness. The Battle of Gettysburg was a battle beyond imagination. But from Shaara’s simple yet profoundly moving book, we get to experience what it was like as a killer angel.
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