Embattled Courage
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
The Civil War was one of the most important events in American history. At the core of this war were the soldiers who fought in it and the value with which they fought with, courage. Courage may have been the focal point but most began to feel betrayed by the War towards the end and their values and ideals changed. Gerald F. Linderman writes about the basis for and stories of the courage that dominated the early parts of the war and how the war's length and harshness altered the values of those involved in his book "Embattled Courage". Linderman delved into a plurality of sources, firsthand accounts, from libraries at major universities and the Library of Congress to obtain a good amount of sources in support of his book. His support of his argument is very credible with his extensive bibliography of materials used to form his ideas about the nature and evolution of courage. His depictions create a convincing case for the role of courage in the Civil War and what happened to it when war became reality, and the future of the value.
Linderman describes courage as the center of a web of moral values that filled the minds of the Civil War soldier. Manliness, Godliness, duty, honor, and knightliness were the other values that Linderman touched upon while defining the early Civil War soldier's mindset...