Gettysburg Requiem
The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates
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- USD 13.99
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- USD 13.99
Descripción editorial
William C. Oates is best remembered as the Confederate officer defeated at Gettysburg's Little Round Top, losing a golden opportunity to turn the Union's flank and win the battle--and perhaps the war. Now, Glenn W. LaFantasie--bestselling author of Twilight at Little Round Top--has written a gripping biography of Oates.
Oates was no moonlight-and-magnolias Southerner, as LaFantasie shows. Raised in the hard-scrabble Wiregrass Country of Alabama, he ran away from home as a teenager, roamed through Louisiana and Texas--where he took up card sharking--and finally returned to Alabama, to pull himself up by his bootstraps and become a respected attorney. During the war, he rose to the rank of colonel, served under Stonewall Jackson and Lee, was wounded six times and lost an arm. Returning home, he launched a successful political career, becoming a seven-term congressman and ultimately governor. LaFantasie shows how, for Oates, the war never really ended--he remained devoted to the Lost Cause, and spent the rest of his life waging the political battles of Reconstruction.
Here then is a richly evocative story of Southern life before, during, and after the Civil War, based on first-time and exclusive access of family papers and never-before-seen archives.
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Leading Alabama's 15th regiment in the final charge up Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, was the supreme moment for Confederate colonel Oates, though he retreated after meeting bloody resistance. LaFantasie (Twilight at Little Round Top) does not claim his subject is undeservedly neglected, but he finds enough other highlights to justify this biography of the hot-tempered, brave, sexist and implacably racist 19th-century Southern white male. Born poor, Oates managed to educate himself well enough to pass the bar. After secession, he recruited a company and went to war, fighting with great courage and perhaps too little judgment, returning home in 1864 when he lost an arm. Despite Alabama's struggling postwar economy, Oates's legal practice made him wealthy with suspicious rapidity. An ambitious politician, he spent seven terms in Congress, served as governor during the 1890s and as a general in the Spanish-American War. LaFantasie spends too much time reminding readers that abusing blacks, oppressing women and exploiting the poor were acceptable in Oates's circle, and he is positively clairvoyant in his ability to read Oates's thoughts and describe his emotional reactions. Though most readers will agree Oates deserves his obscurity, his life still makes for an engaging biography.
