Study Guide for Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage
Prof. Grimsley
History 582.01
Autumn Quarter 2001
Introduction
In the introduction, Linderman writes, “Every war begins as one war and becomes two, those watched by civilians and that fought by soldiers.” What is the significance of this bifurcation? On what group of soldiers does Linderman’s study focus? Why these and not other groups?
Part One. Courage’s War
Chapter 1. Courage at the Core
1. Linderman speaks of a “constellation of values, with courage at the center.” What were these values? What was their relationship to each other?
Chapter 2. Courage from Battlefield to the Hospital
2. According to Linderman, “Courage had for Civil War soldiers a narrow, rigid, and powerful meaning: heroic action undertaken without fear.” In what ways does this view of courage differ from courage as understood in the twentieth century?
3. Why was the test of courage more difficult for officers than enlisted men?
4. What fate(s) awaited men whose courage failed them?
5. What was “hospital courage,” and why did a Sanitary Commission worker consider it consider it more difficult than showing battlefield courage?
Chapter 3. Courage as the Cement of Armies
6. What was the most important function of courage?
7. In what ways was the “egalitarian spirit” of the age a danger to sound military discipline?
8. What were the three concentric spheres of military discipline? In which sphere did discipline function best? Least? In what sphere did courage play the largest role?
9. How did officers secure the obedience of their men?
10. According to Linderman, executions created as many disciplinary problems as they solved. Why?
Chapter 4. The Uses of Courage
11. Why did Civil War soldiers believe that showing courage actually improved their chance of survival?
12. “Courage was the primary bond between armies.” In what ways did this bond manifest itself? What was its significance?
13. Linderman believes that Civil War soldiers felt but were suspicious of what J. Glenn Gray termed the “delight in destruction” that he observed during World War Two. Why were they suspicious?
Chapter 5. Courage and Civilian Society
14. Why did Americans in the 1860s assume that one could not be virtuous in courage and unvirtuous in other aspects of life?
15. What was the relationship between courage and religious faith?
Part Two. A Perilous Education
Chapter 6. Unexpected Adversaries
16. What was the first shock—the first unexpected reality—of military life?
17. How did most soldiers feel about camp life?
18. What effect did the reality of the battlefield have on soldiers?
Chapter 7. Shovel and Sword
19. What does Linderman mean when he writes, “the very nature of combat did not fit, could not be made to fit, within the framework of soldier expectations”?
20. Why did Civil War soldiers initially disdain the use of field fortifications? When and why did this attitude fade?
Chapter 8. Unraveling Convictions
21. What convictions, and in what order, did soldiers abandon as the war progressed?
Chapter 9. The New Severity
22. What does Linderman mean by “the new severity”?
Chapter 10. A Warfare of Terror
23. Linderman argues that Civil War soldiers gradually moved from a stance of reluctance to take anyone’s property to a willingness to steal or destroy enemy property on a large scale. What were the milestones involved in this movement?
Chapter 11. Unraveling Ties
24. As the war progressed, Civil War soldiers grew distant from the civilian societies they left behind. What were the sources of their alienation from civilians?
Chapter 12. Disillusionment
25. What were the main factors that contributed to the soldiers’ feelings of disillusionment by 1864?
26. What significance does Linderman assign to the reenlistment of 140,000 Union soldiers in early 1864?
Epilogue
27. What was “the hibernation”?
28. What was “the revival”? When and why did it occur?
29. “How are the militarization of social thought and the purification of memory, forces of great consequence in the 1890s, to be explained?”