![]() If you go, they’ll go right up the hilltop and take us in the rear. “You cannot withdraw,” Chamberlain’s commander tells him in the novel. Posted at the far left flank of the Union army on a piece of topographically important ground, Chamberlain’s men had to beat back a series of Confederate attacks on July 2, 1863. On the Federal side, Shaara focuses on cavalryman John Buford and, most significantly, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine Infantry. History has not been kind to Lee’s “Old Warhorse.” Shaara’s sympathetic treatment of him in The Killer Angels almost single-handedly resurrected public interest in Longstreet’s controversial career. Longstreet didn’t help his own case after the war by becoming a Republican, accepting various government jobs, and criticizing Lee. Lost Cause advocates, particularly Confederate generals Jubal Early and Fitzhugh Lee, scapegoated Longstreet (and others) for the Southern defeat at Gettysburg-all in an attempt to absolve Lee and preserve his Marble Man status. ![]() Where Shaara deviates significantly from Lost Cause tradition, though, is his choice to make Longstreet a hero of the novel. ![]() In my last post, I began to discuss Michael Shaara’s aesthetic choices for constructing The Killer Angels as he did, and how he adopted a Lost Cause-interpretation of Robert E. ![]()
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