West Pointers and the Civil War, Wayne WeiSiang Hsieh
West Pointers and the Civil War, Wayne WeiSiang Hsieh
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West Pointers and the Civil War
The Old Army in War and Peace

Author: Wayne WeiSiang Hsieh

Narrator: Stephen Hoye

Unabridged: 8 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/15/2009

Synopsis

The task for those in charge of professionalizing the military in the first half of the nineteenth century and transforming it from a militialed army to a highly disciplined standing army was a difficult job. Americans had long supported a tradition of militia and distrusted professional soldiers. However, by the time of the Civil War, the high command positions in the Union army and the nascent army of the Confederacy were filled with graduates of West Point, who had served in the Mexican War and who had been taught in the European military tradition. The sorts of campaigns the armies would wage, the rules of those engagements, the understandings of victory, all were in a sense predetermined by the military training and experience of the professionals called in to organize and lead the opposing sides. In examining the role of the institutional military in the Civil War, Hsieh makes use of manuals, reports, letters housed at West Point, newspapers, diaries, and numerous secondary sources.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Hans on December 12, 2021

Dr. Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh presents here a case study of how traditionalist, "old Army" mentalities baked into the officer corps of both Union and Confederate armies directly affected the American Civil War. Likening the "old army" mentality to an almost elite, aristocratic conservatism, he argues th......more

Goodreads review by Eric on June 12, 2019

This was somewhat interesting to start, as I was led to believe that I would learn how the Civil War caused, in large part, our nation's Army to transition from "Old Army" to "New Army." There was a small amount of this, but it was mostly a litany of Civil War battles with their players, and some ti......more

Goodreads review by Penelope on October 27, 2019

Started off slow and rather over detailed about the history of military stategy (for me, personally) , but about halfway in they got to the civil war information I was looking for. Then it was terrific!......more

Goodreads review by Tripp on October 15, 2013

Hsieh's book resets the Civil War into the context of its time rather than as a means of understanding the wars or times that follow. His focus is on the Army as an institution. The Civil War split the Army as well as the country and he argues it is the nature of the Old Army that defined how the wa......more

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