Virginia's wilderness: investigating the landscape of war
| dc.contributor | Elmore, Bartow J. | |
| dc.contributor | Giggie, John Michael | |
| dc.contributor | Gordon, Lesley J. | |
| dc.contributor | Kohl, Lawrence Frederick | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Rable, George C. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Petty, Adam | |
| dc.contributor.other | University of Alabama Tuscaloosa | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-07-11T16:49:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-07-11T16:49:09Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018 | |
| dc.description | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | This work reconsiders the myth surrounding the Wilderness, a forest in Virginia, which played host to three Civil War campaigns. This Wilderness myth has several components. First, the Wilderness was a battlefield unlike any other and created unique battle conditions. Second, these conditions favored the Confederates who tried to trap the Federals in the Wilderness. Third, there was a mystique surrounding the Wilderness, which associated it with woe, gloom, death, destruction, hell, fire, and the supernatural among other things. While evocative, this traditional interpretation reflects a distorted understanding of the forest as well as what actually took place within its bounds. This dissertation argues that the Wilderness myth was the product of hindsight and of a desire to explain away Union failures and highlight Robert E. Lee’s generalship. While the Wilderness truly was a very difficult battlefield that created trying combat conditions, many of the claims of Wilderness exceptionalism are unfounded, and consequently, the Wilderness did not give the Confederates a special advantage, nor did they try to trap the Union army there. The Wilderness’s threatening mystique, however, did set it apart from any other battlefield of the war. | en_US |
| dc.format.extent | 242 p. | |
| dc.format.medium | electronic | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.other | u0015_0000001_0002944 | |
| dc.identifier.other | Petty_alatus_0004D_13401 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/3629 | |
| dc.language | English | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Alabama Libraries | |
| dc.relation.hasversion | born digital | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | The University of Alabama Electronic Theses and Dissertations | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | The University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collections | |
| dc.rights | All rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated. | en_US |
| dc.subject | American history | |
| dc.title | Virginia's wilderness: investigating the landscape of war | en_US |
| dc.type | thesis | |
| dc.type | text | |
| etdms.degree.department | University of Alabama. Department of History | |
| etdms.degree.discipline | History | |
| etdms.degree.grantor | The University of Alabama | |
| etdms.degree.level | doctoral | |
| etdms.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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