Gettysburg

The Tide Turns: An Oral History

Bruce Chadwick

The definitive oral history of the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War that combines vivid first-hand accounts with rich historical narrative.

In late June of 1863, one month after his victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee, head of the Army of Northern Virginia, invaded the North. He would cross the Potomac River, the dividing line between the North and the South, and head towards Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania with the goal of seizing the trains which would then take his army into Philadelphia and perhaps even New York City. He hoped that these victories would force U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to surrender.

As he pushed north, Lee was operating without his cavalry leader, J.E.B. Stuart, whom he had allowed to go on a useless scouting mission. At the same time, the Union army, now led by little known commander George Meade, who replaced General Joe Hooker, with whom Lincoln did not get along, was tracking Lee and his men.

Both sides clashed at Gettysburg, a tiny Pennsylvania farm village on July 1 in what would be a three day battle that would change the course of the war.

The battle would reveal the mettle of the unheralded Meade, and would also call into question General Lee’s reputation as a legendary commander when he unleashed the ill planned and ill prepared Pickett’s Charge on the third and final day of the conflict. The Union troops fought hard and repelled the Confederates for three consecutive days. The battle proved costly to both sides. Some 50,000 men were killed across the battlefield at little Round Top. Big Round Top, the Wheat Field and Devil’s Den. The defeated Lee’s army would never again invade the North.

After so much bloodshed, President Lincoln's history-making and eloquent Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln, delivered on Nov. 19 to honor the dead, came to embody the essence of the war. "None there, North or South, died in vain," Lincoln said. The address, not even three minutes long, is considered the finest speech ever delivered buy an American President and has been memorized by generations ever since.

Though the war would drag on for two more long years, the Union army grew in size and boldness after Gettysburg, with new leadership that would include Ulysses S. Grant, a noted change in the dynamic between North and South.

Using letters, diaries, journals, newspaper articles, and other written sources, Bruce Chadwick has crafted another masterful oral history. Skillfully combining traditional historic narrative with the in-the-moment ethos of an oral history, Gettysburg: the Tide Turns brings this iconic battle to fresh and vivid life.

Bruce Chadwick is a former journalist and author of eight works of history, including The First American Army, George Washington's War, The General and Mrs. Washington, Brother Against Brother, Two American Presidents, Traveling the Underground Railroad and The Reel Civil War. He lectures in American history at Rutgers University and also teaches writing at New Jersey City University.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Bruce Chadwick

“Mr. Chadwick has achieved the effect of a living—and momentous—dialogye with history by carefully selecting quotes from dozens of participants in that fraught time and skillfully binding them together. His swift, absorbing, wholly coherent narrative gives a sense of immediacy to the travails of those who thirsted for a fight, and those who groped after peace, as the nation moved toward a terrible test of arms.” The Wall Street Journal

“The genius of Bruce Chadwick’s oral history of the road to Ft. Sumter is that it reveals the emotions, the uncertainties, the fears, the rumors, the excitement, the hopes, the pride, the courage, and the animosities of the men and women involved in the Civil War.” New York Journal of Books

"Highly recommended. A gripping narrative of the critical year of 1858 and the nation's slide toward disunion and war...Readers seeking to understand how individuals are agents of historical change will find Chadwick's account of the failed leadership of President James Buchanan especially compelling." G. Kurt Piehler, author of Remembering War the American Way

"Chadwick's excellent history shows how the issue of slavery came crashing into the professional, public, and private lives of many Americans...Chadwick offers a fascinating premise: that James Buchanan, far from being a passive spectator, played a major role in the drama of his time. 1858 is a welcome addition to scholarship of the most volatile period of American history." Frank Cucurullo, Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial