The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle | 
 enlarge | Author: Margaret S. Creighton
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 607336
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0465014577
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780465014576
ASIN: 0465014577
Publication Date: July 3, 2006
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Product Description
"A wonderful 'backstage' story of human beings caught up in the greatest battle fought in the Western Hemisphere." (Ken Burns) In the summer of 1863, as Union and Confederate armies converged on southern Pennsylvania, the town of Gettysburg found itself thrust onto the center stage of war. The three days of fighting that ensued decisively turned the tide of the Civil War. In The Colors of Courage, Margaret Creighton narrates the tale of this crucial battle from the viewpoint of three unsung groups--women, immigrants, and African Americans--and reveals how wide the conflict's dimensions were. A historian with a superb flair for storytelling, Creighton draws on memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspapers to bring to life the individuals at the heart of her narrative. The Colors of Courage is a stunningly fluid work of original history-one that redefines the Civil War's most remarkable battle. "Exciting, intelligent and provocative." (Chicago Tribune) "The Colors of Courage is a must for anyone interested in the battle of Gettysburg and social history of the Civil War period." (Civil War News)
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Re-thinking courage February 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A lesson that comes through in Margaret Creighton's excellent The Colors of Courage is one, you'd think, we wouldn't need to learn: that the courage displayed by soldiers on the battlefield doesn't exhaust the meaning of the word. Curiously, though, it's a point that our culture seems to resist. Although we use the word "courage" in a number of different contexts, the template for our thinking about what it means to be courageous almost always is the battlefield with all its conventional associations.
But as Creighton points out, using the battle of Gettysburg as her focus point, courage comes in many "colors," and when it comes to the Civil War, we're only now beginning to discover what some of them are. Certainly, men facing one another on the battlefield display courage (although, as Gerald Linderman pointed out in his Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War, what counted as courage changed as the war progressed). But other kinds of courage as documented in Creighton's book include
--the courage of the civilian women at Gburg who protected their families (many of the town's men being absent) during the battle, negotiated with Confederates to avoid trouble, and tended the thousands of wounded before and after the three days;
--the courage of the African American residents in Gburg and southern Pennsylvania who had to contend with slave catchers that accompanied Lee's invading army, federal authorities who refused to let them bear arms against the invaders, and the gradual romanticization of the Civil War as a conflict in which "both sides fought for what they thought was right" that minimized the horror of slavery;
--the courage of German-Americans (derogatorily referred to as "Dutch"), who were seen by native-born Americans who viewed them as cowardly soldiers, lazy civilians, and buffoons everywhere. The heavily German-American 11th Corps, which (largely through no fault of its own) had been routed at Chancellorsville by Stonewall Jackson's surprise flank slam, were derided for their entirely honorable actions at Gburg simply because they were "Dutch";
--and the courage of generals such as Oliver Otis Howard and Carl Schurz, who both refused to subordinate moral to physical courage, and recognized that the stakes involved in putting an end to slavery were much more important than those offered by "the vogue of rugged, tough, and secular masculinity" (p. 234) too often then and now identified as courage.
A masterful book that opens new vistas on both the battle of Gettysburg and the meaning of the Civil War.
 Interesting sidelights to Gettysburg battle, but bizarre frame of reference May 15, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Despite its colorless title, The Colors of Courage is an interesting and revealing book that's well worth the reading. One learns much about native (Yankee) prejudice against German immigrants (allegedly stupid, clownish and cowardly), what happened in the town of Gettysburg during the three days of battle, and the experience of northern blacks, especially those near the Mason-Dixon line (only 7 miles away). Much fascinating material has been uncovered by fruitful research. The style of cool appraisal of historical fact though often gives way to one in which the author's paternalistic bigheartedness is apparent. Refreshingly, the author rejects the usual attempts at evoking sympathy or a misguided evenhandedness for the Confederacy and its soldiers, and presents the rebel army in all the horrific racism that was its soul and raison d'etre.
It is distressing though that much of the book is given over to a cloying gender self-promotion. Claims are made for the courageous self-sacrifice of Gettysburg womanhood, but little real courage is really described. The only incident that stands out in my mind is the fact that some Gettysburg women prepared meals for the Confederate soldiers who occupied the town during the battle, soldiers who, given the opportunity, would have killed their husbands, sons, brothers and fathers. These meals were prepared under some duress, of course, but when one woman courageously refuses she goes unpunished. But what could one expect from a gender that, in a 19th century rural backwater, suffered all the quasi-slavery and humiliations imposed by unchallenged male superiority -- not a fertile nursery for courage. The author notes many episodes of women's lives in Gettysburg, episodes that made me cringe with shame for these poor put-upon women. But amazingly these episodes are not presented as shameful at all, as if that would diminish these women as proud bearers of the title of womanhood. While chattel slavery is forthrightly despised, in this book gender slavery gets off scot-free! There is hardly a word that points the finger critically at the male superiority that so diminished the lives of these women. It's the elephant in the parlor -- overwhelmingly present, but unmentioned.
Despite this bizarre frame of reference, The Colors of Courage presents aspects of the war and the society that lived in its midst that are well worth discovering and whose uncovering justifies the obvious effort devoted to bringing these sidelights of the war to view.
Well researched, yet biased. February 4, 2006
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
Though Mrs. Creighton's text is well researched and factual, I believe it to be a bit extreme. I find that most claims made in the text are nothing more than generalizations. Yes, Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, however very few Union soldiers were fighting for this cause. Most Federal troops were fighting to preserve the Union, and quite a few were appaled over the idea of losing their lives to free the slaves. Additionaly, the majority of the Confederates namely Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson were not slave owners, and were simply fighting for state's rights. In fact, Lee asked Confederate President Jefferson Davis to incorporate black units into the Confederate Army. This was rejected, but by early 1865 the Confederate Army consisted of a few black units.
Secondly, although the citizens of Gettysburg suffered for a few weeks I tend to feel very little remorse. What Creighton believed to be major infractions against the Confederate Army was but mere childsplay to what Union General William T. Sherman dubbed "total war". In his infamous march to the sea(Atlanta to Savannah), his men robbed, killed, and humiliated southern citizens in an attempt to make the South lose it's fighting spirit. So please forgive me if I do not share in the citizen's of Pennsylvania's remorse for their two weeks of terror. Please do not get me wrong, I have nothing but the highest respect for those effected by the Civil War(fighting men and citizens alike). Yet, I believe it to be somewhat offensive to not even mention towns like Charleston, South Carolina and Vicksburg,Mississippi that were shelled and in the case of Vicksburg, starved into submission.
In summation, I believed Mrs. Creighton's book to be both informative and a good read. Please forgive me if I have offended anyone, and I will be more than happy to discuss this as well.
Pickett's Charge fought on land owned by a Free Black! WOW! December 12, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book tells us, not about the battle, but what went on in the town of Gettysburg itself. Having lived there for 5 years, I was steeped in the folklore that the soldiers ran back and forth throught the streets of the town for three days, and with the exception of Jennie Wade (story: warned to go to the basement, courageously continued making bread) the townspeople were unscathed and John Burns (story: an irascible old coot), no townspeople participated. I had never heard of the Brian Family!
I was not without resources. I was the director of the public library. I met Michael Shaara, Bill Frassinito, Col. Sheads, Charlie Glatfelter, and a host of lesser and unknown historians, Park Service tested guides, civil war buffs and re-enacters. Perhaps I never asked Shaara (the one time I met him) and the others whom I saw more often, tacitly understanding that this battle was a white male thing, about these things. Maybe I accepted the script because the Gettysburg as I knew it was a quiet town, didn't get involved, and maybe didn't in 1863.
How could all that fighting occur in the town, without an effect, as defined by the local folklore surrounding the battle? Could the soldiers really be so courtly that they put aside their survival needs as not to disrupt to the town's civilians?
There are people who know this battle in great detail. They can recite (and argue about) the numbers of blue and gray who died in the wheat field, the peach orchard the round tops, etc. I never heard them talk about how the soldiers got fed (did they think they had were 3 squares at a mess hall?)
Creighton gives us not only the narrartive but also the answers as to how this history got burried.
Excellent work! Bravo Margaret Creighton!
Yes, I agree, but on the other hand . . . October 15, 2005
I enjoyed Margaret Creighton's book. From far off Yarmouth, Maine, she has thrown her nets far and wide and hauled in a lot of historical flotsam and jetsam that might have escaped other scholars, in service of putting together another of her finely tuned historical studies of the underserved in American history. Here we find out more about the immigrant populations who comprised the Union Army, as well as the actual lives of the women of Gettysburg and the black citizens of the surrounding area. These are the shadow puppets of history, the folks who you might never have learned about by visiting the national park nor studying your social studies book.
You probably heard more about Mamie Eisenhower's residence at Gettysburg than you did about the women who were drafted into battle, whether they were forced to nurse, to cook, to slave, or to fight. Why is this? Partially, as Professor Creighton explains, these women were told, and they believed it, that their sacrifices did not matter. And that, perhaps, there was even something a little bit shameful about what they did, particularly if they were required to assist the invading Confederate army. Of the ravishment and rape that undoubtedly occurred, we know little but can surmise much, thanks to Creighton's research and the guarded testimony of forty Gettysburg women, mostly farmwives. Creighton looks at the nuance behind every statement, searching out human reality wherever it crops it head. "A middle-aged woman on a farm opened her door to a soldier on July second. By the way he was dressed, she was sure that he was a Louisiana Tiger. He told her that `General Lee had said that they should ask for food and if they would not give it they should demand it and that was what he was going to do.' She fed him ham. He ate some of it and then insulted her. The bread, he complained, was not fit to eat, `Madam,' he said, `I can go into any cabin in Virginia, poor and desolate as it is, from Winchester to Richmond, with not a fence standing, and get a better dinner than this.'" Creighton returns to this anecdote to eke out perceptions on the nature of resistance, and the implacability of the bad ham (Gettysburg women had to be fine actresses, for otherwise the Tiger in question might have guessed that the farmwife had fine chickens hidden with their beaks taped.)
As Creighton acknowledges, the presence of women on the Gettysburg battlefield is currently a contested site for scholars, particular feminist scholars, and she acknowledges that a host of others are trawling the same fields. The material remains of interest, and does indeed widen our picture of what happened that summer long ago, but I wondered, after finishing the book, if perhaps she might have written three separate books, for there's a sense in which the struggles of the immigrant soldiers, the Gettysburg women, and the freed, escaped or citizen slaves are experiences of very different registers and don't mesh together especially well except under cloudy language of the deracinated and ignored, and although Creighton tries her best, she can only link them this vaguely for the first two hundred times, then after that her rhetoric grows tiresome.
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