Product Description

In this compelling dual biography, Mark Perry narrates the parallel lives of Union Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and Confederate Colonel William Oates. Chamberlain's and Oates's troops clashed at Little Round Top in a legendary contest that decided the Battle of Gettysburg, opening the door to Northern victory in the Civil War. It also set each man on a path to national prominence and a lifetime of political service. Drawing on a vast mine of documents, including letters, wartime journals, and political speeches, Mark Perry brings these men and their times vividly to life. Tracking Oates, the maverick Alabama frontiersman, and the scholarly Chamberlain of Maine, Conceived in Liberty explores the inexorable drive toward war amidst the forces of Western expansion, the failing cotton economy, religious revivalism, abolitionism, and the growing differences between North and South. In the postwar years, their hard-won battle glory unexpectedly brought Oates and Chamberlain the moral authority and political influence to shape America's destiny: Reconstruction policy, the party system, and, not least of all, race relations. It is this story--of two ordinary men given an extraordinary chance to act on their beliefs at a crucial moment in the life of our country--that makes Conceived in Liberty not just a Civil War book, but a portrait of American possibility in a tumultuous century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #836648 in Books
• Published on: 1997-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

Amazon.com
The popularity of Michael Shaara's wonderful Civil War novel The Killer Angels left many readers hungry for more information about its real-life protagonist, Joshua Chamberlain, who bravely led the 20th Maine in holding the Union's extreme left flank at Little Round Top on the second day of Gettysburg. This dual biography introduces a new figure, nearly as compelling: William Oates, the man who commanded the Alabama troops opposing Chamberlain's bluecoats. Their parallel lives, captured on these pages, reveal the country's 19th-century sectionalism and allow Perry to write a chronicle of the Civil War and its aftermath through the prism of two engaging personalities.

Chamberlain's story is fairly well known. He was a Bowdoin College professor who left his post to serve in the army, fought well, and went on to a successful postwar political career as the governor of Maine. Oates, like Chamberlain, was the son of a farmer who got caught up in his nation's defining conflict, and then helped it inch along to recovery years later as a pragmatic governor and member of Congress. Perry refuses to canonize either--Chamberlain was an overbearing husband and Oates stuffed ballot boxes--yet his treatment of these two admirable but flawed men provides a refreshing new way to read about the Civil War. --John J. Miller

From Library Journal
Perry's (A Fire in Zion, LJ 8/94) latest work presents the life and times of two men who met in battle at Little Round Top on Gettysburg's second day. Perry offers a compelling look at the lives of those officers?how they differed (U.S. officer Chamberlain was a romantic; C.S.A officer Oates was a pragmatist) and how they were similar: contrary to the impression left by Michael Shaara's Killer Angels (LJ 9/1/74) and the movie Gettysburg, neither Oates nor Chamberlain had much use for the idea of black suffrage. While the section relating to the war is somewhat weak, the account of the two officers' pre- and postwar careers is strong and gripping. That, and a look at the prevalent trends of the time that shaped Oates and Chamberlain, makes this a worthwhile purchase and enjoyable reading for Civil War buffs. Recommended for all public libraries.?Robert A. Curtis, Taylor Memorial P.L., Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Focusing on two Civil War heroes who commanded opposing regiments at Gettysburg, this dual biography forges an expansive, dramatic, highly readable history of the generation that came of age during that fateful conflict. Perry, who writes about history and military and foreign affairs (A Fire in Zion: How the Israelis and the Palestinians Made Peace, 1994, etc.), chooses his subjects well. Chamberlain, a devout and introspective Maine college professor, and Oates, a brawling Alabama roustabout, waged the battle for Little Round Top--``the single most important struggle of the single most important battle of America's most important and bloodiest war.'' Despite obvious differences in character, remarkable similarities mark the separate paths that crossed briefly at Gettysburg. Both were self-made men forced by family hardship to provide their own educations; both rode their war records to political office, serving as governors of their respective states; both failed to achieve their highest political ambitions--to serve in the US Senate. The experience of Oates, especially, illustrates the fluctuating fortunes of each side during the long conflict. He fought in nearly every prominent battle of the eastern campaign, from the highs of Stonewall Jackson's stunning Shenandoah Valley victories to the fateful Gettysburg defeat, where his failure to capture Little Round Top is posited as the war's turning point. Perry examines deeply the prevailing trends that shaped the politics of Oates and Chamberlain before the war (a survey that describes the rise of charismatic religion, the beginning of abolitionism, the antebellum movements for women's rights and temperance) and the politics of Reconstruction, which both men helped shape after it. Just when historical sideroads and blow-by-blow battle depictions threaten to swamp readers, Perry veers back to Oates and Chamberlain, the twin Everymen of his satisfying, wide-lens perspective on history. (16 b&w photos not seen) (History Book Club main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.