Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stone‘s River

Kniffin, G. C.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
42K words
Chapters
5

Tags

English Originals World HistoryMilitary Historical ReappraisalMilitary StrategySocial ObservationPortrait GalleryMilitary CommandersFate and FortuneHeroismDocumentary NarrativeTurbulent Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stone's River by G. C. KniffinAuthor: Kniffin, G. C.,Language: English, Class: E456: History: America: Civil War period (1861-1865), Release Date: Apr 18, 2010

Editor's review

This book is one of the important primary sources for studying the Western Theater of the American Civil War, centering on the Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stones River. Writing from the perspective of a participant, Kniffin records the troop movements, battlefield conditions, and soldiers' experiences before and after the battle, offering readers firsthand material for understanding the turning point in the Tennessee campaign from late 1862 to early 1863. Its value lies not in grand strategic analysis but in the authenticity of detail: march routes, camp life, and the chaos and endurance of combat bring readers close to the circumstances of ordinary officers and soldiers. The prose bears the hallmarks of nineteenth-century documentary writing—direct in narration and solid in material—making it suitable as supplementary reading for Civil War history. Readers are advised to consult maps and background materials on the campaign to keep unit designations and geography straight. For military history enthusiasts, students of American history, and readers interested in the writing of war memory, this short volume offers a rare micro-level window.

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Reading tips

  1. Consult background on the Battle of Stones River and the Army of the Cumberland's organization before starting the text
  2. Read alongside maps of the Civil War's Tennessee theater, marking march routes and battle sites
  3. Take notes on details of soldiers' life and battlefield conditions as primary-source material

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a complete general history of the Civil War? No. It focuses on the Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stones River; it is a topical documentary source of limited length and cannot replace a general history. It is best used as supplementary material on a specific campaign, read alongside a general history and maps.
Can I read it without background knowledge of the American Civil War? You can, but it will be difficult. The book involves unit designations, generals' names, and place names, and readers without background knowledge can easily get lost. It is advisable to first grasp the basic outline of the Tennessee campaign in 1862–1863; the book will then read much more smoothly.
What should I keep in mind when reading the original English? This is nineteenth-century English documentary writing, with sentence structures and vocabulary characteristic of its era, and some military terminology requires verification. Annotated e-reading tools are recommended; look up abbreviations and place names as you encounter them rather than aiming for speed.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Kniffin, G. C. Author

G. C. Kniffin is an author about whom very little biographical information is publicly available; his full English name, nationality, and dates of birth and death are not clearly recorded, so his writing can only be understood through the works held in the collection. Two of his works are included, both dealing with military history during the American Civil War. Representative titles include The Third Day at Stone's River and Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stone's River. Judging from their subjects, Kniffin focused on the course of specific battles and the movements of units, organizing his narrative around day-by-day details of the battlefield. His approach emphasizes factual reconstruction and the military process rather than broad background description. Such works appeared mainly in early collections and periodicals, suggesting that his writing first circulated as topical articles or commemorative pieces, intended largely for researchers and enthusiasts interested in Civil War military history. Given the limited material, a full account of his life and writing remains to be verified.