{"id":7397,"date":"2012-06-10T08:41:15","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T13:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=7397"},"modified":"2012-06-10T09:14:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T14:14:00","slug":"the-killer-angels-by-michael-shaara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/the-killer-angels-by-michael-shaara\/","title":{"rendered":"The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>June, 1863. \u00a0In a bid to destroy the Army of the Potomac, Robert E. Lee invades Pennsylvania with an army of 70,000 men. \u00a0Using the mountains to screen his movements, he advances toward Harrisburg, fully expecting to secure a victory that will end the American Civil War.<\/p>\n

But two weeks into the campaign, Stuart’s cavalry still hasn’t reported back, leaving the Confederate army blind. \u00a0Deep in enemy territory, with reports of the Union advance beginning to trickle in, Lee moves his forces to converge on a small town named Gettysburg.<\/p>\n

In the titanic clash that follows, friend will fight against brother, generals will knowingly send thousands of men to their deaths, and the fate of the United States of America will lie in the hands of farmers and mountain men, immigrants, West Point classmates, and a New England professor.<\/p>\n

This book is awesome.\u00a0 <\/em>Epic, in the best and truest sense of the word. \u00a0I’m not a civil war buff, but it reduced me to tears. \u00a0The scope is tremendous, and yet at the same time the characters feel like real people.<\/p>\n

For some, like Chamberlain, the war is about slavery and equality–something that disturbs him when he comes across a black man for the first time. \u00a0For others, it’s about states’ rights and self-government. \u00a0But for most everybody else–including Robert E. Lee–it’s about a myriad of other things, like honor, duty to country, boredom, a desire to prove one’s manhood, and a hunger to be part of something greater.<\/p>\n

What’s remarkable is how so many good people, who more often than not respect the opposing side and hold them in the highest regard, end up getting swept into such a horrific and bloody battle. \u00a0No one, especially the generals, have the power to prevent any of it–all they can do is leave it in the hands of God. \u00a0And the tragedy of it all is summed up so perfectly in the film rendition of this book, when General Armistead reaches the high-water mark of the Confederacy<\/a> and falls, only to hear that his friend and classmate on the Union side, General Hancock, has fallen too (skip to 23:15):<\/p>\n