edited by David M. Smith, with a foreword by Edwin C. Bearss.
John C. Pemberton, the Confederate officer who surrendered Vicksburg to U.S. Grant in July 1863, is not remembered as one of the South's elite generals. When his commander, Joseph E. Johnston, published his wartime memoirs in 1874, he laid the blame for Vicksburg's loss squarely at the feet of Pemberton and Confederate President Jefferson F. Davis. Although Davis eventually had his say in his memoirs, Pemberton never did.
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Or so historians thought. Pemberton had, indeed, penned a response to Johnston, but it was never published and lay forgotten for over 100 years until it finally came to light in a 1995 estate sale in Cincinnati, Ohio. Compelled To Appear In Print allows one of the War's most famous scapegoats to tell his side of a story that history has, until now, seen only through the eyes of his main antagonist.
John C. Pemberton has long suffered for his alleged role in the Vicksburg campaign. This book will force people to reexamine their assessment of Pemberton, offers fresh insight into the collapse of the Confederate high command during the Vicksburg campaign, and raises new questions about the generalship of Joseph E. Johnston and the writing of Confederate military history. Must reading for anyone interested in why Vicksburg fell.
-- Brooks D. Simpson, author of ULYSSES S. GRANT: TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY, 1822-1865
(hardcover, dust jacket)
