Michael ShaaraÆs 1993 book The Killer Angels inspired a miniseries about the Battle of Gettysburg and won the author a Pulitzer Prize because of his even-handed and skillful treatment of the battle -û considered by almost all Civil War scholars to be a turning point in the war û- as well as of the war itself and the place it holds in American history. This paper examines some of the moral issues that Shaara raises and how these are related to ideals of leadership extolled and personified those who lead the Battle of Gettysburg, especially George Meade and Joshua Chamberlain.
Shaara neither attempts to vilify nor to excuse the officers or soldiers of the Confederacy (or the Union) but looks at them instead as individuals, many of whom were astonishingly brave and committed to their causes. Shaara allows us to see that although the war was in some ways about slavery and in some ways about the growing divide between the agrarian culture of the South as opposed to the industrial culture of the North, it was also about two groups of soldiers fighting for the survival of their homeland, their families, their farms, the places where they had played as children.
The book manages -û as do very few military histories -û to show the intricate ways in which every war is about a grand cause and also about a very intimate, personal equation of loyalty. While never diminishing the terribleness of slavery, ShaaraÆs book manages to depoliticize the war in a remarkable way so that we are given a series of microbiographies in courage. Shaara also shows us how loyalty, courage and leadership work in much the same way on both sides of a battle.
The book focuses on what are arguably the three most important days of the Civil War, July 1-3, 1863, providing complex characterizations of a number of the key figures at the Battle of Gettysburg, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, Hancock, Meade and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain û who is in ...