Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer
A Confederate Headquarters Memoir of Longstreet, Lee, and the Army of Northern VirginiaBy Gilbert Moxley Sorrel
Length9h 5m
About this audiobook
Gilbert Moxley Sorrel's Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer is a lucid memoir of military administration, command, and combat during the American Civil War, written from the revealing vantage point of a senior staff officer. Rather than offering a purely chronological battlefield narrative, Sorrel examines the mechanisms of Confederate service: the transmission of orders, relations between commanders and subordinates, logistical pressures, and the practical uncertainties behind celebrated operations. His prose combines professional directness with anecdotal portraiture, placing personalities and decisions within the institutional culture of the Army of Northern Virginia. As a postwar military recollection, the book belongs to the literature of Confederate remembrance while also providing valuable evidence about how participants interpreted leadership, loyalty, and defeat. Sorrel entered Confederate service as a staff officer and became closely associated with General James Longstreet, eventually rising to brigadier general. His experience at headquarters exposed him to high-level strategy as well as the everyday frictions of wartime command, giving the memoir an unusual breadth. Written after decades of reflection, it also reveals the author's effort to preserve the reputations, motives, and professional standards of officers whose careers had been shaped by a lost cause. This volume will reward readers of Civil War history, military biography, and memoir who wish to look beyond conventional battle accounts. Its firsthand testimony, informed criticism, and vivid institutional detail make it especially useful for understanding Confederate command culture and the human realities concealed behind military decisions.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.3 (436)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, StoryGraph
GenreHistory
Length9 hrs 5 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 22, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The True Story of Black Battalions: 6 Civil War Memoirs
2Introduction
3Chapter I Battle of Manassas, July 21, 1861
4Chapter II After Manassas at Centerville
5Chapter III Reminiscences and Horses
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter IV Sketches
7Chapter V Our National Hymn
8Chapter VI The Peninsula and Battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862
9Chapter VII Battle of Seven Pines, May 31, 1862
10Chapter VIII Battles of the Chickahominy, June 26 to July 2, 1862
11Chapter IX Rivalry and More Reminiscenses
12Chapter X Second Battle of Manassas, August 29 and 30, 1862
13Chapter XI Battles of South Mountain (Boonsboro Gap) and Sharpsburg (Antietam), Sept. 14th and 17th, 1862
14Chapter XII Battle of Sharpsburg, Continued
15Chapter XIII Battle of Sharpsburg, Concluded
16Chapter XIV Our Personnel—Visitors
17Chapter XV The Staff
18Chapter XVI Events Preceding Fredericksburg
19Chapter XVII Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862
20Chapter XVIII After Fredericksburg—Reminiscences
21Chapter XIX To South Virginia for Supplies
22Chapter XX Preparing for Gettysburg
23Chapter XXI Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 2, 3, 1863
24Chapter XXII Gettysburg Aftermath
25Chapter XXIII In Virginia Again
26Chapter XXIV Longstreet to Reinforce Bragg
27Chapter XXV Battle of Chickamauga, September 20, 1863
28Chapter XXVI Chattanooga—Incidents
29Chapter XXVII The East Tennessee Campaign, November 1863, to April, 1864
30Chapter XXVIII The East Tennessee Campaign, Continued
31Chapter XXIX At Home in Savannah—Sketches
32Chapter XXX Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864.
33Chapter XXXI Coincidences—Longstreet's Successor
34Chapter XXXII Battles of Spottsylvania C. H., May 10 and 12, and Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864
35Chapter XXXIII The Siege of Petersburg, June, 1864, to March, 1865
36Chapter XXXIV Longstreet's Return—Farewell to Lee
37Appendix
More from Gilbert Moxley Sorrel
A Brief History of IntelligenceMax S. Bennett12h 18m4.6 (6.6K)$29 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
Where Cowards Go to DieBenjamin Sledge8h 42m4.7 (351)$20 · $0.00
RevolutionariesSanjeev Sanyal11h 23m4.6 (2.6K)$29 · $0.00
We Crossed a Bridge and It TrembledWendy Pearlman6h4.6 (5.2K)$24 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
BeyondStephen Walker15h 39m4.6 (3.2K)$33 · $0.00
Kings and PawnsHoward Bryant10h 9m4.6 (678)$29 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Jubal Stone: U.S. Marshal: Blood Trail To Hell: A Western Adventure NovelCasey Nash3h 42m4.6 (3.2K)$18 · $0.00
Fall and RiseMitchell Zuckoff17h 23m4.6 (9.8K)$40 · $0.00
The SurvivorJosef Lewkowicz, Michael Calvin9h 22m4.6 (2.5K)$29 · $0.00
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 (Annotated)Alexis de Tocqueville17h 25m4.6 (1.2K)$2 · $0.00
All the Gallant MenDonald Stratton, Ken Gire5h 55m4.6 (11.8K)$24 · $0.00
You may also like
The Memoirs of General W. T. ShermanWilliam Tecumseh Sherman40h 26m4.3 (4.5K)$1 · $0.00
The Life of Uncle Billy - Memoirs of General W. T. ShermanWilliam Tecumseh Sherman39h 7m4.7 (1.1K)$0.99 · $0.00
The Life of George Washington (Annotated)John Marshall67h 49m4.1 (378)$2 · $0.00
Co. Aytch: Maury Grays First Tennessee Regiment (Civil War Memoir)Samuel R. Watkins9h 21m4.4 (11K)$1 · $0.00
Muhammad AliThomas Hauser7h 54m4.4 (4K)$20 · $0.00
The True Life Stories of the Declaration of Independence SignersCharles Augustus Goodrich18h 48m4.3 (301)$1.99 · $0.00
FormidableElisabeth Griffith17h 14m4.2 (276)$25
Recollections of a Confederate Staff OfficerG. Moxley Sorrel8h 37m4.3 (563)$0.99 · $0.00
Fox's Book of Martyrs (Annotated)John Foxe21h 22m4.5 (1.3K)$2 · $0.00
The Football 100The Athletic18h 59m4.1 (428)$40 · $0.00
Recollections of a Confederate Staff OfficerGilbert Moxley Sorrel9h 39m4.4 (1.4K)$1 · $0.00
Cold Harbor to the CraterGary W. Gallagher, Caroline E. Janney12h 33m3.8 (72)$23
The Complete Works of Thomas Jefferson (Annotated)Thomas Jefferson214h 5m4.6 (104)$0.99 · $0.00
The AlamoJohn Myers Myers7h 13m3.6 (198)$17
"Downright Fighting" (Annotated)Thomas J. Fleming3h 2m$0.99 · $0.00
My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field (Annotated)Charles Carleton Coffin6h 14m3.9 (93)$1.99 · $0.00
General Robert E. Lee: The True Story of the Infamous "Marble Man"John Esten Cooke, Robert E. Lee21h 57m3.8 (87)$1 · $0.00
The Life of a Slave Girl - Women's Slave NarrativesHarriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Mary Prince, Elizabeth Keckley, Kate Drumgoold, Lucy A. Delaney, Margaretta Matilda Odell, Emma and Lloyd Ray, Annie L. Burton, Nina Hill Robinson, Martha Griffith Browne55h 44m4.5 (40)$0.99 · $0.00
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (Vol.1&2) (Annotated)Jacob D. Cox41h 24m$2 · $0.00
The Life of Uncle Billy - Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman (Annotated)William Tecumseh Sherman40h 24m4.7 (36)$1.99 · $0.00