W. H. D. Rouse
speaker
492 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 8 Aug
W. H. D. Rouse’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
it was the confederacy's misfortune that no bold intelligent and lucky general was available to take its place but one thing was certain with hood leading the southerners the pattern of the campaign would change in the ranks
historians have long been in the habit of dealing with the past as if it were nothing more than the story of a small number of great men who moved about shaping the world as they saw fit in reality leaders are not long successful without followers the great mass of the common people who do the work
bear the burdens and suffer the consequences of their leaders policies the civil war offers a unique opportunity to study the common people of america because during that conflict large numbers of people were directly involved in the great events of the times for most of them the war was the single most important event of their lives
consequently they wrote about it in great detail in their letters and diaries and saved these documents after the conflict ended it is therefore possible to see the civil war armies as groups of humans not masses of automata the men who followed sherman johnston and hood in eighteen sixty four left behind information that adds much to an understanding of the campaign
records kept by the federal government show that the typical northern soldier was five feet eight and one quarter inches tall and weighed a hundred and forty three and a half pounds
doubtless the southerners were of a similar stature the same records also indicate that before the war forty eight per cent of the men had been farmers among the confederates the percentage of farmers was more than half relatively few emigrants served in either western army perhaps one fifth to one sixth of the men were of foreign birth more than half the units in sherman's armies were from illinois indiana and ohio
iowa kentucky missouri and wisconsin also furnished large contingents such eastern states as new york connecticut new jersey and pennsylvania were represented but their contributions were small more than two-thirds of the units in the southern army were from tennessee alabama mississippi and georgia other states with significant numbers of troops in the confederate ranks were texas arkansas and louisiana
Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee were represented by units on both sides.
Most of the men in the armies that struggled for Atlanta had volunteered for military service in 1861 or 1862.
By 1864, they had become veterans, inured to the hardships of military life.
Nevertheless, they found the Atlanta Campaign
a severe trial unlike many civil war military operations in which fighting occurred at infrequent intervals the struggle for atlanta was virtually a continuous battle sometimes as at resaca almost all of the opposing forces were engaged at other times action was limited to the desultory firing of skirmishers but only on rare occasions were the soldiers able to escape the sounds and dangers of combat
the weather whether a freak cold wave in mid-june the unusually heavy rains of late may and june or the normal heat of july and august affected every man and often hampered troop movements as well
Frequently, units on the march lost men who could not stand the pace.
The soldiers would drop by the roadside until they had recovered their strength, then move on to overtake their comrades.
For example, the heat on July 12 was so bad that only 50 of the men in an Illinois regiment could keep up on a three-mile march.
when the armies were in fortified positions as they were at kenesaw mountain the men often stretched blankets or brush across the trenches to protect themselves from the sun on rainy days fence rails or rocks in the trenches served to keep soldiers out of the water
clothing was also a problem as a rule sherman's men were better supplied than their opponents but the wool uniforms they wore were unsuited to the hot georgia summer the confederates had almost no new clothing after the campaign began and their uniforms deteriorated rapidly a texan summed up their plight in early june when he wrote in this army one hole in the seat of the breeches indicates a captain two holes a lieutenant
and the seat of the pants all out indicates that the individual is a private rarely did the men of either army have a chance to wash and almost all of them were affected by body lice and other vermin a sense of humor helped them to survive these trials
soldiers who were pinned down in a water-filled trench by enemy fire consoled themselves with the thought that they were at least drowning the lice the federals complained that the retreating southerners infested the country with lice that attacked the advancing northerners other pests included chiggers ticks snakes scorpions flies and ants
Showing 301–320 of 492 · page 16 of 25
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