The Killer Angels: Accurate Depiction of Revolutionary Events

I don’t think there was too much opinion in this novel, it was a very long novel but honestly short at the same time, once you get into the book, you want to keep reading to see what is going to happened next. It really did not change my opinion in this subject, I still think the same way. I think they could have written the book a little shorter vs. to doing it very long and just wanting to quit reading due to it having way too much detailing and knowing you still had quite a few more to read. Over all as a book, this is a great book for other American History classes to have to read, there is enough information for them to be able to write a good paper. Chamberlain finds himself and his crew in the middle of this attack, but surprisingly, he survives and ends up being intact. Since the Confederate troops had shot to high, not a lot of damage happened to the Union Batteries. Around sixty percent of the group Pickett was in charge of was lost, or killed. The confederates soon go away, and the battle of Gettysburg comes to its great ending, it was a very graphic war by the reading that I did and possibly bloody, but gladly came to an end. The men get through the first day of the battle with the Union forces hustling around the hills of Gettysburg. They then set up cannons and some other defensive things, Longstreet is nervous about all of these things because he know that Lee plans to attack them instead of swinging the army southeast toward Washington D.C. They also get through the next few days of war, and they come to the morning of July 3 where Chamberlains men are moved to the center of the Union Line, where it was supposed to be quiet and safe for the men. But Lee is still being persistent in attacking his enemy, which is when Longstreet tries to convince Lee that that is a bad idea to attack, that it is going to be a total failure, but of course Lee refuses to accept that. Longstreet has no other choice but to agree with attacking the main part of the place Mr. Pickett is in charge of attacking. While all of these things are going on, it’s when the battle of Gettysburg, it starts when the Confederates start to go against Buford’s men. Buford then decides that he has no choice but to hold off the Confederates until Reynolds has gotten there.

As soon as Reynolds arrives he puts his troops into position to fight and starts to fight the confederates off, only bad thing is that he is then killed. Soon after Reynolds is killed Lee arrives into Gettysburg and finds the battle going hard at each other. Then two of the other generals that were from the confederates arrive and let Lee know that they have gotten together the Union troops, which they had kept arriving in from the south. Lee then tells his men’s to attack back; meanwhile Chamberlains group has begun to go back towards the town of Gettysburg. On the morning of July 1, Lee gets up and realizes Stuart is nowhere to be seen, he immediately starts feeling lost without him due to always needing Stuarts help for everything, Stuart is the one that knows where the Union army is. Lee had no choice but to end up meeting with Longstreet, and let him know what his plans are, Longstreet then tells him that he wants to go southeast so that he can go between the Union army and Washington D.C., he thinks that is the best way to win the battle. Lee did not agree with Longstreet due to him wanting to smash the union aggressively and try to kill everyone quick and end war quickly, even though that is not a great idea. In the town of Gettysburg, General John Buford, the leader of the Union Men, has gone into the town and finds out that there are confederate troops nearby. He then realizes that the two armies that were there may end up fighting against each other in the town of Gettysburg, so he decides to take his two groups of men that were approximately 2,000 men, and hide them all over the top of the hills that were in the same area. John knew that if he had his troops up high, he had a better chance of winning this battle, it was not a 100% sure thing but it was a great start and idea.

Then at some camp that he was at Longstreet ends up meeting with George Pickett and several of the other generals that were very important. This story actually begins on June 29, 1863 when a person that follows people to see what they are doing, had come to Longstreet and told him that he saw the army of the union moving close by, to where they were at. Longstreet was very worried when he heard these news, because General Stuart was supposed to be looking out for the Union army with his men. As soon as Longstreet got told the Union was getting closer to them, his first thought was to quickly move north to prevent the Union from getting closer. All the Confederates decided to move through the mountains that were nearby a town called Gettysburg, and this is where it all starts. I would say that the topic of this book was the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. It was on July 1st, and the year 1863, when the Northern Virginia army or if you want to call them the Confederate army and the Potomac/ Union Army, had fought in one of the biggest American Civil war battle.

It is so detailed in this story, in which men were fighting, the struggles they went through. After the battle had ended, there were roughly around 51,000 men that were wounded, dead, or even end up missing. A lot of the characters that were part of this book were actually real historical people that were alive back then. Some of the people in this novel were the commander of the confederate army General Robert E. Lee, the second in command Longstreet, and one who participated in one of the most famous segments of the Gettysburg Battle, and the fighting on Little Round Top, Union Colonel Joshua L. I think the intended audience was actually for students that are taking an American History class; it has a lot of good information over the Gettysburg Battle. The book The Killer Angels has a great author that I personally think anyone can look up to, his name is Michael Shaara. Michael was an American author of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction; he wrote a great book that I read called For Love of the Game.