General Robert F. Hoke: Lee's Modest Warrior - Softcover

Barefoot, Daniel W.

3.5

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780895872371: General Robert F. Hoke: Lee's Modest Warrior

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0895872374 ISBN 13: 9780895872371

Publisher: Blair, 2001

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He was the youngest major general in the Confederacy. He fought in the first battle of the Civil War and was still fighting after Appomattox. In between, he led what U. S. Grant later called the worst drubbing I ever got, at Cold Harbor. He was even rumored to be Lee's hand-picked successor as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.Yet General Robert F. Hoke was never the subject of a full-length biography until Daniel W. Barefoot came along. In 1996, John F. Blair, Publisher, released Barefoot's General Robert F. Hoke: Lee's Modest Warrior to great acclaim. In April 2001, Blair will proudly release a paperback edition of this important Civil War biography.Barefoot argues that his subject was ignored by biographers for so long because of the greatest of Hoke's qualities of character - his sincere modesty. Hoke refused to use his fame from the war as a tool for political or material gain. He even refused the governorship of North Carolina when it was virtually handed to him. Instead, he quietly went back to work, hitching his war-horse to a plow. A leader in the rebuilding of North Carolina's economy, he did not talk about the war or even attend veterans' reunions, insisting that Southerners needed to put the war behind them and move on.Hoke's father died when the boy was only seven. Robert studied briefly at the Kentucky Military Institute, then returned home to take responsibility for the family businesses at the tender age of 16. When the war began, Hoke received a second lieutenant's commission. Within three years, he was a major general. Barefoot recounts Hoke's meteoric rise, as well as the skill and daring in battle that brought it about. He provides grippingaccounts of the Seven Days, Second Manassas, Antietam, and Chancellorsville. His account of the Confederacy's last stand against Sherman has been called among the best from a Confederate perspective.

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About the Author:

Like Hoke, Daniel W. Barefoot's roots are in Lincoln County, North Carolina. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law, Barefoot now serves his state's 44th District in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He is the author of four volumes in the Touring the Backroads (tm) series.

From Publishers Weekly:

A biography that stresses its subject's modesty may be implying that he or she has a good deal to be modest about. Perhaps it was his modesty that made Robert F. Hoke (1837-1912) the last major Confederate general to warrant a full-length biography, but the fact is that Hoke established himself as one of the finest subordinate commanders in the Confederacy's eastern theater. Though not a professional soldier--he'd managed his family's manufacturing businesses before the war--Hoke served admirably with the Army of Northern Virginia as a regimental and brigade commander. Transferred to his home state of North Carolina after Gettysburg, he mounted a series of small but successful operations against Union forces. When he returned to Virginia in 1864 as a division commander, he came into his own, handling his command with skill and success in the siege of Petersburg. In the war's last months, Hoke made a final stand against Sherman's army. Barefoot's (Turning the Backwoods of North Carolina's Lower Coast) account of this latter campaign is among the best from a Confederate perspective. His seemingly almost uncritical admiration for Hoke, however, leads him to exaggerate both the general's importance and his talents. Nevertheless, Barefoot establishes Hoke as a general who improved with increased responsibilities, even in desperate circumstances. This quality, unusual in any war, justifies this near-hagiographic but exhaustively researched and informative study. Illustrations.

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