The Killer Angels

Michael Shaara’s work portrays the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point in the American Civil War, and examines the conflict on many levels. The author explores the motivations of the leaders and their soldiers, and contrasts the fortunes of the poorly supplied but buoyant Confederacy, and the superbly equipped but demoralised Union. At the end of the battle, it is the professional Union commanders who have won—fighting a battle that maximised the value of the terrain and firepower. The idealists and romantics of the book, like the Confederate General Lee, succeed only in wasting away their own forces by ‘following their hearts’.