"I knew that if the feat was accomplished it must be at a most fearful sacrifice of as brave and gallant soldiers as ever engaged in battle"
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A commander confessing dread is rarer - and more revealing - than a commander boasting. Hood’s line is built like a reluctant admission: he “knew” the objective could be taken, but only by paying with the lives of men he is careful to praise as “brave and gallant.” That pairing isn’t just sentiment. It’s a moral shield. By elevating the soldiers’ character, Hood frames the coming losses as tragic necessity rather than miscalculation, shifting attention from the planner to the price-payers.
The key word is “sacrifice,” which smuggles in a kind of sanctification. Soldiers don’t merely die; they are offered up. In a Civil War context - where commanders routinely launched frontal assaults against entrenched positions - the language turns slaughter into duty, and duty into fate. “Feat” and “accomplished” suggest achievement and inevitability; “most fearful” punctures the triumph with foreboding. The sentence performs a balancing act: it anticipates criticism while claiming clarity-eyed responsibility.
Hood’s broader reputation sharpens the subtext. As a Confederate general associated with aggressive attacks and catastrophic casualties (especially in the 1864 Atlanta and Tennessee campaigns), he needed a rhetoric that could acknowledge bloodshed without owning it as error. This is the rhetoric of pre-emptive elegy: admiration in advance, grief in advance, absolution in advance. It works because it sounds like conscience, while quietly functioning as justification.
The key word is “sacrifice,” which smuggles in a kind of sanctification. Soldiers don’t merely die; they are offered up. In a Civil War context - where commanders routinely launched frontal assaults against entrenched positions - the language turns slaughter into duty, and duty into fate. “Feat” and “accomplished” suggest achievement and inevitability; “most fearful” punctures the triumph with foreboding. The sentence performs a balancing act: it anticipates criticism while claiming clarity-eyed responsibility.
Hood’s broader reputation sharpens the subtext. As a Confederate general associated with aggressive attacks and catastrophic casualties (especially in the 1864 Atlanta and Tennessee campaigns), he needed a rhetoric that could acknowledge bloodshed without owning it as error. This is the rhetoric of pre-emptive elegy: admiration in advance, grief in advance, absolution in advance. It works because it sounds like conscience, while quietly functioning as justification.
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| Topic | Military & Soldier |
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