Lesley J. Gordon earned her BA with High Honors from the College of William and Mary, and her MA and PhD in American History from the University of Georgia. She presently holds the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at the University of Alabama. Her publications include General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and their Wives (Oxford University Press, 2001), Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), and A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2014). She has published numerous articles, book chapters and book reviews, and her public talks have been featured on C-Span. She was editor of the academic journal Civil War History (2010-2015), and is President of the Society for Civil War History (2022-2024). Her current book project explores accusations of cowardice and their lasting effects on Civil War regiments.
Rather than reciting the accolades of a famed fighting unit, "A Broken Regiment: The Sixteenth Connecticut’s Civil War" focuses on a single group of Northern men struggling in wartime, grappling over questions of cowardice and heroism, patriotism and purpose, and ultimately the “true” history their military experience. This particular unit, once called by their lieutenant colonel “an unfortunate regiment,” began their Civil War service by breaking under enfilade fire at the battle of Antietam, and essentially ended it by suffering capture at Plymouth, North Carolina in 1864. Some 400 members of its ranks became inmates at the Confederacy’s infamous Andersonville prison. Competing stories of who they were, why they endured what they did and how they should be remembered began before the war ended. By the turn of the century, the “unfortunate regiment” became the “Brave Sixteenth,” individual memories and accounts altered to fit a more triumphant, heroic narrative of the war. Gordon’s "A Broken Regiment" uncovers the fascinating tale of this hapless group of men, but further probes the processes and often conflicting debates over a unit’s shared memory and identity among northern soldiers.