GENERAL JOHN H. WINDER C.S.A by Blakey, Arch Fredric

University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL, 1990. first US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 x 9, FINE/FINE CONDITION, XVI, 275 pages, illus, notes, bibliog., index........................................................ History seldom loves a loser, especially a loser who dies in disgrace. John Henry Winder (1800-1865) had served in the U.S. Army for almost forty years before resigning in 1861 to join the Confederacy. C.S.A. Brigadier General Winder spent the last four years of his life trying to honor both the ethics of a distinguished career army officer and his duty: to command Richmond and to oversee all Union prisoners of war east of the Mississippi...................................................... The Richmond posting earned Winder the contempt of Confederate civilians, who titled him the power-crazed czar of Richmond. As warden, he won notoriety in the North as the "beast" of Andersonville Prison. Both North and South vilified Winder for decades after his death, and, outside of Civil War experts, most historians and popular histories have reinforced this image of Winder as a tyrant at best, a sadistic monster at worst.Fred Blakey proposes to set the record straight in this first complete biography of the enigmatic Winder, the first work to examine Winder's antebellum career and the first to examine wartime events in Richmond and the Confederate prisons from Winder's viewpoint.