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Books > Humanities > History > American history > 1800 to 1900
When Union and Confederate forces squared off along Bull Run on
July 21, 1861, the Federals expected this first major military
campaign would bring an early end to the Civil War. But when
Confederate troops launched a strong counterattack, both sides
realized the war would be longer and costlier than anticipated.
First Bull Run, or First Manassas, set the stage for four years of
bloody conflict that forever changed the political, social, and
economic fabric of the nation. It also introduced the commanders,
tactics, and weaponry that would define the American way of war
through the turn of the twentieth century.
This crucial campaign receives its most complete and comprehensive
treatment in Edward G. Longacre's "The Early Morning of War." A
magisterial work by a veteran historian, "The Early Morning of War"
blends narrative and analysis to convey the full scope of the
campaign of First Bull Run--its drama and suspense as well as its
practical and tactical underpinnings and ramifications. Also woven
throughout are biographical sketches detailing the backgrounds and
personalities of the leading commanders and other actors in the
unfolding conflict.
Longacre has combed previously unpublished primary sources,
including correspondence, diaries, and memoirs of more than four
hundred participants and observers, from ranking commanders to
common soldiers and civilians affected by the fighting. In weighing
all the evidence, Longacre finds correctives to long-held theories
about campaign strategy and battle tactics and questions sacrosanct
beliefs--such as whether the Manassas Gap Railroad was essential to
the Confederate victory. Longacre shears away the myths and
persuasively examines the long-term repercussions of the Union's
defeat at Bull Run, while analyzing whether the Confederates really
had a chance of ending the war in July 1861 by seizing Washington,
D.C.
Brilliant moves, avoidable blunders, accidents, historical forces,
personal foibles: all are within Longacre's compass in this deftly
written work that is sure to become the standard history of the
first, critical campaign of the Civil War.
Dillon J. Carroll's Invisible Wounds examines the effects of
military service, particularly combat, on the psyches and emotional
well-being of Civil War soldiers-Black and white, North and South.
Soldiers faced harsh military discipline, arduous marches, poor
rations, debilitating diseases, and the terror of battle, all of
which took a severe psychological toll. While mental collapses
sometimes occurred during the war, the emotional damage soldiers
incurred more often became apparent in the postwar years, when it
manifested itself in disturbing and self-destructive behavior.
Carroll explores the dynamic between the families of mentally ill
veterans and the superintendents of insane asylums, as well as
between those superintendents and doctors in the nascent field of
neurology, who increasingly believed the central nervous system or
cultural and social factors caused mental illness. Invisible Wounds
is a sweeping reevaluation of the mental damage inflicted by the
nation's most tragic conflict.
During the American Civil War, thousands of citizens in the Deep
South remained loyal to the United States. Though often overlooked,
they possessed broad symbolic importance and occupied an outsized
place in the strategic thinking and public discourse of both the
Union and the Confederacy. In True Blue, Clayton J. Butler
investigates the lives of white Unionists in three Confederate
states, revealing who they were, why and how they took their
Unionist stand, and what happened to them as a result. He focuses
on three Union regiments recruited from among the white residents
of the Deep South-individuals who passed the highest bar of
Unionism by enlisting in the United States Army to fight with the
First Louisiana Cavalry, First Alabama Cavalry, and Thirteenth
Tennessee Union Cavalry. Northerners and southerners alike thought
a considerable amount about Deep South Unionism throughout the war,
often projecting their hopes and apprehensions onto these embattled
dissenters. For both, the significance of these Unionists hinged on
the role they would play in the postwar future. To northerners,
they represented the tangible nucleus of national loyalty within
the rebelling states on which to build Reconstruction policies. To
Confederates, they represented traitors to the political ideals of
their would-be nation and, as the war went on, to the white race,
making them at times a target for vicious reprisal. Unionists'
wartime allegiance proved a touchstone during the political chaos
and realignment of Reconstruction, a period when many of these
veterans played a key role both as elected officials and as a
pivotal voting bloc. In the end, white Unionists proved willing to
ally with African Americans during the war to save the Union but
unwilling to protect or advance Black civil rights afterward,
revealing the character of Unionism during the era as a whole.
The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is the site of one
of America's most famous armed struggles, but the events
surrounding Custer's defeat there in 1876 are only the beginning of
the story. As park custodians, American Indians, and others have
contested how the site should be preserved and interpreted for
posterity, the Little Bighorn has turned into a battlefield in more
ways than one. In Stricken Field, one of America's foremost
military historians offers the first comprehensive history of the
site and its administration in more than half a century.Jerome A.
Greene has produced a compelling account of one of the West's most
hallowed and controversial attractions, beginning with the battle
itself and ending with the establishment of an American Indian
memorial early in the twenty-first century. Chronicling successive
efforts of the War Department and the National Park Service to
oversee the site, Greene describes the principal issues that have
confounded its managers, from battle observances and memorials to
ongoing maintenance, visitor access, and public use. Stricken Field
is a cautionary tale. Greene elucidates the conflict between the
Park Service's dual mission to provide public access while
preserving the integrity of a historical resource. He also traces
the complex events surrounding the site, including Indian protests
in the 1970s and 1980s that ultimately contributed to the 2003
dedication of a monument finally recognizing the Lakotas, Northern
Cheyennes, and other American Indians who fought there.
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