The Antebellum Press: Setting the Stage for Civil War reveals the critical role of journalism in the years leading up to America's deadliest conflict by exploring the events that foreshadowed and, in some ways, contributed directly to the outbreak of war. This collection of scholarly essays traces how the national press influenced and shaped America's path towards warfare. Major challenges faced by American newspapers prior to secession and war are explored, including: the economic development of the press; technology and its influence on the press; major editors and reporters (North and South) and the role of partisanship; and the central debate over slavery in the future of an expanding nation. A clear narrative of institutional, political, and cultural tensions between 1820 and 1861 is presented through the contributors' use of primary sources. In this way, the reader is offered contemporary perspectives that provide unique insights into which local or national issues were pivotal to the writers whose words informed and influenced the people of the time. As a scholarly work written by educators, this volume is an essential text for both upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates who study the American Civil War, journalism, print and media culture, and mass communication history.

Organized in the fall of 1862, the 125th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was commanded by the aggressive and ambitious Colonel Emerson Opdycke, a citizen-soldier with no military experience who rose from lieutenant to brevet major general. Part of the Army of the Cumberland, the 125th first saw combat at Chickamauga. Charging into Dyer's cornfield to blunt a rebel breakthrough, the outnumbered Buckeyes pressed forward and, despite heavy casualties, drove the enemy back, buying time for the fractured Union army to rally. Impressed by the heroic charge by an untested regiment, Union General Thomas Wood labeled them "Opdycke's Tigers." After losing a third of their number at Chickamauga, the 125th fought engagements across Tennessee and Georgia during 1864, and took part in the decisive battles at Franklin and Nashville. Drawing on both primary sources and recent scholarship, this is the first full-length history of the regiment in more than 120 years.

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War: The definitive Civil War classic as Sam wanted it revised complete with his edits, new perspectives, authoritative text, and images of his changes.
"Company Aytch" has reigned as one of the most memorable and honest depictions of the American Civil War since its original publication in 1882. Sam R. Watkins's firsthand account of life as a Confederate soldier eloquently captured the realities of war, the humor and pathos of soldiering, and the tragic, historic events in which he participated. Although there have been other versions of "Company Aytch" published, this is the first with new material and revisions by Sam Watkins himself. Featuring over forty images, including his own pencil-marked edits, this volume combines the ageless text with Sam's intended revisions a treasure for lovers of history, academia, and Civil War enthusiasts alike.

In Jubal Early: Robert E. Lee's Bad Old Man, a new critical biography of Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early, Civil War historian B.F. Cooling III takes a fresh look at one of the most fascinating, idiosyncratic characters in the pantheon of Confederate heroes and villains. Dubbed by Robert E. Lee as his "bad old man" because of his demeanor, Early was also Lee's chosen instrument to attack and capture Washington as well as defend the Shenandoah Valley granary in the summer and fall of 1864. Neither cornered nor snared by Union opponents, Early came closest of any Confederate general to capturing Washington, ending Lincoln's presidency, and forever changing the fate of the Civil War and American history. His failure to grapple with this moment of historical immortality and emerge victorious bespeaks as much his own foibles as the counter-efforts of the enemy, the effects of weather and the shortcomings of his army. From the pinnacle of success, Jubal Early descended to the trough of defeat within three months when opponent General Philip Sheridan resoundingly defeated him in the Valley campaign of 1864. Jubal Early famously exhibited a harder, less gallant personal as a leading Confederate practitioner of "hard" or destructive war, a tactic usually ascribed to Union generals Hunter, Sheridan, and Sherman. An extortionist of Yankee capital in northern towns in Pennsylvania and Maryland-typically in the form of tribute-Early also became forever associated with the wanton destruction of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, as well as Congressman Thaddeus Stevens private commerical ironworks, and the private dwellings of Maryland governor Augustus Bradford and then Postmaster General Montgomery Blair. How war hardened a crabbed, arthritically hobbled but brilliantly pragmatic soldier and lawyer offers one of the most fascinating puzzles of personality in Civil War history. One of the most alluring yet repellent figures of Southern Confederate history, Jubal Early would devolve from the ideal prewar constitutional unionist to the postwar personification of the unreconstructed rebel and progenitor of the "lost cause" explanation for the demise of the Confederacy's experiment in rebellion or independence. This critical study explains how one of Virginia's loyal sons came through war and peace to garner a unique position in the Confederacy's pantheon of heroes-and the Union's cabal of military villains. Jubal Early: Robert E. Lee's Bad Old Man will appeal to anyone interested in Civil War history and Confederate history.

Following the suggestion of the historian Peter Parish, these essays probe "the edges" of slavery and the sectional conflict. The authors seek to recover forgotten stories, exceptional cases and contested identities to reveal the forces that shaped America, in the era of "the Long Civil War," c.1830-1877. Offering an unparalleled scope, from the internal politics of southern households to trans-Atlantic propaganda battles, these essays address the fluidity and negotiability of racial and gendered identities, of criminal and transgressive behaviors, of contingent, shifting loyalties and of the hopes of freedom that found expression in refugee camps, court rooms and literary works.

In 1864, Union soldier Charles George described a charge into battle by General Phil Sheridan: "Such a picture of earnestness and determination I never saw as he showed as he came in sight of the battle field . . . What a scene for a painter!" These words proved prophetic, as Sheridan's desperate ride provided the subject for numerous paintings and etchings as well as songs and poetry. George was not alone in thinking of art in the midst of combat; the significance of the issues under contention, the brutal intensity of the fighting, and the staggering number of casualties combined to form a tragedy so profound that some could not help but view it through an aesthetic lens, to see the war as a concert of death. It is hardly surprising that art influenced the perception and interpretation of the war given the intrinsic role that the arts played in the lives of antebellum Americans. Nor is it surprising that literature, music, and the visual arts were permanently altered by such an emotional and material catastrophe. In The Arts and Culture of the American Civil War, an interdisciplinary team of scholars explores the way the arts - theatre, music, fiction, poetry, painting, architecture, and dance - were influenced by the war as well as the unique ways that art functioned during and immediately following the war. Included are discussions of familiar topics (such as Ambrose Bierce, Peter Rothermel, and minstrelsy) with less-studied subjects (soldiers and dance, epistolary songs). The collection as a whole sheds light on the role of race, class, and gender in the production and consumption of the arts for soldiers and civilians at this time; it also draws attention to the ways that art shaped - and was shaped by - veterans long after the war.

Exploring how the face and body of America were imagined both physically and metaphorically during the Civil War, this book shows how visual iconography affected changes in postbellum gendered and racialised identifications of the nation.

Following the Battle of Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee was in full retreat, from the battle lines south of Nashville to the Tennessee River at the Alabama state line. Ferocious engagements broke out along the way as Hood's small rearguard, harried by Federal Cavalry brigades, fought a 10-day running battle over 100 miles of impoverished countryside during one of the worst winters on record.

This is the story of 150 of the most adventurous scouts, gold prospectors, gunslingers, buffalo hunters, and Civil War veterans of both sides-they may have been the deadliest collection of shooters to ever hit the trail. This is the most detailed work ever produced on the obscure legend of the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road Prospecting Expedition in the Montana Territory-the product of multi-year research across the country, and visits to the three battlefields and expedition route of over 500 miles-an event that impacted the Little Bighorn in 1876. Numerous legends of the West rode on the expedition, later playing roles in the Great Sioux War of 1876. Their adversaries now were the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne-some of the greatest light cavalry to ever gallop over the North American continent. And watching their every move were Sitting Bull, Gall, Hump, Crazy Horse, and a renegade chief named Inkpaduta, ready to strike.

The US Military Academy trained officers for both sides in the American Civil War. The Commandant of Cadets played an important role in this education by overseeing the Corps of Cadets' drills and tactical instruction. Historians criticize the tactical program as antiquated because it did not consider the impact of rifled weapons, the unique American terrain, and suitability of Napoleonic tactics and strategy. Much of this blame is due to confusion between strategy and tactics and differences between minor tactics and grand tactics. The Army assigned sixteen officers as commandants between 1817 to 1864. Their impact on cadets and tactical education varied based on the amount of time as commandant and their attitude about the assignment. These commandants made changes to the program, developed new textbooks, and taught many cadets who became Civil War generals. Historians have generally ignored the roles of the commandants despite their major influence on cadets. Readers who want a better understanding of antebellum military training will appreciate discussions about preparing cadets to become officers. The biographies of the forgotten men who influenced future officers present an account of the commandant's contributions to the Academy, notable graduates, and other military service.

Although she was one of the leading thinkers and writers of the women's suffrage movement, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) was largely written out of history. After working in collaboration with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and after serving as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, Gage developed increasingly radical views on feminism, religious liberty, and equality under the law. She eventually parted ways with the suffrage movement and founded the more progressive Woman's National Liberal Union. In Witness to Rebellion, award-winning author Peter Svenson presents and examines Gage's last significant work, a scrapbook that collects newspaper clippings about the Civil War from the 1860s onward. Providing relevant contextual information, Svenson formats the content of the scrapbook to transform this important artifact into a readable work that offers a new and engaging perspective on nineteenth-century American history. Gage's scrapbook sheds light on her thinking, both as a feminist and a Union patriot, as she lived through the bloodshed and upheaval of the war years and their aftermath. Witness to Rebellion is a valuable resource not only for scholars of history, women's studies, and material culture, but also for general readers with interest in women's suffrage and the Civil War.

Providing a fresh look at a crucial aspect of the American Civil War, this new study explores the day-to-day life of people in the Confederate States of America as they struggled to cope with a crisis that spared no one, military or civilian. Mobley touches on the experiences of everyone on the home front-white and black, male and female, rich and poor, young and old, native and foreign born. He looks at health, agriculture, industry, transportation, refugees city life, religion, education, culture families, personal relationships, and public welfare. In so doing, he offers his perspective on how much the will of the people contributed to the final defeat of the Southern cause. Although no single experience was common to all Southerners, a great many suffered poverty, dislocation, and heartbreak. For African Americans, however, the war brought liberation from slavery and the promise of a new life. White women, too, saw their lives transformed as wartime challenges gave them new responsibilities and experiences. Mobley explains how the Confederate military draft, heavy taxes, and restrictions on personal freedoms led to widespread dissatisfaction and cries for peace among Southern folk. He describes the Confederacy as a region of divided loyalties, where pro-Union and pro-Confederate neighbors sometimes clashed violently. This readable, one-volume account of life behind the lines will prove particularly useful for students of the conflict.

The untold history of the multiracial making of the border between Canada and the United States. Often described as the longest undefended border in the world, the Canada-United States border was born in blood, conflict, and uncertainty. At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, they had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had created an expansive international border that restricted movement. The vision that seemed so clear in the minds of diplomats and politicians was never so well-defined on the ground. As A Line of Blood and Dirt argues, both countries built their border across Indigenous lands using hunger, violence, and coercion to displace existing communities and to disrupt their ideas of territory and belonging. Drawing on oral histories, map visualizations, and archival sources, Benjamin Hoy reveals the role Indigenous people played in the development of the international boundary, as well as the impact the border had on Indigenous people, European settlers, Chinese migrants, and African Americans. Unable to prevent movement at the border's physical location for over a century, Canada and the United States instead found ways to project fear across international lines. Bringing together the histories of tribes, immigration, economics, and the relationship of neighboring nations, A Line of Blood and Dirt offers a new history of Indigenous peoples and the borderland.

Originally published in 1967 this book tells the full story of the breach between the United States and Great Britain and the pivotal role played by Benjamin Franklin in both the declaration of independence and the American Treaty. Accessibly written, and richly illustrated with half-tones and maps, this is an introductory text which will be of use to both A Level students and as an introductory text for under-graduates.

Published here for the first time, the Civil War combat memoir of Col. James Taylor Holmes of the 52nd Ohio Volunteers presents a richly detailed first-hand account the June 1864 Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Written in 1915, Holmes' insightful narrative, with original hand-drawn diagrams, differs on key points from the accepted scholarship on troop movements and positions at Kennesaw, and questions the legitimacy of a battlefield monument. An extensive introduction and annotations by historian Mark A. Smith provide a brief yet comprehensive overview of the battle and places Holmes' document in historical context.

The 96th Pennsylvania Volunteers infantry regiment was formed in 1861-its ranks filled by nearly 1,200 Irish and German immigrants from Schuylkill County responding to Lincoln's call for troops. The men saw action for three years with the Army of the Potomac's VI Corps, participating in engagements at Gaines' Mill, Crampton's Gap, Salem Church and Spotsylvania. Drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs and other accounts, this comprehensive history documents their combat service from the point of view of the rank-and-file soldier, along with their views on the war, slavery, emancipation and politics.

This book explores the remarkable partnership of Joseph and Harriet Hawley, a married couple from Connecticut whose lives were transformed by overlapping experiences in the American Civil War era. When Joseph became the colonel of the 7th Connecticut Infantry Regiment in 1862, Harriet ignored family advice and social convention, and travelled to Union military headquarters at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where Joseph's regiment was stationed. From that bold beginning, she spent the next three years as a visitor at field hospitals, a teacher at freedman's schools, a wartime journalist, a ward nurse, and her husband's informal advisor and publicist. Moving in and around the scenes of military action, she lived and worked in spaces usually reserved for men and took on responsibilities that implicitly challenged conventional understandings of women's physical and emotional dependency. While Joseph struggled for recognition and promotion in the brutally competitive environment of Union military politics, Harriet shrewdly used her own personal contacts with power brokers in Hartford and Washington to protect his interests and those of his men. And as the terrible realities of the Civil War pushed them both to the brink of physical and emotional collapse, Harriet and Joseph remained committed to the cause and found ways to sustain their devotion to both Union and emancipation in the very worst moments of the conflict.

The Civil War experience of the 10th Minnesota Volunteer Regiment resembles that of few other regiments. On the day the 10th Minnesota first mustered at Fort Snelling in August 1862, the Sioux Indian War broke out in western Minnesota. Soldiers who signed up to fight the Confederacy instead found themselves marching to defend the frontier and spending a year fighting two campaigns against the Sioux. When the 10th finally deployed south to fight the Confederate Army, it engaged in a series of skirmishes in the West, including battles at Tupelo and Nashville, and suffered many casualties. This chronicle merges the individual experiences of Union soldiers, Native Americans, and Confederates to offer a compelling, panoramic portrait of the 10th Minnesota during the Sioux Uprising and the Civil War, revealing the unwavering resolve of this remarkable regiment.

Daughters of Israel, Daughters of the South: Southern Jewish Women and Identity in the Antebellum and Civil War South examines southern Jewish womanhood during the Antebellum and Civil War Eras. This study finds that in the Protestant South southern Jewish women created and maintained unique American Jewish identities through their efforts in education, writing, religious observance, paid and unpaid labour, and relationships with whites and African-American slaves This book examines how these women creatively fought proselytisation, challenged anti- Semitism, maintained a distinctive southern Judaism, promoted their own status and legitimacy as southerners, and worked diligently as Confederate ambassadors.

During the Civil War, each side accused the other of mistreating prisoners of war. Today, most historians believe there was systemic and deliberate mistreatment of POWs by one or both sides yet many base their conclusions on anecdotal evidence, much of it from postwar writings. Drawing on prisoner diaries and Union Army documents (some newly discovered), the author presents a fresh and detailed study of supposed prisoner mistreatment at Fort Delaware-one of the largest Union prison camps-and draws some surprising conclusions, some of which have implications for the entire Union prison camp system.

During the Chickamauga Campaign, General David Stanley's two Union cavalry divisions battled Nathan Bedford Forrest's and Joseph Wheeler's two cavalry corps in some of the most difficult terrain for mounted operations in the Civil War. The Federal cavalry divisions, commanded by George Crook and Edward McCook, secured the flanks on the Union advance on Chattanooga, secured the crossing of the Tennessee River, and then pushed into enemy-held territory. Cavalry fights at Alpine and La Fayette marked the early part of the campaign, but the battle exploded on September 18 as Col. Robert Minty and Col. John Wilder held back a determined attack by Confederate infantry, reminiscent of Buford's actions at Gettysburg. Due to Stanley's illness, Robert Mitchell assumed command of the cavalry during the battle along Chickamauga Creek, with notable cavalry actions at Glass Mill, Cooper's Gap, and securing the flanks after the battle. Soon thereafter, the Union cavalry fought Wheeler's mounted forces raiding through Tennessee before the battle at Farmington sent the Confederate horsemen back across the Tennessee River. The contributions of the Union cavalry during this campaign are often overlooked, but the troopers fought through conditions so dusty they could hardly see the horse in front of them while boldly leading the infantry in the second costliest battle in the Civil War.

Ship Island was used as a French base of operations for Gulf Coast maneuvers and later, during the War of 1812, by the British as a launching point for the disastrous Battle of New Orleans. But most memorably, Ship Island served as a Federal prison under the command of Union Major-General Benjamin F. Butler during the Civil War. This volume traces this fascinating and somewhat sinister history of Ship Island, which lies about 12 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. After discussing the impact that early Southern abandonment of the island ultimately had on the course of the war, it describes the unhealthy atmosphere and inhumane treatment of prisoners, which earned Butler the nickname of ""The Beast."" The main focus of the book, however, is a series of rosters of the men imprisoned. Organized first by the state in which the soldier enlisted and then by the company in which he served, entries are listed alphabetically by last name and include information such as beginning rank; date and place of enlistment; date and place of capture; physical characteristics; and, where possible, the fate and postwar occupation of the prisoner. A list of Union soldiers who died while serving on garrison duty is also provided, as well as information about the citizens of the Confederacy who were imprisoned on Ship Island.

This book offers a unique firsthand account of the experiences of a teenage officer in America's Civil War. Second Lieutenant Thomas James Howell was only seventeen years old when he received his commission to serve the 3rd New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Featuring sixty-five letters that Howell wrote home to his family, this book describes soldier life in the Army of the Potomac during the spring and summer of 1862, focusing on Howell's experiences during Major General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. Howell's letters tell the story of a young man coming of age in the army. He wrote to his mother and siblings about the particular challenges he faced in seeking to earn the respect of both the men he commanded and his superiors. Unfortunately, however, the young lieutenant's life was cut short in his very first combat experience when he was struck in the abdomen by a cannonball and nearly torn in two during the Battle of Gaines' Mill. This book records Howell's tragic story, and it traces his distinctive perception of the Civil War as a vehicle enabling him to transition into manhood and to prove his masculinity.

Dan Showalter, a Pennsylvanian transplant to the Yosemite Valley, was Speaker Pro Tem of the California State Assembly at the outbreak of the Civil War and the exemplar of treason in the Far West among the pro-Union press. He gained notoriety as the survivor of California's last political duel, for his role in the display of a Confederate flag in Sacramento, and for his imprisonment after an armed confrontation with Union troops. Escaping to Texas, he distinguished himself in the Confederate service in naval battles and in pursuit of Comanche raiders. As commander the 4th Arizona Cavalry, he helped recapture the Rio Grande Valley from the Union and defended Brownsville against a combined Union and Mexican force. Refusing to surrender at war's end, he fled to Mexico where he died of a wound sustained in a drunken bar fight at age 35.