"I will always be somebody." This assertion, a startling one from a nineteenth-century woman, drove the life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only American woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. President Andrew Johnson issued the award in 1865 in recognition of the incomparable medical service Walker rendered during the Civil War. Yet few people today know anything about the woman so well-known--even notorious--in her own lifetime. Kaminski shares a different way of looking at the Civil War, through the eyes of a woman confident she could make a contribution equal to that of any man. This part of the story takes readers into the political cauldron of the nation's capital in wartime, where Walker was a familiar if notorious figure. Mary Walker's relentless pursuit of gender and racial equality is key to understanding her commitment to a Union victory in the Civil War. Her role in the women's suffrage movement became controversial and the US Army stripped Walker of her medal, only to have the medal reinstated in 1977.

When Chicago lawyer Thomas Osborn set out to form a Union regiment in the days following the attack on Fort Sumter, he could not have known it was the beginning of a 6000-mile journey that would end at Appomattox Courthouse four years later. With assistance from Governor Richard Yates, the 39th Illinois Infantry-"The Yates Phalanx"-enlisted young men from Chicago, its modern-day suburbs, and small towns of northern and central Illinois. While most Illinois regiments fought in the west, the 39th marched through the Shenandoah Valley to fight Stonewall Jackson, to Charleston Harbor for the Second Battle of Fort Sumter and to Richmond for the year-long siege at Petersburg. This book chronicles day-to-day life in the regiment, the myriad factors that determined its path, and the battles fought by the Chicagoans-including two Medal of Honor recipients-who fired some of the last shots before the Confederate surrender.

Two aging Civil War veterans mourned the death of their sons at a joint funeral in Knoxville National Cemetery. One, a cavalry general, had fought for the Union. The other had served as surgeon/major of a Confederate cavalry regiment. They met for the first time at the graves of their sons-two army lieutenants and University of Tennessee graduates, killed together in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Newspaper accounts presented the encounter as an example of reconciliation between North and South. This book recounts the meeting of two families from opposing sides of the war-both rooted in East Tennessee, a region harshly divided by the conflict-placing their story in the context of America's reconciliation narrative at the end of the 19th century.

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aTogether, the essays collected by Logue and Barton provide a vivid portrait of the social, political, economic, and cultural struggles of Civil War veterans.a
--"The North Carolina Historical Review"

"A marvelous collection of essays, The Civil War Veteran provides an indispensable introduction to the problems the veterans faced and the contributions that they made. The bibliography alone is an invaluable resource."
--Gaines M. Foster, author of "Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South"

"Never before has such a wide-ranging and excellent collection of readings on Civil War veterans been assembled in one place. A must have book for anyone interested in this topic."
--Donald R. Shaffer, author of "After The Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans"

"An excellent collection of essays on a largely neglected topic. . . . The editors have done a thorough job of considering the pivotal issues, selecting broad yet focused themes, and gathering the writings that best illustrate those issues and themes."
--Daniel Sutherland, University of Arkansas

The Civil War Veteran presents a profound but often troubling story of the postwar experiences of Union and Confederate Civil War veterans. Most ex-soldiers and their neighbors readjusted smoothly. However, many arrived home with or developed serious problems; poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, and other manifestations of post traumatic stress syndrome, such as flashbacks and paranoia, plagued these veterans. Black veterans in particular suffered a particularly cruel fate: they fought with distinction and for theirfreedom, but postwar racism obliterated recognition of their wartime contributions.

Despite these hardships, veterans found some help from federal and state governments, through the establishment of a national pension system and soldiers' homes. Yet veterans did not passively accept this assistance--some influenced and created policy in public office, while others joined together in veterans' organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic to fight for their rights and to shape the collective memory of the Civil War. As the number of veterans from wars in the Middle East rapidly increases, the stories in the pages of The Civil War Veteran give us valuable perspective on the challenges of readjustment for ex-soldiers and American society.

Elite Confederate Women in the American Civil War is a wide-ranging primary source collection that offers a compelling selection of upper-class, white Confederate women's voices from archives across the South. From the prison diary of Mary Terry to Elizabeth Baker Crozier's eyewitness account of the siege of Knoxville, this volume introduces lesser-known voices of the war to show the interconnections between the home front and the front lines, and how the war shaped the lives of women and households across the South. This collection challenges students to engage with the role of first-person narratives in history and to reconsider the roles of southern women in the Civil War. Exploring the themes of slavery, nationalism, secession and occupation, these narratives offer new ways to think about traditional issues in Civil War history and, more broadly, show the ways in which studies of women and gender can enrich studies of cultures of war. This book is designed for undergraduate and graduate students of both the American Civil War and women's history.

Elite Confederate Women in the American Civil War is a wide-ranging primary source collection that offers a compelling selection of upper-class, white Confederate women's voices from archives across the South. From the prison diary of Mary Terry to Elizabeth Baker Crozier's eyewitness account of the siege of Knoxville, this volume introduces lesser-known voices of the war to show the interconnections between the home front and the front lines, and how the war shaped the lives of women and households across the South. This collection challenges students to engage with the role of first-person narratives in history and to reconsider the roles of southern women in the Civil War. Exploring the themes of slavery, nationalism, secession and occupation, these narratives offer new ways to think about traditional issues in Civil War history and, more broadly, show the ways in which studies of women and gender can enrich studies of cultures of war. This book is designed for undergraduate and graduate students of both the American Civil War and women's history.

This is the first published comprehensive survey of naval action on the Mississippi River and her tributaries for the years 1863-1865. Following introductory reviews of the rivers and of the U.S. Navy's Mississippi Squadron, chronological Federal naval participation in various raids and larger campaigns is highlighted, as well as counterinsurgency, economical support and control, and logistical protection. It includes details on units, locations, or activities that have been previously underreported or completely ignored. Examples include the birth and function of the Mississippi Squadron's 11th District, the role of U.S. Army gunboats, and the war on the Upper Cumberland and Upper Tennessee Rivers. The last chapter details the coming of the peace in 1865 and the decommissioning of the U.S. river navy and the sale of its gunboats.

Lawyer, planter and politician Samuel Hoey Walkup (1818-1876) led the 48th North Carolina Infantry in the Civil War. A devout Christian and Whig nationalist, he opposed secession until hostilities were well underway, then became a die-hard Confederate, serving in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Seven Days battles through Appomattox. Presenting Walkup's complete and annotated writings, this composite biography of an important but overlooked Southern leader reveals an insightful narrator of his times. Having been a pre-war civilian outside the West Point establishment, he offers a candid view of Confederate leadership, particularly Robert E. Lee and A.P. Hill. Home life with his wife Minnie Parmela Reece Price and the enslaved members of their household was a complex relationship of cooperation and resistance, congeniality and oppression. Walkup's story offers a cautionary account of misguided benevolence supporting profound racial oppression.

This book is the story of the fascinating and accomplished life of a 19th-century Delaware favorite son, Brig. Gen. Henry Lockwood, who sailed aboard the U.S. Navy man-of-war United States with novelist Herman Melville and figures importantly in Melville's novel White-Jacket; who participated in Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones's seizure of Monterey from Mexico; who was a progenitor and co-builder of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis; who pacified the slavery-bound Delmarva peninsula during the Civil War; who distinguished himself as a brigade commander at Gettysburg; and who later commanded Maryland Heights at Harper's Ferry, the Middle Department/8th Corps, and a division at Cold Harbor. All these accomplishments occurred in the face of a stuttering tendency that afflicted him throughout his life. The book also notices important family members such as son Lieut.James Lockwood, who died of starvation during the Greely polar expedition after having reached the furthest point north of any human; brother Navy Surgeon John Lockwood, whose polemical essays in conjunction with Melville's didactic message in White-Jacket were major factors in the outlawing of punitive flogging in the Navy; and son-in-law Adm. Charles Sigsbee, who was in command of the Maine when it blew up in Havana Harbor, thus adding to the cries for war against Spain. Three pivotal events in Lockwood's military career have unjustly detracted from his historical reputation: the failure of the Naval Academy to memorialize him for his seminal role its building; the lack of historical notice of his pacification and reconciliation of Delmarva without a shot being fired; and his relief from division command at Cold Harbor by an unhinged corps commander. For the historical record, Lockwood finally receives vindication in this book.

Built in Birkenhead, England, from 1862-1865, the "Laird rams" were two innovative armored warships intended for service with the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. The vessels represented a substantial threat to Union naval power and offered the Confederacy potential means to break the Union blockade of Southern coastline. During 1863, the critical year of the Confederacy's last, slim hope of recognition by the British and French, President Lincoln threatened war with the British if the ships ever sailed under Confederate colors. Built in some secrecy, then floated on the River Mersey under the gaze of intense international scrutiny, the ships were suddenly purchased by Britain to avoid a war with the U.S., then were largely forgotten. Historians rarely mention these sister warships-if referred at all, they are given short shrift. This book provides the first complete history of these once famous ironclads that never fired a shot in anger yet served at distant stations as defenders of the British Empire.

Although the American Civil War has received extensive scholarly attention in the 150+ years since its conclusion, far less scholarly work has been devoted to western newspapers and their experiences of that bloody conflict. This first volume of a two-volume set reveals that the West was not immune from the war's battles, military recruitment, national anxieties, or partisan infighting. The Western Press in the Crucible of the American Civil War explores how editors throughout the region (from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast) responded to secession, the war, and its immediate aftermath. This edited volume examines editors' outspoken partisanship (including political feuds), their newsgathering techniques, their financial concerns, and their responses to wartime press censorship. The book also reveals how the war was reported in the western press, while also casting a light on reporting of home front issues. This first volume reveals the financial and editorial lengths that editors went to in order to meet readers' demands for war and home front news across a vast region where infrastructure was poor and news, therefore, was often slow to arrive. The second volume, The Midwestern Press in the Crucible of the American Civil War, focuses on the press in the midwestern United States.

Honest Abe. The rail-splitter. The Great Emancipator. Old Abe. These are familiar monikers of Abraham Lincoln, appellations that admirers instantly recognize. They describe a man who has influenced the lives of everyday people as well as notables like Leo Tolstoy, Marilyn Monroe, and Winston Churchill. But there is also a multitude of fictional Lincolns almost as familiar as the original: time traveler, android, monster hunter, and more. This book explores Lincoln's evolution from martyred president to cultural icon and the struggle between the Lincoln of history and his fictional progeny. He has been Simpsonized by Matt Groening, charmed by Shirley Temple, and emulated by the Lone Ranger. Countless devotees have attempted to rescue him through time travel, to clone him, or to raise him from the dead. Lincoln's image and memory have been invoked to fight communism, mock a sitting president, and sell products. Lincoln has even been portrayed as the greatest example of goodness humanity has to offer. In short, Lincoln is the essential American myth.

This volume examines what the citizen soldiery of the New England states wore when they marched off to save the Union in 1861. An exhaustive search of thousands of newspapers yielded a myriad of reports and personal accounts from soldiers letters, which together offer a hitherto unpublished view of the stirring events during the first few months of the Civil War. Combined with fascinating detail from numerous diaries and regimental histories, the author is able to describe the appearance of the Union volunteers of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine. The narrative is enhanced by photographs of original uniform items from private collections, plus imagery of the day showing the great variety of clothing and headgear worn. Accepted by the Company of Military Historians, this is an essential reference for collectors, living historians, modelers, and curators, as well as anyone with a general interest in the Civil War.

The 30th North Carolina Infantry was involved in most of the major battles in Virginia from the Seven Days through the surrender at Appomattox, and saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the American Civil War. Two-thirds of these men volunteered early; the others were enlisted at the point of a bayonet. Their casualty rate was high, the rate of death from disease was higher and the desertion and AWOL rate was higher still. What was the war actually like for these men? What was their economic status? To what extent were they involved in the institution of slavery? What were their lives like in the Army? What did they believe they were fighting for and did those views change over time? This book answers those questions and depicts Civil War soldiers as they were, rather than as appendages to famous generals or symbols of myth. It focuses on the realities of the men themselves, not their battles. In addition to the author's personal collection of letters and other contemporary records, it draws upon newly discovered letters, diaries, memoirs, census records, and published works.

Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio opponent of the Civil War and of abolition, was thrown out of the country by Abraham Lincoln because of his political views. As a result of his banishment, Vallandigham became a martyr to his cause and was nominated for governor by the Democratic Party in 1863. He ran the race from exile. The stakes in this colorful campaign were enormous, and Lincoln was highly involved, worrying that a Vallandigham victory would be seen as a rejection of the war by voters. That could have been devastating to the Union cause. It also would likely have made Vallandigham-a former congressman from Dayton-a presidential prospect. This book tells the story of a unique event in American history: a president-significantly, Lincoln-banishing a leading opponent, with that opponent then being nominated by a major party for high office in an important state.

During the Civil War, control of the Mississippi River was a hotly contested objective of both the Union and Confederate armies. By late 1862, the South held only a 110-mile stretch of this vital waterway. Determined to defend this critical span of the river, the Confederacy built two fortresses to defend it-Vicksburg on the north end, Port Hudson on the south. Drawing on the letters and memoirs of soldiers and officers on both sides, this book chronicles the brutal struggle for Port Hudson, Louisiana, beginning with Admiral Farragut's costly naval attack by the Union fleet, through the furious infantry assaults ordered by General Nathaniel Banks-including the first charge made by black troops in the Civil War-and finally the 48-day siege itself. Among the most tragic campaigns of the war, it is recognized by historians as the longest siege in American military history.

Unprepared for invasion, Tennessee joined the Confederacy in June 1861. The state's long border and three major rivers with northern access made defense difficult. Cutting through critical manufacturing centers, the Cumberland River led directly to the capital city of Nashville. To thwart Federal attack, engineers hastily constructed river batteries as part of the defenses that would come to be known as Fort Donelson, downstream near the town of Dover. Ulysses S. Grant began moving up the rivers in early 1862. In last-minute desperation, two companies of volunteer infantry and a company of light artillerymen were deployed to the hastily constructed batteries. On February 14, they slugged it out with four City-class ironclads and two timber-clads, driving off the gunboats with heavy casualties, while only losing one man. This book details the construction, armament, and battle for the Fort Donelson river batteries.

One of the most hotly debated issues in the historical study of race relations is the question of how the Civil War and Reconstruction affected social relations in the South. Did the War leave class and race hierarchies intact? Or did it mark the profound disruption of a long-standing social order?

Yankee Town, Southern City examines how the members of the southern community of Lynchburg, Virginia experienced four distinct but overlapping events--Secession, Civil War, Black Emancipation, and Reconstruction. By looking at life in the grog shop, at the military encampment, on the street corner, and on the shop floor, Steven Elliott Tripp illustrates the way in which ordinary people influenced the contours of race and class relations in their town.

The border states during the Civil War have long been ignored or misunderstood in general histories. This book corrects that oversight, explaining how many border state residents used wartime realities to redefine their politics and culture as "Southern." By studying the characteristics of those positioned along this fault line during the Civil War, the centrality of the war issue of slavery, which border residents long eschewed as being divisive, became apparent. This book explains how the process of Southernization occurred during and after the Civil War-a phenomenon largely unexplained by historians. Beyond the broader, more traditional narrative of the clash of arms, within these border slave states raged an inner civil war that shaped the military and political outcomes of the war as well as these states' cultural landscapes. Author Christopher Phillips describes how the Civil War experience in the border states served to form new loyalties and communities of identity that both deeply divided these states and distorted the meaning of the war for postwar generations. Explains how neutrality and definitions of loyalty and disloyalty during the war, which became key political issues, emerged from the military experience in the neutral border slave states Documents how Lincoln's major wartime political issues centered on events or conflicts that originated in the border slave states Describes the centrality of emancipation, black enlistment, and their intersection with guerrilla warfare in the border states' experience during the Civil War

On April 16, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued a blockade of the Confederate coastline. The largely agrarian South did not have the industrial base to succeed in a protracted conflict. What it did have - and what England and other foreign countries wanted - was cotton and tobacco. Industrious men soon began to connect the dots between Confederate and British needs. As the blockade grew, the blockade runners became quite ingenious in finding ways around the barriers. Boats worked their way back and forth from the Confederacy to Nassau and England, and everyone from scoundrels to naval officers wanted a piece of the action. Poor men became rich in a single transaction, and dances and drinking - from the posh Royal Victoria hotel to the boarding houses lining the harbor - were the order of the day. British, United States, and Confederate sailors intermingled in the streets, eyeing each other warily as boats snuck in and out of Nassau. But it was all to come crashing down as the blockade finally tightened and the final Confederate ports were captured. The story of this great carnival has been mentioned in a variety of sources but never examined in detail. Breaking the Blockade: The Bahamas during the Civil War focuses on the political dynamics and tensions that existed between the United States Consular Service, the governor of the Bahamas, and the representatives of the southern and English firms making a large profit off the blockade. Filled with intrigue, drama, and colorful characters, this is an important Civil War story that has not yet been told.