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Books > History > American history > 1800 to 1900
The Battle of Gettysburg remains one of the most controversial
military actions in America's history, and one of the most
studied.Professor Coddington's is an analysis not only of the
battle proper, but of the actions of both Union and Confederate
armies for the six months prior to the battle and the factors
affecting General Meade's decision not to pursue the retreating
Confederate forces. This book contends that Gettysburg was a
crucial Union victory, primarily because of the effective
leadership of Union forces--not, as has often been said, only
because the North was the beneficiary of Lee's mistakes.
Scrupulously documented and rich in fascinating detail, The
Gettysburg Campaign stands as one of the landmark works in the
history of the Civil War.
JIM BRIDGER- MOUNTAIN MAN: A BIOGRAPHY by STANLEY VESTAL. Contents
include: PREFACE ix PART 1 TRAPPER I ENTERPRISING YOUNG MAN 1 II.
SET POLES FOR THE MOUNTAINS 8 HI. HIVERNAN 21 IV. THE MISSOURI
LEGION 28 V. HUGH GLASS AND THE GRIZZLY 40 PART 3 BOOSHWAY VI.
BLANKET CHIEF 57 VIL THE BATTLE OF PIERRE S HOLE 69 VHI. SHOT IN
THE BACK 86 IX. DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST 95 X. ARROW BUTCHERED OUT
105 XL OLD GABE TO THE RESCUE 112 XII. INJUN SCRAPES 119 XIII. THE
LAST RENDEZVOUS 132 vii mil CONTENTS PART 3 TRADER XTV. FORT
BRIDGER 142 XV. MILK RIVER . 154 XVI. THE OVERLAND TRAIL 162 XVH.
THE TREATY AT LARAMIE 168 XVm. THE SAINTS RAID FORT BRIDGER 182
PART 4, GUIDE XIX. SIR GEORGE GORE 192 XX. THE MARCH SOUTH 199 XXI.
TALL TALES 206 PART 5 CHIEF OF SCOUTS XXII. THE POWDER RIVER
EXPEDITION 220 XXHI. RED CLOUD S DEFIANCE 241 XXIV. THE CHEYENNES
WARNING 249 XXV. BLOODY JUNKET 258 XXVI. FORT PHIL KEARNEY 268
XXVEL AMBUSH 278 XXVttL MASSACRE 284 XXIX. THE END OF THE TRAIL 295
APPENDIX 301 INDEX PREFACE EVER since tlie days when, as a boy, I
raced Indian ponies and swam in a Western river with the Cheyenne
lads, I have felt the lack of a satisfying portrait of Jim Bridger.
The intervening years permitted much research, but somehow the
books about Bridger never seemed to do him justice. In his own time
he was a legend, and since his death historians have been content
for the most part merely to pile up facts around these retold
incidents. There has been no adequate biog raphy to bring the man
to life. quot Few men have beenjso misrepresented. On the one hand,
he was represented in fiction and on the screen as a drunken,
loutish polygamist and liar, in a carica ture so monstrous that his
outraged relatives brought suit to recover damages. The court ruled
that no one could confuse this caricature with the real Jim
Bridger, and denied the suit. On the other hand, Jim Bridger s real
achievements have been ignored or neglected by writers, who have
tried to rep resent him as an Injun fighter with aE the dash and
daring of Kit Carson, as a wag with all the wit and love of fun of
Joe Meek, or as a crusty, ignorant hillbilly, unable to hold his
own in the society of civilized men...
A great deal has been written about the military career of
Comfederate General Earl Van Dorn, but his death at the hands of
infuriated Dr. George B. Peters hinted spying and espionage. A baby
a short time later by Jessie McKissack Peters, the young wife of a
much older physician and state senator husband who had been absent
for a year, came into question. The fascinating families left to
cope with the situations include servants who were taught trades
that allowed them to erebuild the area. Descendants became the
first blacks to receive architectural licenses.
ELLA CORRIGAN'S despair at being jilted pales in light of what
follows after she makes the hasty decision to marry a man she has
long avoided. Unaware that a friend's secret act of jealousy is
responsible for her bitter heartache, she enters an existence never
imagined during sweeter days as Mistress of her father's Savannah
River plantation - where a mystery is building around the family's
phenomenal natural spring, Corrigans' Pool. . . . The South is
embroiled in a bloody Civil War by the time Ella discovers that
Corrigans' Pool, on her family's property, is much more than the
exquisite pond she had thought it to be all her life, but by the
time she learns its dangerous secret, she is trapped by a secret of
her own, blackmailed, and powerless against one man's unspeakable
evil. Haunted by the threat of scandal, she struggles against the
horrors of her new existence, an existence she must keep private
even from the very people who could help her. Her life comes full
circle when the past she has long blamed for her wretchedness steps
unexpectedly out of the darkness to face her . . . FIVE STAR
FOREWORD CLARION REVIEW (EXCERPT): Ryan's storytelling ability and
masterful use of setting, dialogue, and characterization, adds up
to an exquisite piece of historical fiction. Corrigans' Pool
manages to blend romance, mystery, humor, and tragedy with flawless
precision. The romance is moving but subtle, the mystery is
suspenseful, and the story flows smoothly to a dramatic and
satisfying conclusion. Readers are sure to be enthralled with this
exceptional novel. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
First published in 1882, Samuel Watkins' 'Co. Aytch - A Sideshow of
the Big Show' is widely recognized as one of the most important
Civil War memoirs. Written in a lively, engaging style, the book
captures the pride, misery, glory, and horror experienced by the
common foot soldier.
In 1861, Americans thought that the war looming on their horizon
would be brief. None foresaw that they were embarking on our
nation's worst calamity, a four-year bloodbath that cost the lives
of more than half a million people. But as eminent Civil War
historian Emory Thomas points out in this stimulating and
provocative book, once the dogs of war are unleashed, it is almost
impossible to rein them in. In The Dogs of War, Thomas highlights
the delusions that dominated each side's thinking. Lincoln believed
that most Southerners loved the Union, and would be dragged
unwillingly into secession by the planter class. Jefferson Davis
could not quite believe that Northern resolve would survive the
first battle. Once the Yankees witnessed Southern determination, he
hoped, they would acknowledge Confederate independence. These two
leaders, in turn, reflected widely held myths. Thomas weaves his
exploration of these misconceptions into a tense narrative of the
months leading up to the war, from the "Great Secession Winter" to
a fast-paced account of the Fort Sumter crisis in 1861. Emory M.
Thomas's books demonstrate a breathtaking range of major Civil War
scholarship, from The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience and
the landmark The Confederate Nation, to definitive biographies of
Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart. In The Dogs of War, he draws upon
his lifetime of study to offer a new perspective on the outbreak of
our national Iliad.
Cavalryman, Infantryman and Prisoner of War
This personable first hand account of the American Civil War was
written by William Tyler of the 9th Illinois Cavalry of the Union
Army. It is an eye-witness narrative where the good nature of the
author shines through the text and, as a consequence, as well as
being a first rate source work of the horse soldiers in blue it is
also a story full of humour, adventure and anecdote. The first part
of the narrative deals with the business of war from the
perspective of a trooper in the Union Cavalry, but Tyler's role was
soon to change due to his singular success in the carrying of an
important dispatch. As often happens, especially in military life,
having demonstrated some talent Tyler became the 'expert on hand'
and was given further dispatches to carry through perilous, enemy
occupied country on a regular basis. He gives the impression that
he relished the independence of action and the adventures that came
his way. Discharged after a wound, Tyler re-enlisted, not to return
to his old unit but in the 95th Illinois Infantry because he wished
to be close to his brother who had joined that regiment. In a
battle near Guntown, Mississippi, against Forrest's Confederates,
Tyler was captured and sent to the notorious Andersonville prisoner
of war jail. In the final part of his book he describes the
appalling conditions and brutality suffered by the Union men in
Andersonville which makes for revealing if harrowing reading.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each
title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our
hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their
spines and fabric head and tail bands.
Not much has been written about the Italian immigrant experience
prior to 1880. This book, through careful analysis of primary and
archival sources, brings to life the Civil War-time trials and
tribulations of several notable Italian Americans--Bancroft
Gherardi, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Francis B. Spinola, Decimus et
Ultimus Barziza, and Edward Ferrero, among others. Though their
numbers were few, Italian Americans played central roles in the
bloodiest war in our country's history. Included in this book are
samples of John Garibaldi's wartime correspondence to his wife,
lists of Italian Americans who served as officers and
noncommissioned sailors in the Union Navy, and first-hand
correspondence of William Howell Reed (Virginia hospitals overseer
under President Grant) and the brother of a young Italian who died
in the hospital during the war. Sons of Garibaldi in Blue and Gray
fills a critical gap in studies of Italian American life in the
United States in the late 1800s.
Slavery on the Periphery focuses on nineteen counties on the
Kansas-Missouri border, tracing slavery's rise and fall from the
earliest years of American settlement through the Civil War along
this critical geographical, political, and social fault line.
Kristen Epps explores slavery's emergence from an upper South
slaveholding culture and its development into a small-scale system
characterised by slaves' diverse forms of employment, close contact
between slaves and slaveholders, a robust hiring market, and the
prevalence of abroad marriages. She demonstrates that space and
place mattered to enslaved men and women most clearly because slave
mobility provided a means of resistance to the strictures of daily
life. Mobility was a medium for both negotiation and confrontation
between slaves and slaveholders, and the ongoing political conflict
between proslavery supporters and antislavery proponents opened new
doors for such resistance. Slavery's expansion on the
Kansas-Missouri border was no mere intellectual debate within the
halls of Congress. Its horrors had become a visible presence in a
region so torn by bloody conflict that it captivated the nineteenth
- century American public. Foregrounding African Americans' place
in the border narrative illustrates how slavery's presence set the
stage for the Civil War and emancipation here, as it did elsewhere
in the United States.
The Civil War resulted from the insistence of Southern "firebrands"
that the 1820 restrictions on where slavery could be practiced in
the Western territories of the USA be removed. And the dogged
determination of some Northerners to restrict the brutal treatment
of blacks and finally put slavery on the road to extinction. In the
1850's big shoes dropped one after another in staccato fashion to
dash such hopes. The final straws were the Dred Scott Decision in
1857 saying blacks weren't even people and Congress had no power to
restrict slavery anywhere And Civil War was going on in "bleeding
Kansas" between adherents of the two stances. John Brown was
radicalized there by the sacking of Abolitionist stronghold
Lawrence. He and his sons killed some Jayhawkers (slavery
adherents) from Missouri. Then Brown, his sons, and a few others,
lit a fuse in Oct 1859 by a hare brained scheme to seize the
Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to arm slaves and precipitate
action to free them. So when Lincoln was elected in 1860-the South
bolted As they had threatened for 15 years. America was almost
destroyed. Until July 4, 1863 when two Union victories insured:
"that these honored dead (800,000) shall not have died in vain"
Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg, Pa Nov. 1863.
Because of Union victories at Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry, the
outer perimeter of defenses that protected western and middle
Tennessee left the city of Memphis, Tennessee exposed to Union
attack by river. After Grant's victory at Shiloh the Confederate
forces would concentrate their strength along the Ohio and Mobile
Railroad in northern Mississippi. The disastrous defeat of General
Earl Van Dorn at Corinth, Mississippi left the door wide open for a
union victory at Vicksburg and the fall of her sister fortress at
Port Hudson, Louisiana. The Mississippi River represents the
jugular vein of the South. The capture of New Orleans by Admiral
Farrago effectively shut commerce that the South depended upon. The
northern strategist fully recognized that the control of the
Mississippi and her tributaries would prevent any Southern
expansion into Missouri and Kentucky. The 18th Arkansas infantry
played a role in the defense of both the upper and lower
Mississippi River. This is their story.
The South Carolina 23rd Infantry Regiment [also called Coast
Rangers] was assembled at Charleston, South Carolina, in November,
1861. Most of the men were from Horry, Georgetown, Charleston, and
Colleton counties. After being stationed in South Carolina, the
regiment moved to Virginia and during the war served in General
Evans', Elliot's, and Wallace's Brigade.
Lasting from June 1864 through April 1965, the RichmondPetersburg
Campaign was the longest of the Civil War, dwarfing even the
Atlanta and Vicksburg campaigns in its scope and complexity. This
compact yet comprehensive guide allows armchair historian and
battlefield visitor alike to follow the campaign's course, with a
clear view of its multifaceted strategic, operation, tactical, and
human dimensions.
A concise, single-volume collection of official reports and
personal accounts, the guide is organized in one-day and multi-day
itineraries that take the reader to all the battlefields of the
campaign, some of which have never before been interpreted and
described for the visitor so extensively. Comprehensive campaign
and battle maps reflect troop movements, historical terrain
features, and modern roads for ease of understanding and
navigation. A uniquely useful resource for the military enthusiast
and the battlefield traveler, this is the essential guide for
anyone hoping to see the historic landscape and the human face of
this most decisive campaign of the Civil War.
At its core, the Civil War was a conflict over the meaning of
citizenship. Most famously, it became a struggle over whether or
not to grant rights to a group that stood outside the pale of
civil-society: African Americans. But other groups--namely Jews,
Germans, the Irish, and Native Americans--also became part of this
struggle to exercise rights stripped from them by legislation,
court rulings, and the prejudices that defined the age. Grounded in
extensive research by experts in their respective fields, Civil War
Citizens is the first volume to collectively analyze the wartime
experiences of those who lived outside the dominant white,
Anglo-Saxon Protestant citizenry of nineteenth-century America. The
essays examine the momentous decisions made by these communities in
the face of war, their desire for full citizenship, the complex
loyalties that shaped their actions, and the inspiring and
heartbreaking results of their choices-- choices that still echo
through the United States today. Contributors: Stephen D. Engle,
William McKee Evans, David T. Gleeson, Andrea Mehrlander, Joseph P.
Reidy, Robert N. Rosen, and Susannah J. Ural.
A battle badly conducted and the destruction of one brave man
This an account of the battle of Shiloh by one who was present as a
colonel of the Ohio Volunteer infantry, but it is also much more
than that. In every line of this book the reader feels the anger
and vitriol of a deeply offended man. This work transcends history
to become an exposure-according to the author's viewpoint-of
incompetence, double dealing and cover-up on behalf of the senior
officers of the Union Army. The particular target of Worthington's
accusation is his superior officer W. T. Sherman. Certainly the two
men were enemies-a situation which for Worthington, as the
subordinate officer, was to have disastrous consequences. It is now
recognised that Worthington's own conduct during the battle itself
was exemplary, contributing much to the benefit of the Union
action. Nevertheless, Sherman court martialled Worthington after
the battle and he was cashiered from the service. Notwithstanding
the illegality of his trial and its subsequent over turning by
Lincoln himself, Sherman, in concert with Grant, ensured
Worthington was never reinstated. This is a vital analysis of a
Civil War battle with no holds barred and a story of great
injustice done to a man of principle.
In September 1868, the remains of Jacob and Nancy Jane Young were
found lying near the banks of Indiana's White River. It was a
gruesome scene. Part of Jacob's face had been blown off, apparently
by the shotgun that lay a few feet away. Spiders and black beetles
crawled over his wound. Smoke rose from his wife's smoldering body,
which was so badly burned that her intestines were exposed, the
flesh on her thighs gone, and the bones partially reduced to
powder. Suspicion for both deaths turned to Nancy Clem, a housewife
who was also one of Mr. Young's former business partners. In The
Notorious Mrs. Clem, Wendy Gamber chronicles the life and times of
this charming and persuasive Gilded Age confidence woman, who
became famous not only as an accused murderess but also as an
itinerant peddler of patent medicine and the supposed originator of
the Ponzi scheme. Clem's story is a shocking tale of friendship and
betrayal, crime and punishment, courtroom drama and partisan
politicking, get-rich-quick schemes and shady business deals. It
also raises fascinating questions about women's place in an
evolving urban economy. As they argued over Clem's guilt or
innocence, lawyers, jurors, and ordinary citizens pondered
competing ideas about gender, money, and marriage. Was Clem on
trial because she allegedly murdered her business partner? Or was
she on trial because she engaged in business? Along the way, Gamber
introduces a host of equally compelling characters, from
prosecuting attorney and future U.S. president Benjamin Harrison to
folksy defense lawyer John Hanna, daring detective Peter Wilkins,
pioneering "lady news writer" Laura Ream, and female-remedy
manufacturer Michael Slavin. Based on extensive sources, including
newspapers, trial documents, and local histories, this gripping
account of a seemingly typical woman who achieved extraordinary
notoriety will appeal to true crime lovers and historians alike.
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