In this important new contribution to the historical literature, Amy Fluker offers a history of Civil War commemoration in Missouri, shifting focus away from the guerrilla war and devoting equal attention to Union, African American, and Confederate commemoration. She provides the most complete look yet at the construction of Civil War memory in Missouri, illuminating the particular challenges that shaped Civil War commemoration. As a slaveholding Union state on the Western frontier, Missouri found itself at odds with the popular narratives of Civil War memory developing in the North and the South. At the same time, the state's deeply divided population clashed with one another as they tried to find meaning in their complicated and divisive history. As Missouri's Civil War generation constructed and competed to control Civil War memory, they undertook a series of collaborative efforts that paved the way for reconciliation to a degree unmatched by other states. Understanding this process lends informative context to contemporary debates about Civil War memory. Acts of Civil War commemoration have long been controversial and were never undertaken for objective purposes, but instead served to transmit particular values to future generations.

Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin's 1946 autobiography The Making of a Southerner is considered a classic testament of a white southerner's commitment to racial justice in a culture where little was to be found. Lumpkin's unpublished novel Eli Hill, which was discovered in Lumpkin's papers after her death, contributes to the same struggle by imaginatively re-creating a historical figure and a moment in the violent white resistance to Reconstruction. Born to enslaved parents in York County, South Carolina, Elias Hill (1819-1872) learned to read and write and became a popular Baptist minister. Owing to his influence, Hill was one of many victims of a series of vicious attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. After testifying before a congressional committee that emigration was the only solution, Hill and 135 other formerly enslaved people emigrated to Liberia. Lumpkin had trained as a sociologist and historian to use archival sources and data in arguing for socioeconomic change. In her autobiography, she uses the lens of an individual life, her own, to understand how racism was inculcated in white children and how they could free themselves from its grip. With Eli Hill, she turns to imagination, informed by archival research, to put an African American man at the center of a story about Reconstruction. In curating this important work of historical recovery for use in the classroom, Bruce Baker and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall have included the full text of the original manuscript and an introduction that contextualizes the novel in both its historical setting and its creation.

Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation's least effective heads of state. In President without a Party- the first fullA -scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades- Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler's early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his viceA -presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler's ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president's personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a ""traitor president."" The most complete accounting of Tyler's life and career, Leahy's biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South's dominant ideology of states' rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-A of-A theA -road, bipartisan approach to the nation's problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president- the annexation of Texas- exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.

The Nez Perce people lived in peace with white intruders in their homelands from the time of Lewis & Clark until 1863 when a treaty called for the tribe's removal to a reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph (1840-1904), headman of the Nez Perce band in northeastern Oregon's Wallowa Valley, became the greatest diplomat, philosopher, and--from necessity rather than choice--war leader of his people and among the most respected Indian leaders of American history.
In this meticulous and moving new study of Joseph's life, Candy Moulton--
who has traveled over all the trails he and his people blazed--emphasizes the pivotal year of 1877, when the frontier military tried to force Joseph and his people onto the reservation. Instead of meekly following these outrageous orders, he led 750 Nez Perces on a 1,500-mile, four-month flight from western Idaho across Montana and through the Yellowstone country and northwest Wyoming toward safety in Canada. After many battles, the flight ended at the Bear Paws mountains in north-central Montana, just forty miles from the Canadian border and potential refuge. There the U.S. Army surrounded the Nez Perces, captured their horse herd, killed all but two of their primary chiefs, and forced capitulation. When Joseph surrendered to military leaders he told them, "From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."
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By the time he became president in 1801, Thomas Jefferson had already been looking west for decades. He saw the country's population expanding and he judged that America's territory must expand too, lest America become as crowded and conflict-prone as Europe. He started modestly, by seeking to purchase New Orleans from the French. Napoleon Bonaparte answered with a breathtaking proposal: would the Americans care to purchase all of Louisiana? Jefferson said yes and soon enough had dispatched two explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to find a passage across the new territory to the Pacific. In Dreams of El Dorado, the bestselling author H. W. Brands captures the experiences of the men and women who headed into this new territory, from Lewis and Clark's expedition in early 19th century to the closing of the frontier in the early 20th. He introduces us to explorers, mountain men, cowboys, missionaries, and soldiers; he takes us on the Oregon Trail, to John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in the Pacific Northwest, to Texas during its revolution and California during the gold rush and to Little Big Horn on the day of Custer's defeat at the hands of the Indian general Crazy Horse. Not every American who went West sought immense wealth but most expected a greater competence than they could find in the East. Their dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame; their dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples, foreigners and one another. Throughout, Brands explodes many longstanding myths, reorienting our view of the West and of American history more broadly. The West was often viewed as the last bastion of American individualism but woven through its entire history was a strong thread of collectivism. Westerners sneered, even snarled, at federal power but federal power was essential to the development of the West. The West was America's unspoiled Eden but the spoilage of the West proceeded more rapidly than that of any other region. The West was where whites fought Indians but they rarely went into battle without Indian allies and their ranks included black soldiers. The West was where fortune beckoned, where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise, the bonanza farmer's audacity; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East. A sweeping, engrossing work of narrative history, Dreams of El Dorado will forever change how we think about the making of the American nation.

There were over 600 artillery pieces at Gettysburg. The guns were managed and operated by over 14,000 men. In three days over 50,000 rounds were fired. What impact did artillery have on this famous battle? How efficiently were the guns used? What were the strengths and weaknesses on each side? "Civil War Artillery At Gettysburg" answers these questions and many more. Using accessible descriptions, this work details the state of the art of this "long arm" as it existed at the time of the battle. It is an informative overview of field artillery in general while using the battle of Gettysburg to illustrate artillery technology. For it was Gettysburg when the artillery branch of both armies had matured to the point where its organization would stay relatively unchanged for the remainder of the war. Both armies prior to Gettysburg had neither the same mix of guns nor, more importantly, the same structure of organization as it did at this battle. The effects were telling. "This book is an artillery 'buff's' delight...The work meticulously examines the forming of the respective artillery arms of the two armies; the organization; artillery technology; guns; equipment and animals constituting that arm; ammunition; artillery operations; the artillerymen and, finally, actions of the guns on July 2 and 3....The work is perfect for someone seeking more data than found in most general histories of the battle...Nicely illustrated to supplement the text, the succinctly written technical details of ballistics, projectile composition and impact of technology for battlefield lethality will prove similarly useful and exciting for anyone captivated by the guns of Gettysburg." Book review by B. F. Cooling, The Civil War Courier "Rather than being a dull treatise, 'Artillery at Gettysburg'...proves to be an engaging book... Cole explains the benefits and liabilities of each piece of artiillery....His use of photographs, diagrams, and maps are excellent and integrate seamlessly into the text....Not only does it explain why events unfolded the way they did, it helps explain how they unfolded." Book review by Maj. James Gates, USAF, Military Review "No other modern book on Civil War artillery of this size is as detailed...as this book is generally...The author's broad approach to the whole subject of artillery tactics shine when he compares and contrasts several artillery incidents at Gettysburg that better explain what was going on at the time....This book is essential for all those interested in Civil War artillery, 19th century artillery, or just the battle of Gettysburg. Highly recommended." Book review by Peter A. Frandsen, The Artilleryman "I found Civil War Artillery at Gettysburg to be an informative and well written account of the 'long-arm' at Gettysburg. The book is very well-illustrated with maps and photos throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to our readers." Book review by James N. Vogler, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, Confederate Veteran Philip Cole was born and raised in Gettysburg and currently resides near there. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and graduate of Penn State University. Cole is a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Arguably the most significant conflict in United States' history, the Civil War still resonates to this day. The product of intense research, this book examines the events and characters that drove the War Between the States. From the first shots at Fort Sumter to the treaty at Appomattox, from McClellan and Grant to Lee and Jackson, this book looks at the Civil War in its entirety, even emphasising the negotiations for European support and supplies. In order to understand the Civil War's impact, it is necessary to understand the war itself, making this book a valuable resource of information.

Jeffry D. Wert re-creates the last day of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg in astonishing detail, taking readers from Meade's council of war to the seven-hour struggle for Culp's Hill -- the most sustained combat of the entire engagement. Drawing on hundreds of sources, including more than 400 manuscript collections, he offers brief excerpts from the letters and diaries of soldiers. He also introduces heroes on both sides of the conflict -- among them General George Greene, the oldest general on the battlefield, who led the Union troops at Culp's Hill.

A gripping narrative written in a fresh and lively style, Gettysburg, Day Three is an unforgettable rendering of an immortal day in our country's history.

Born into slavery in rural Louisiana, Rose Herera was bought and sold several times before being purchased by the De Hart family of New Orleans. Still a slave, she married and had children, who also became the property of the De Harts. But after Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862 during the American Civil War, Herera's owners fled to Havana, taking three of her small children with them. Beyond Freedom's Reach is the true story of one woman's quest to rescue her children from bondage. In a gripping, meticulously researched account, Adam Rothman lays bare the mayhem of emancipation during and after the Civil War. Just how far the rights of freed slaves extended was unclear to black and white people alike, and so when Mary De Hart returned to New Orleans in 1865 to visit friends, she was surprised to find herself taken into custody as a kidnapper. The case of Rose Herera's abducted children made its way through New Orleans' courts, igniting a custody battle that revealed the prospects and limits of justice during Reconstruction. Rose Herera's perseverance brought her children's plight to the attention of members of the U.S. Senate and State Department, who turned a domestic conflict into an international scandal. Beyond Freedom's Reach is an unforgettable human drama and a poignant reflection on the tangled politics of slavery and the hazards faced by so many Americans on the hard road to freedom.

Opening of the Civil War is a complete account of the division of the Union from Lincoln's Election Day in November of 1860 to mid-June of 1861. Besides the various phases of secession, the main event centers around Fort Sumter. Lincoln is the main actor upon the stage, but Buchanan plays a prominent role in the proceedings as well. Lee and McClellan are also highlighted. This is the only book that covers this crucial period in such detail. Little used sources paint an exciting story of a march toward Bull Run and other major battles. Details of early encounters are described along with the lives of many generals in a true historical drama in this factual history.

Back in print after nearly 140 years! When first published in 1964, only 200 copies were printed, making it very rare. This book provides a unique glimpse into the mind and thoughT processes behind one of the Civil War's most prominent generals.

This slim volume will appeal to all historical enthusiasts of the U.S. Civil War and is competitively priced. It is newly indexed for research and genealogical purposes.

"This report is important not only as a military campaign report, but as a brief history of condition in the western Virginia counties that became West Virginia. McClellan was accutely aware of the advantages to be gained by the North if he could establish a foothold in that area."
-- Jan Dickinson, author of TATTERED UNIFORMS AND BRIGHT BAYONETS: WEST VIRGINIA'S CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS

The two reporters, A.J.L. Fremantle and Whitelaw Reid, one traveling with the Union army and the other with the Confederates, are the authors of these two magnificent firsthand accounts of the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, the pivotal action of the Civil War.* Presents engaging firsthand accounts of the battle of Gettysburg* Completely updated with a new introduction, references, illustrations and maps* Includes a bibliographic essay for further reading* Provides students with a unique and engaging look at the most pivotal action of the Civil War

A history of the American Civil War starting with an account of the years preceding it and its causes. It discusses slavery, the two sides of the war, the international dimension, the position and role of the free blacks and slaves, the end of the war and reconstruction.

Richard B. Harwell Award Although often counted among the Union's top five generals, George Henry Thomas has still not received his due. A Virginian who sided with the North in the Civil War, he was a more complicated commander than traditional views have allowed. Brian Wills now provides a new and more complete look at the life of a man known to history as "The Rock of Chickamauga," to his troops as "Old Pap," and to General William T. Sherman as a soldier who was "as true as steel." While biographers have long been hampered by Thomas's lack of personal papers, Wills has drawn on previously untapped sources-notably the correspondence of Thomas's contemporaries-to offer new insights into what made him tick. Focusing on Thomas's personality and motivations, Wills contributes revealing discussions of his style and approach to command and successfully captures his troubled interactions with other Union commanders, providing a particularly more evenhanded evaluation of his relationship with Grant. He also gives a more substantial account of battlefield action than can be found in other biographies, capturing the ebb and flow of key encounters-Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Stones River and Mill Springs, Peachtree Creek and Nashville-to help readers better understand Thomas's contributions to their outcomes. Throughout Wills presents a well-rounded individual whose complex views embraced the worlds of professional military service and scientific inquisitiveness, a man known for attention to detail and compassion to subordinates. We also meet a sharp-tempered person whose disdain for politics hurt his prospects for advancement as much as it reflected positively on his character, and Wills offers new insight into why Thomas might not have progressed as quickly up the ladder of command as he might have liked. More deeply researched than other biographies, Wills's work situates Thomas squarely in his own time to provide readers with a more thorough and balanced life story of this enigmatic Union general. It is a definitive military history that gives us a new and needed picture of the Rock of Chickamauga-a man whose devotion to duty and ideals made him as true as steel.

During six months in 1862, William Jefferson Whatley and his wife, Nancy Falkaday Watkins Whatley, exchanged a series of letters that vividly demonstrate the quickly changing roles of women whose husbands left home to fight in the Civil War. When William Whatley enlisted with the Confederate Army in 1862, he left his young wife Nancy in charge of their cotton farm in East Texas, near the village of Caledonia in Rusk County. In letters to her husband, Nancy describes in elaborate detail how she dealt with and felt about her new role, which thrust her into an array of unfamiliar duties, including dealing with increasingly unruly slaves, overseeing the harvest of the cotton crop, and negotiating business transactions with unscrupulous neighbors. At the same time, she carried on her traditional family duties and tended to their four young children during frequent epidemics of measles and diphtheria. Stationed hundreds of miles away, her husband could only offer her advice, sympathy, and shared frustration. In An East Texas Family's Civil War, the Whatleys' great-grandson, John T. Whatley, transcribes and annotates these letters for the first time. Notable for their descriptions of the unraveling of the local slave labor system and accounts of rural southern life, Nancy's letters offer a rare window on the hardships faced by women on the home front taking on unprecedented responsibilities and filling unfamiliar roles.

American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War challenges traditional American constitutional history, theory and jurisprudence that sees today's constitutionalism as linked by an unbroken chain to the 1787 Federal constitutional convention. American Sovereigns examines the idea that after the American Revolution, a collectivity - the people - would rule as the sovereign. Heated political controversies within the states and at the national level over what it meant that the people were the sovereign and how that collective sovereign could express its will were not resolved in 1776, in 1787, or prior to the Civil War. The idea of the people as the sovereign both unified and divided Americans in thinking about government and the basis of the Union. Today's constitutionalism is not a natural inheritance, but the product of choices Americans made between shifting understandings about themselves as a collective sovereign.

The Whirlwind of War builds on the great themes and follows many of the important figures who were introduced in The Approaching Fury. Stephen B. Oates's riveting narrative brings to life the complex and destructive war that is the central event in American history. He writes in the first person, assuming the viewpoints of several of the principal figures: the rival presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis; the rival generals, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman; the great black abolitionist, editor, and orator, Frederick Douglass; the young Union battlefield nurse, Cornelia Hancock; the brilliant head of the Chicago Sanitary Commission and cocreator of the northern Sanitary Fair, Mary Livermore; the Confederate socialite and political insider, Mary Boykin Chesnut; the assassin, John Wilkes Booth; and the greatest poet of the era, Walt Whitman, who speaks in the coda about the meaning of war and Lincoln's death.

Visions of Glory brings together twenty-two images and twenty-two brisk essays, each essay connecting an image to the events that unfolded during a particular year of the Civil War. The book focuses on a diverse set of images that include a depiction of former slaves whipping their erstwhile overseer distributed by an African American publisher, a census graph published in the New York Times, and a cutout of a child's hand sent by a southern mother to her husband at the front. The essays in this collection reveal how wartime women and men created both written accounts and a visual register to make sense of this pivotal period. The collection proceeds chronologically, providing a nuanced history by highlighting the multiple meanings an assorted group of writers and readers discerned from the same set of circumstances. In so doing, this volume assembles contingent and fractured visions of the Civil War, but its differing perspectives also reveal a set of overlapping concerns. A number of essays focus in particular on African American engagements with visual culture. The collection also emphasizes the role that women played in making, disseminating, or interpreting wartime images. While every essay explores the relationship between image and word, several contributions focus on the ways in which Civil War images complicate an understanding of canonical writers such as Emerson, Melville, and Whitman.

In the popular imagination, Civil War disability is virtually synonymous with amputation. But war affects the body in countless ways, many of them understudied by historians. In Bodies in Blue, Sarah Handley-Cousins expands and complicates our understanding of wartime disability by examining a variety of bodies and ailments, ranging from the temporary to the chronic, from disease to injury, and encompassing both physical and mental conditions. She studies the cases of well-known individuals, such as Union general Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, alongside many cases drawn from the ranks to provide a more comprehensive view of how soldiers, civilians, and institutions grappled with war-related disability in the Civil War-era North. During the Civil War and long after, the bodies of Union soldiers and veterans were sites of powerful cultural beliefs about duty and sacrifice. However, the realities of living with a disability were ever at odds with the expectations of manhood. As a consequence, men who failed to perform the role of wounded warrior properly could be scrutinized for failing to live up to standards of martial masculinity. Under the gaze of surgeons, officers, bureaucrats, and civilians, disabled soldiers made difficult negotiations in their attempts to accommodate impaired bodies and please observers. Some managed this process with ease; others struggled and suffered. Embracing and exploring this apparent contradiction, Bodies in Blue pushes Civil War history in a new direction.