In early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed. In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a year of Cleburne's proposal, which was initially rejected out of hand, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Robert E. Lee had all reached the same conclusions. At that point, the idea was debated widely in newspapers and drawing rooms across the South, as more and more slaves fled to Union lines and fought in the ranks of the Union army. Eventually, the soldiers of Lee's army voted on the proposal, and the Confederate government actually enacted a version of it in March. The Army issued the necessary orders just two weeks before Appomattox, too late to affect the course of the war. Throughout the book, Levine captures the voices of blacks and whites, wealthy planters and poor farmers, soldiers and officers, and newspaper editors and politicians from all across the South. In the process, he sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South. Confederate Emancipation offers an engaging and illuminating account of a fascinating and politically charged idea, setting it firmly and vividly in the context of the Civil War and the part played in it by the issue of slavery and the actions of the slaves themselves.

The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years later: the trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the creation of the only republic in English history. There were startling and unexpected developments, too, in religion and ideas: the spread of unorthodox doctrines; the attainment of a wide measure of liberty of conscience; new thinking about the moral and intellectual bases of politics and society. God's Instruments centres on the principal instrument of radical change, Oliver Cromwell, and on the unfamiliar landscape of the decade he dominated, from the abolition of the monarchy in 1649 to the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660. Its theme is the relationship between the beliefs or convictions of politicians and their decisions and actions. Blair Worden explores the biblical dimension of Puritan politics; the ways that a belief in the workings of divine providence affected political conduct; Cromwell's commitment to liberty of conscience and his search for godly reformation through educational reform; the constitutional premises of his rule and those of his opponents in the struggle for supremacy between parliamentary and military rule; the relationship between conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The conflicts Worden reconstructs are placed in the perspective of long-term developments, of which historians have lost sight, in ideas about parliament and about freedom. The final chapters turn to the guiding convictions of two writers at the heart of politics, John Milton and the royalist Edward Hyde, the future Earl of Clarendon. Material from previously published essays, much of it expanded and extensively revised, comes together with freshly written chapters.

First appearing in 1845 The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, with its painfully vivid depiction of life in bondage, was both a bestseller in its day and one of the most powerful, authoritative texts lending support to the abolitionist movement. The author traces his life from an infant born into slavery and taken from his mother at birth, to a displaced child hungry for knowledge, to an abused and beaten laborer seeking freedom and a chance to marry the woman he loved. Offering bright, cameo glimpses into a world that should not be forgotten, Douglass chronicles both the cruel violence of a system that saw him as little more than livestock, and the brighter moments of success, of courageous support from friends and allies. Initially greeted by some with doubt that it could have been written by a black man and former slave, the book had a profound effect on American society, making the author something of a celebrity and his cause less an abstract ideal and more of an urgent human concern. Solemn, powerful and passionate The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is more than an important historical document-it is a personal account of striving for human freedom in a world where the author was regarded as neither free nor human. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is both modern and readable.

The Fifth New York Cavalry was a volunteer regiment organised in response to the Union defeat at the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. The citizen-cavalrymen who made up the regiment came from across New York State and from every walk of life. In the following four years the unit became, according to contemporary sources, one of the finest cavalry formations in the field. The regiment's history is told chronologically in the overall context of the Civil War and based upon primary sources, including official reports, diaries, letters and newspaper accounts. Wherever possible Fifth New York troopers speak to us directly, describing their experiences in the Shenandoah campaign of 1862, the epic encounter at Gettysburg, life in camp and on picket duty, the Wilderness in the spring of 1864 and again the Shenandoah in the fall of 1864.

This is the first published biography of Lieutenant Commander Le Roy Fitch, U.S. Navy. Fitch saw action on the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; fought against Morgan, Wheeler and Forrest, as well as irregulars; commanded an ironclad monitor during the Battle of Nashville; and was renowned for his abilities in counterinsurgency and convoy tactics.

This book reveals the life of R. Clay Crawford, his dreams, his schemes, his successes and his failures, as he launched himself into many of the most turbulent episodes of nineteenth-century United States history. Like everyone else, he was born with a family history, not just genetic, but also cultural, determinants; this book therefore reveals the influences on his behavior inherited from his father and his grandfathers. And, again like everyone else, he passed on to his children a model, not just genetic, but cultural. Even so, Clay's story is not just a family affair. Clay was a ""self-made man,"" living in an age when that figure was thought to be a national asset-he thus stands out as a warning that the worship of the ""self-made man"" produces more rogues than Rockefellers.

The son of a North Carolina governor, Holmes graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1829 and served on the frontier during the ""Trail of Tears."" He fought in the Second Seminole War and the War with Mexico and, in 1859 , became the US Army's chief recruiting officer and was assigned to Governors Island at New York City. Only days before resigning from the US Army, he helped organise the naval expedition sent to relieve Fort Sumter from the Confederacy's blockade. But then casting his lot with his native state, Holmes led a Confederate brigade at First Manassas and a division during the Peninsular Campaign, commanded armies in the Trans-Mississippi, and organised North Carolina's young boys and old men into the Confederate Reserves. Holmes served with some of America's most notable historic figures: Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. In modern times, however, he is virtually unknown. The man and the soldier possessed traits of both triumph and tragedy.

This book is the fifth volume in a series documenting the colonels of the Civil War Union army who did not advance beyond that rank. Presented in this volume are the colonels who commanded regiments from Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. A brief biographical sketch of each is included, providing a synopsis of each one's Civil War service followed by pertinent details of their life history. Accompanying the biographical sketches are photographs of most of the colonels. Preceding the biographical sketches for each state is a roster of that state's colonels, in regimental order, including those promoted to brigadier general and brevet brigadier general, whose lives are documented in other reference works. A bibliography of reference sources allows for examination of the lives of the colonels in more detail. The work is fully indexed.

On April 12, 1864, a small Union force occupying Fort Pillow, Tennessee, a fortress located on the Mississippi River just north of Memphis, was overwhelmed by a larger Confederate force under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest. While the battle was insignificant from a strategic standpoint, the indiscriminate massacre of Union soldiers, particularly African-American soldiers, made the Fort Pillow Massacre one of the most gruesome slaughters of the American Civil War, rivaling other instances of Civil War brutality. The Fort Pillow Massacre outlines the events of the massacre while placing them within the racial and social context of the Civil War. Bruce Tap combines a succinct history with a selection of primary documents, including government reports, eyewitness testimony, and newspaper articles, to introduce the topic to undergraduates.

As the Civil War's toll mounted, an antiquated medical system faced a deluge of sick and wounded soldiers. In response, the United States created a national care system primarily funded and regulated by the federal government. New Haven, Connecticut, was chosen as the site for a new military hospital because of available medical expertise, ready access to rail and water transportation and a pre-existing state hospital for the indigent. Pliny Adams Jewett, next in line to become chief of surgery at Yale, sacrificed his private practice and eventually his future in New Haven to serve as chief of staff of the new thousand-bed Knight U.S. General Hospital. The ""War Governor,"" William Buckingham, personally financed hospital construction while supporting needy soldiers and their families. He appointed state agents to scour battlefields and hospitals to ensure his state's soldiers got the best care while encouraging their transfer to the hospital in New Haven. This history of the hospital's construction and operation during the war discusses the state of medicine at the time as well as the administrative side of providing care to sick and wounded soldiers.

On April 12, 1864, a small Union force occupying Fort Pillow, Tennessee, a fortress located on the Mississippi River just north of Memphis, was overwhelmed by a larger Confederate force under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest. While the battle was insignificant from a strategic standpoint, the indiscriminate massacre of Union soldiers, particularly African-American soldiers, made the Fort Pillow Massacre one of the most gruesome slaughters of the American Civil War, rivaling other instances of Civil War brutality. The Fort Pillow Massacre outlines the events of the massacre while placing them within the racial and social context of the Civil War. Bruce Tap combines a succinct history with a selection of primary documents, including government reports, eyewitness testimony, and newspaper articles, to introduce the topic to undergraduates.

"The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution. Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.

With a focus on the relationship between Orwell and Kopp during the Spanish Civil War, 'George Orwell's Commander in Spain: The is a biography of a fascinating figure: double spy, fraud, brilliant inventor and stout-hearted commander.

This highly original work explores a previously unknown financial conspiracy at the start of the American Civil War. The book explains the reasons for the puzzling intensity of Missouri's guerrilla conflict, and for the state's anomalous experience in Reconstruction. In the broader history of the war, the book reveals for the first time the nature of military mobilization in the antebellum United States.

This book follows the 7th Tennessee Infantry Regiment from their May 1861 mustering-in to the war's final moments at Appomattox in April 1865. It is an intensely personal account based upon the Tennesseans' letters, journals, memoirs, official reports, personnel records, and family histories. It is a powerful account of courage and sacrifice. The men (a full roster is included) changed from exhilarated volunteers to battle-hardened veterans. They had eagerly rushed to join up, ""anxious to confront the enemy on the battle front."" Later, amid the grim realities, the Tennesseans stayed with their comrades and carried out their responsibilities. Rifleman Tom Holloway wrote, ""I went into this measure with the conviction that it was my imperative duty."" Eventually, as the war destroyed the Tennesseans, Lt. Ferguson Harris wrote simply, ""I wonder who will be the last of us to go?

This is a documentary work offering a first-person account of a Union soldier's daily adversity while a prisoner of war from 20 September 1863 to 4 June 1865. In 1891, while a patient at the Leavenworth National Home, Irish immigrant Edward Glennan began to write down his experiences in vivid detail, describing the months of malnutrition, exposure, disease and self-doubt. The first six months Glennan was incarcerated at Libby and Danville prisons in Virginia. On 20 March 1864, Glennan entered Camp Sumter, located near Andersonville, Georgia. He reminisced about the events of his eight-month captivity at Andersonville, such as the hanging of the Raider Six, escape tunnels, gambling, trading, ration wagons, and disease. Afflicted with scurvy, Glennan nearly lost his ability to walk. To increase his chances for survival, he skillfully befriended other prisoners, sharing resources acquired through trade, theft and trickery. His friends left him either by parole or death. On 14 November 1864, Glennan was transported from Andersonville to Camp Parole in Maryland; there he remained until his discharge on 4 June 1865.

Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy when Virginia joined the Southern cause, marking the city as a prime target for the Union army. General McClellan was the first Union leader to lay siege to Richmond, and that was just the beginning. The attractive and genteel city of Richmond would be transformed into a refugee camp, a scene of riots, and a city-sized hospital before the war was over. Making use of diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts from the era, Wright brings readers face to face with the men and women who fought for the city, endured starvation, observed Lee's defeats and Grant's progress, and witnessed the Confederacy's last days.

This book sets out to analyse the schism in French public opinion during the Spanish Civil War that was to end in the tragic collapse of French national unity. It makes no claim to being a new history of the conflict, or even of the international events surrounding it. It touches only cursorily upon the events in Spain proper. It considers only tangentially French public opinion in regard to the two Spains. Instead, it examines how the French people viewed their position in the international imbroglio swirling around the Spanish question, and how news was manipulated as never before. And since opinion polls were inexistent and radio commentary had little influence, almost the only means of gauging public opinion is the press. Mainstream historical fact is presented merely as the skeleton on which French press reportage is grafted. Included in the historical material is the author's research in the archives of all five of the French departements bordering on Spain. Within the press, four areas predominate: editorial opinion; propaganda; French correspondents in Spain; and collateral events in France (frontier incidents, arms supplies, foreign volunteers, and espionage activities). The work is divided into two parts, the chronological hiatus coming in December 1936. This division is explained by the policy formulated by the democracies that went through no appreciable change; a policy sufficiently strong, perhaps, to deter the Axis powers from all-out intervention in Spain, but weak enough to allow them to pursue with impunity a victory by attrition. The periodic opening and closing of the French frontier played no decisive part in the outcome, since French aid to the Spanish Republic never came close to what the Axis provided the Nationalists. The book ends with the agony of the Republican exodus. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

The 115th New York began its military career as part of the largest surrender of U.S. troops to take place before World War II and ended its career as part of the largest successful amphibious landings of U.S. troops before World War II. In between, it travelled a fighting odyssey through the American Civil War that is unique among Union regiments. Not only did it fight mainly in theatres and battles unknown to all but the most serious Civil War student, but it endured mass arrest and banishment by its own army and a cabal of its own officers against its commander. In earning distinction as one of ""Fox's Fighting 300"" Union regiments, the 115th fought in obscure campaigns along the Southern coast, joined briefly in the famous combat between Grant and Lee in Virginia, fought alongside African American units, witnessed the liberation of thousands of slaves and captured Union soldiers, and ended up campaigning with William T. Sherman's western army. The soldiers of the 115th New York were common men from Saratoga County, the Mohawk Valley, and Adirondack Mountain areas of New York State. In telling their story, author Mark Silo utilizes the words and recollections left by sixty-seven of these men, as well as vast amounts of source material regarding the events and battles they experienced. The result, states National Park Service historian John J. Hennessy, is ""Truly exceptional... a woven story that is both excellent history and engaging narrative - an important chronicle of common men on an uncommon quest for survival and triumph.

The English Civil War was a time of disruption, suffering and persecution for many people, not least the clergy of the established church, who found themselves ejected from their livings in increasing numbers as Parliamentarian forces extended their control across the country. Yet, historians have tended to downplay their suffering, preferring in most cases to concentrate instead upon the persecution suffered by dissenters after the Restoration. Drawing upon an impressive array of sources - most notably the remarkable set of family and parish memories collected by John Walker in the early years of the eighteenth century - this book refocuses attention on the experiences of the sequestered loyalist clergy during the turbulent years of the 1640s and 1650s. The study highlights how the experiences of the clergy can help illuminate events in wider society, whilst at the same time acknowledging the unique situation in which Church of England ministers found themselves. For although the plundering, imprisonment and personal loss of the clergy was probably indicative of the experiences of many ordinary people on middle incomes, the ever present religious dimension to the conflict ensured particular attention was paid to those holding religious office. During the war and interregnum, zealous religious reformers attacked every aspect of established religion, targeting both existing institutions and those who supported them. Clergy were ejected on an unprecedented scale, suffering much violence and persecution and branded as 'malignants' and 'baal's priests'. By re-examining their history, the book offers a balanced assessment of the persecution, challenging many preconceptions about the ejected loyalists, and providing new insights into the experiences and legacies of this influential group.

This book is a study of an important regiment in the Civil War overlooked by most historians. Unlike most regiments, which came from rural areas of the country, the 14th Brooklyn was taken from the city of Brooklyn in the State of New York. Having been a militia unit until the outbreak of the war, they were quickly mobilized and they served in most of the major battles in the East. Their bravery in battle was noted by both friends and enemies and certainly by the military leadership on both sides. The book tells of both the military and personal side of fighting; the soldiers' letters home show their homesickness as well as their willingness to endure whatever was necessary to preserve what they believed was right. It shows the relationship between the men of the regiment and the people of Brooklyn, who because they were a militia unit, provided some of their supplies rather than the Federal government. This was particularly true of their distinctive uniforms modeled after the French Chasseur uniforms with bright red pants. The 14th kept these uniforms even after the Federal government standardized the Union uniform to the blue with which we are all familiar.

This book is about previously unidentified people who became Abolitionists involved in the antislavery movement from about 1840 to 1860. Although arrests were made in surrounding counties, not one person was prosecuted for aiding a fugitive slave in DeKalb County. First, the area Congregational, Universalist, Presbyterian and Wesleyan Methodist churches all had compelling antislavery beliefs. Church members, county elected officials, and the Underground Railroad conductors and stationmasters were all one and the same. Additionally, DeKalb County had the highest concentration of subscriptions to the Chicago-based Western Citizen antislavery newspaper. It was an accepted local activity to help escaped slaves. An addendum to the book includes evidence and personal information for over 600 men and women, plus their families, who defied the prevailing Fugitive Slave Law, and helped the antislavery movement in this one Northern Illinois county. This book documents their strong religious motivations and chronicles their moves to seek political redress. Unique photos and illustrations add interest to the compelling story.

This book contains never before published information, including artillery firing tables, for an Indiana infantry regiment converted to heavy artillery. It concentrates upon these Hoosiers' three-and-a-half years of duty in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and Gulf states during the Civil War, often as a separate command. They acted as infantry, cavalry and light artillery (with captured cannons) before being converted to heavy artillery in 1863. Their cannons and artillery equipment were hauled by hundreds of mules. The regiment participated in the taking of New Orleans, securing an important rail link to Morgan City, Louisiana, the Teche Campaign, the siege and reduction of Port Hudson, the Red River Campaign, and sieges and reductions of Fort Gaines, Fort Morgan, Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, Alabama.