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.

During the Civil War, 410,000 people were held as prisoners of war on both sides. With resources strained by the unprecedented number of prisoners, conditions in overcrowded prison camps were dismal, and the death toll across Confederate and Union prisons reached 56,000 by the end of the war. In an attempt to improve prison conditions, President Lincoln issued General Orders 100, which would become the basis for future attempts to define the rights of prisoners, including the Geneva conventions. Meanwhile, stories of horrific prison experiences fueled political agendas on both sides, and would define the memory of the war, as each region worked aggressively to defend its prison record and to honor its own POWs. Robins and Springer examine the experience, culture, and politics of captivity, including war crimes, disease, and the use of former prison sites as locations of historical memory. Transforming Civil War Prisons introduces students to an underappreciated yet crucial aspect of waging war and shows how the legacy of Civil War prisons remains with us today.

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century--but they've never been as intense as they are today. In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them and how a movement arose to force a reckoning. She lucidly shows the forces that drove white southerners to construct beacons of white supremacy, as well as the ways that antimonument sentiment, largely stifled during the Jim Crow era, returned with the civil rights movement and gathered momentum in the decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Monument defenders responded with gerrymandering and "heritage" laws intended to block efforts to remove these statues, but hard as they worked to preserve the Lost Cause vision of southern history, civil rights activists, Black elected officials, and movements of ordinary people fought harder to take the story back. Timely, accessible, and essential, No Common Ground is the story of the seemingly invincible stone sentinels that are just beginning to fall from their pedestals.

Robert P. Watson provides the definitive account of the Confederacy's infamous Libby Prison, site of the Civil War's largest prison break. Libby Prison housed Union officers, high-profile foes of the Confederacy, and political prisoners. Watson captures the wretched conditions, cruel guards, and the story of the daring prison break, called "the most remarkable in American history."

In the Civil War, both sides understood that closing the Souths ports would halt the introduction of war matriel to the industrially weak region. Though the North captured New Orleans in 1862, they did not attack the Confederate navy in Mobile Bay or the city of Mobile, Alabama, until 1864. The two-year delay allowed much needed supplies to enter the Confederacy and changed the face of the ensuing Mobile Campaign, as technological advances in ships submarines, mines and fortification made a striking difference in the fighting. This book examines the politics, preparations, leaders, and battles that made the Mobile Campaign a microcosm of the overall conduct of the Civil War.

Christian Samito writes in his introduction: "In reading Guiney's words, one can have a fuller appreciation of what motivated civilians to volunteer to fight a war and of the privations they suffered in service to their country." These are the collected Civil War letters of Patrick Robert Guiney, an Irish immigrant from Country Tipperary who relocated to Boston, Massachusetts. When the Civil War broke out, Guiney volunteered to defend the Union and, quickly rose from First Lieutenant to Colonel, to command the ninth Massachusetts regiment. A fervent supporter of Lincoln and passionately opposed to slavery, Guiney felt that, in his service to his new country, he was doing his part to gain freedom for the slaves. Being politically outspoken, Guiney was often criticized for his views by other Irish-Americans. His letters reveal not only the experiences and thoughts of an Irish Catholic soldier, but also the hidden tensions within his immigrant community. His views and observations not only illuminate his personal independence of thought, but also the political landscape which he tried to improve.

Wars do not end with peace. When America's Civil War was over it set the stage for another, more enduring conflict, as a fractured society confronted the lingering psychological consequences that followed the four brutal years of deprivation, distrust, and death. The enemy was intangible, lurking in the minds of the war's survivors. Like any great conflict, the battles raged back and forth, as the war weary fought the mental demons. Silenced by stigma and shame, the suffering of the War's survivors surfaced in statistics as the rates of depression, suicide, insanity, crime, and cults climbed. For others, alcohol abuse or a morally suitable misuse of patent medicines relieved the daily distress. Dispirited and distrustful survivors spurned traditional religion and medical practice and sought solace from shady spiritualists and duplicitous doctors dispensing phony panaceas. Epic battles fought across America's landscape inspired countless books on the guts and glory of war but the lingering emotional consequences of conflict are neither glamorous nor visible, making this book unique in its comprehensive coverage of an often ignored cost of conflict.

Alan T. Nolan is one of our most esteemed historians of the Civil War. His classic history The Iron Brigade was chosen as one of the "100 best books ever written on the Civil War" by Civil War Times Illustrated. His articles have appeared in such publications as The American Historical Review, Gettysburg Magazine, Civil War, Civil War Times Illustrated, Indiana Magazine of History, and Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and he has been awarded the Nevins-Freeman award by the Chicago Civil War Round Table. Nolan is not the typical Civil-War historian. That he is a top-notch historian, no one can deny. But his legal training at Harvard, his career in the law, and his many years as an officer of the Indiana Historical Society have given him remarkable insights not imaginable by other historians. This new collection of previously published material celebrates Nolan's life-long research and study of the Civil War. Included are essays on the Iron Brigade, Gettysburg, and leaders such as Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, John Gibbon, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Central to all of the essays is Nolan's admiration for the valor of the common soldier and his conviction that the War was neither romantic nor glorious, though its results emancipation and the maintenance of the Union were surely monumental.

This is the story of the men who fought and died in the 72nd New York Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War. Part of Dan Sickles' famed Excelsior Brigade, the 72nd N.Y. served in all the major actions associated with the III Corps, losing one-fourth or more of the regiment in three different engagements. The 72nd New York Infantry in the Civil War is a ""brogans-up"" view of the war told in the words of the men who were there. Drawing on soldier's letters, diaries, memoirs (many unpublished or obscure) and official reports, this work follows these men from the exciting beginnings of recruitment, the boredom and frustrations of life policing the secessionist countryside of Southern Maryland, through to the eventual disbanding of the regiment in July of 1864 after being bled white at Williamsburg, The Peninsula, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and the Overland Campaign. The final chapter offers a brief account of many of the men's lives following the war. Included in the work are photographs, period illustrations, maps and an organisational chart. Additionally the roster is arranged by company with chronology of officers' service. This work is fully indexed with complete citations and bibliography.

Few 19th-century Americans were as adventurous as Henry Baxter. Best known for his Civil War exploits-from leading the 7th Michigan Volunteer Infantry across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg in the first daylight amphibious assault in American history, to his defense of the Union line on day one of Gettysburg-he accomplished these despite having no prewar military training. His heroism and leadership propelled him from officer of volunteers to major general in the Army of the Potomac. A New York emigrant from a prominent family, Baxter was involved in developing Michigan's political, business and educational foundations. He excelled at enterprise, leading a group of adventurers to California during the Gold Rush, co-founding what would become the Republican Party and eventually becoming President Grant's diplomat to Honduras during one of the most dynamic periods of Central American history. His story parallels Michigan's transition from territory to state and the United States' transformation from a divided republic into a fledgling world power.

Drawing on records of about 5,500 soldiers and veterans, Shades of Green traces the organization of Irish regiments from the perspective of local communities in Connecticut, Illinois, and Wisconsin and the relationships between soldiers and the home front. Research on the impact of the Civil War on Irish Americans has traditionally fallen into one of two tracks, arguing that the Civil War either further alienated Irish immigrants from American society or that military service in defense of the Union offered these men a means of assimilation. In this study of Irish American service, Ryan W. Keating argues that neither paradigm really holds, because many Irish Americans during this time already considered themselves to be assimilated members of American society. This comprehensive study argues that the local community was often more important to ethnic soldiers than the imagined ethnic community, especially in terms of political, social, and economic relationships. An analysis of the Civil War era from this perspective provides a much clearer understanding of immigrant place and identity during the nineteenth century. With a focus on three regiments not traditionally studied, the author provides a fine-grained analysis revealing that ethnic communities, like other types of communities, are not monolithic on a national scale. Examining lesser-studied communities, rather than the usual those of New York City and Boston, Keating brings the local back into the story of Irish American participation in the Civil War, thus adding something new and valuable to the study of the immigrant experience in America's bloodiest conflict. Throughout this rich and groundbreaking study, Keating supports his argument through advanced quantitative analysis of military-service records and an exhaustive review of a massive wealth of raw data; his use of quantitative methods on a large dataset is an unusual and exciting development in Civil War studies. Shades of Green is sure to "shake up" several fields of study that rely on ethnicity as a useful category for analysis; its impressive research provides a significant contribution to scholarship.

This book looks at how Muslims in Spain have changed legislation linked to religious pluralism and immigration and have fortified Spain's frail history and practice of democracy since 1975. Spanish Muslims have achieved this through active civil engagement and a persistent struggle for rights and for status as immigrants and as citizens on par with ethnic Spaniards. Muslims have interacted with Spanish popular traditions, challenged Eurocentric historical narratives, and used Spanish concepts such as convivencia (peaceful coexistence) and arraigo (rootedness) to expand the prevailing construction of belonging. The Muslim struggle for civil rights took off in earnest in Melilla--with its historic ties to the Islamic Kingdom of Fez up to 1497--between 1985 and 1988, when Muslim residents questioned nativist control of the enclave. Subsequently, from 1989 to 2001, on mainland Spain, Muslims formed independent organizations, pushed for national regularization of undocumented residents, and proposed modifications to immigration laws. A primary focus of the book is on how devout Muslims lobbied to institutionalize Islam in Spain, fought for the right to construct mosques despite heavy nativist resistance, and balanced women's rights in the Muslim community and broader secular context. The author also examines the ways that Muslims have interrogated the memory of the Moor in Spanish history and in popular festivals, such as the Festival of Moors and Christians, and how this has played out in regions with strong nationalist traditions, such as Catalonia. The book concludes with a survey of the writings of Muslim immigrants in Spanish and in Catalan, and how these works have publicized the everyday experience of migration in Spain.

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.

In July 1864, while hemmed in by Grant at Richmond, General Robert E. Lee conceived a bold plan designed not only to relieve Lynchburg and protect the Confederate supply line but also to ultimately make a bold move on Washington itself. A major facet of this plan, with the addition of General Jubal Early's forces, became the rescue of the almost 15,000 Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, a large Union prison camp at the confluence of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. This volume takes an in-depth look at Lee's audacious plan, from the circumstances surrounding its inception, simultaneous cavalry and amphibious attacks on Point Lookout, and its somewhat ironic finale. With international recognition hanging in the balance for the Confederacy, the failure of Lee's plan saved the Union and ultimately changed the course of the war.This work focuses on the many factors that contributed to this eventual failure, including Early's somewhat inexplicable hesitancy, a significant loss of time for Confederate troops en route, and aggressive defensive action by Union General Lew Wallace. It also discusses the various circumstances such as Washington's stripped defenses, the potential release of imprisoned Southern troops and a breakdown of Union military intelligence that made Lee's gamble a brilliant, well-founded strategy.

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.

This is the first full-length biography of the Civil War general who saved the Union army from catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, and went on to play major roles in the Chattanooga and Mobile campaigns. Immediately after the war, as commander of U.S. troops in Texas, his actions sparked the "Juneteenth" celebrations of slavery's end, which continue to this day. Granger's first battle was at Wilson's Creek, Missouri, and he soon thereafter rose through the ranks - cavalry, then infantry - in early 1863 vying with Forrest and Van Dorn for control of central Tennessee. The artillery platform he erected at Franklin, dubbed Fort Granger, would soon overlook the death knell of the main Confederate army in the west. Granger's first fame, however, came at Chickamauga, when the Rebel Army of Tennessee came within a hair's-breadth of destroying the Union Army of the Cumberland. Without orders - even defying them - Granger marched his Reserve Corps to the scene of the hottest action, where Thomas was just barely holding on with the rump of Rosecrans' army. Bringing fresh ammunition and hurling his men against Longstreet's oncoming legions, Granger provided just enough breathing space to prevent that Union defeat from becoming the worst open-field battle disgrace of the war. Granger was then given command of a full infantry corps, but just proved too odd a fellow to promote further. At Chattanooga he got on the nerves of U.S. Grant for going off to shoot cannon instead of commanding his troops (he'd actually indulged this impulse also at Chickamauga) and Sherman had no use for him either. So he went down to join Farragut in the conquest of Mobile, Alabama, leading land operations against the Confederate forts. This long-overdue biography sheds fascinating new light on a colourful commander who fought through the war in the West from its first major battles to its last, and even left his impact on the Reconstruction beyond.

Soon after North Carolina seceded from the Union in May 1861, Jacob Nathaniel Raymer enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private and musician and was mustered in on June 7, 1861, pledged to serve the duration of the war. A young man with a talent for keen observation who had pledged to keep those back home informed of the movements of Company C and the Fourth Regiment, he faithfully wrote letters - often signed simply as 'Nat' - to the ""Carolina Watchman"" and the ""Iredell Express"", newspapers published in Statesville, North Carolina.In his capacity as an embedded journalist, Raymer witnessed and chronicled the great battles of the Civil War, including Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and, finally, Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Unlike other contemporary correspondence, rather than being directed to an individual, Nat's letters were intended for the broader audience of area newspapers readers and portrayed the dogged determination of the southern soldiers in a descriptive style whose sense of immediacy functioned to bring the war and all its harsh realities home to his readers. The collection is transcribed primarily from the two newspapers and is complemented by brief narratives that place the letters within the Fourth Regiment's movements. Raymer's postwar experience is also documented through his personal correspondence, which follows him back home and to his eventual settlement in Texas, where he died in 1909 at age 72.

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.

The epic life story of a schoolteacher and preacher in Missouri, guerrilla fighter in the Civil War, Congressman, freethinking lecturer and author, and anarchist. A former Methodist preacher and Missouri schoolteacher, John R. Kelso served as a Union Army foot soldier, cavalry officer, guerrilla fighter, and spy. Kelso became driven by revenge after pro-Southern neighbors stole his property, burned down his house, and drove his family and friends from their homes. He vowed to kill twenty-five Confederates with his own hands and, often disguised as a rebel, proceeded to track and kill unsuspecting victims with "wild delight." The newspapers of the day reported on his feats of derring-do, as the Union hailed him as a hero and Confederate sympathizers called him a monster. Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso is an account of an extraordinary nineteenth-century American life. During Reconstruction, Kelso served in the House of Representatives and was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Personal tragedy then drove him west, where he became a freethinking lecturer and author, an atheist, a spiritualist, and, before his death in 1891, an anarchist. Kelso was also a strong-willed son, a passionate husband, and a loving and grieving father. The Civil War remained central to his life, challenging his notions of manhood and honor, his ideals of liberty and equality, and his beliefs about politics, religion, morality, and human nature. Throughout his life, too, he fought private wars-not only against former friends and alienated family members, rebellious students and disaffected church congregations, political opponents and religious critics, but also against the warring impulses in his own character. In Christopher Grasso's hands, Kelso's life story offers a unique vantage on dimensions of nineteenth-century American culture that are usually treated separately: religious revivalism and political anarchism; sex, divorce, and Civil War battles; freethinking and the Wild West. A complex figure and passionate, contradictory, and prolific writer, John R. Kelso here receives a full telling of his life for the first time.

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.

"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.

The 10th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry waged battle for the Union for three years during the Civil War, ranging from its home state to Atlanta. This work is filled with personal accounts, including 25 war-time letters written by the men of the regiment, and official records of the regiment's activities, which included action at Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge. The regiment began the war with 867 men, suffered a 40-percent casualty rate at Chickamauga, and helped break Confederate lines at Jonesboro. At the end of the war only 140 men staggered home in victory. This title features more than 60 photos, 14 maps, rosters and descriptions of the unit's soldiers.

This lavishly illustrated, richly detailed book presents, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of Minnesota's contribution to the nation's epic struggle during the Civil War. From diaries and letters, diaries and newspaper accounts, the words of the men who fought convey the terror of battle, the drudgery of marching, the fear of death, and the honour of camaraderie. In addition to the extensive use of first-hand accounts of the war, this book contains many seldom-seen contemporary photographs, portraits and artefacts drawn from the Minnesota Historical Society's outstanding collections.

A dashing young orator during the Great Hunger of the 1840s, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony for life. But two years later he was "back from the dead" and in New York, instantly the most famous Irishman in America. Meagher's rebirth included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War. Afterward, he tried to build a new Ireland in the wild west of Montana - a quixotic adventure that ended in the great mystery of his disappearance, which Egan resolves convincingly at last.

This regimental history follows the 111th New York Volunteer Infantry's service from muster through victory. Drawing on many first-hand accounts and primary sources, it provides details on the towns from which the regiment was organized and the backgrounds of the men who served in its ranks. Battles in which the regiment fought, including Harpers Ferry, Gettysburg and Petersburg, are covered in detail, with close unit-level coverage as well as information on the overall strategy and the regiment's place in the greater conflict. An appendix covers in depth the October 1864 capture of 83 111th soldiers by the Confederacy and their subsequent imprisonment, during which many died from hunger and disease.