First published in 1907, Military Memoirs of a Confederate is regarded by many historians as one of the most important and dispassionate first-hand general accounts of the American Civil War. Unlike some other Confederate memoirists, General Edward Porter Alexander had no use for bitter "Lost Cause" theories to explain the South's defeat. Alexander was willing to objectively evaluate and criticize prominent Confederate officers, including Robert E. Lee. The result is a clear-eyed assessment of the long, bloody conflict that forged a nation. The memoir opens with Alexander, recently graduated from West Point, heading to Utah to tamp down the hostile actions of Mormons who had refused to receive a territorial governor appointed by President Buchanan. A few years later, Alexander finds himself on the opposite side of a much larger rebellion this time aligned with Confederates bent on secession from the Union. In the years that follow, he is involved in most of the major battles of the East, including Manassas, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga. Alexander describes each battle and battlefield in sharp detail. Few wartime narratives offer the insight and objectivity of Alexander's Military Memoirs of a Confederate . Civil war buffs and students of American history have much to learn from this superb personal narrative. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Edward Wild, the controversial Union general who headed the all-black African Brigade in the Civil War, was one of the most loved and most hated figures of the 19th century. The man was neither understood nor appreciated by military or civilian, black or white, Northerner or Southerner. After enlisting at the outbreak of the war, Wild was promoted to Brigadier General and placed in charge of the United States Colored Troops. In fulfilling his assignment to free slaves and gain recruits, he took three women as hostages and ordered a great deal of property destruction. He freed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of slaves and settled them safely on Roanoke Island. Wild then not only recruited the newly freed blacks, but trained them and gave them the opportunity to prove their worth in battle. Nobody, it seems, was happy about serving with them, but the African Brigade performed courageously in several battles. Wild did some inexplicable things. Were his actions typical of the 19th century or did he act outside the norm? Was the criticism he suffered from his fellow Union officers valid - or was it due to personality conflicts? Did he deserve to be arrested, court-marshalled, and even wiped from the history books - or was he the victim of discrimination? This work draws its answers from extensive research and includes many rare letters to and from Wild, including one from one of the North Carolinian hostages.

This is a coordinated presentation of the economic basis of revolutionary change in 16th- and early-17th century England, addressing a crucial but neglected phase of historical development. It traces a transformation in the agrarian economy and substantiates the decisive scale on which this took place, showing how the new forms of occupation and practice on the land related to seminal changes in the general dynamics of commercial activity. An integrated, self-regulating national market generated new imperatives, particularly a demand for a right of freedom of trade from arbitrary exactions and restraints. This took political force through the special status that rights of consent had acquired in England, based on the rise of sovereign representative law following the Break with Rome. These associations were reflected in a distinctive merchant-gentry alliance, seeking to establish freedom of trade and representative control of public finance, through parliament. This produced a persistent challenge to royal prerogatives such as impositions from 1610 onwards. Parliamentary provision, especially legislation, came to be seen as essential to good government. These ambitions led to the first revolutionary measures of the Long Parliament in early 1641, establishing automatic parliaments and the normative force of freedom of trade.

The period 1642-1651, one of the most turbulent in the history of mainland Britian, saw the country torn by civil wars. Focusing on the English and Welsh wars this book examines the causes, course and consequences of the conflicts. While offering a concise military account that assesses the wars in their national, regional and local contexts, Dr Gaunt provides a full appraisal of the severity of the wars and the true extent of the impact on civilian life, highlighting areas of continued historical debate. The personal experiences and biographies of key players are also included in this comprehensive and fascinating account.

Capital, Labor, and State is a systematic and thorough examination of American labor policy from the Civil War to the New Deal. David Brian Robertson skillfully demonstrates that although most industrializing nations began to limit employer freedom and regulate labor conditions in the 1900s, the United States continued to allow total employer discretion in decisions concerning hiring, firing, and workplace conditions. Robertson argues that the American constitution made it much more difficult for the American Federation of Labor, government, and business to cooperate for mutual gain as extensively as their counterparts abroad, so that even at the height of New Deal, American labor market policy remained a patchwork of limited protections, uneven laws, and poor enforcement, lacking basic national standards even for child labor.

Avenging Lincoln's Death: The Trial of John Wilkes Booth's Accomplices is an examination of the 1865 military commission trial of eight alleged accomplices of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin who murdered President Abraham Lincoln. The book analyzes the trial transcript and other relevant evidence relating to the guilt of Booth's alleged accomplices, as well as a careful application of basic constitutional law principles to the jurisdiction of the military commission and the fundamental fairness of the trial. The author found that the military commission trial was unconstitutional and unfair because Congress never authorized trial by military commission for these eight civilians. President Johnson exceeded the scope of his authority as commander in chief by ordering the accomplices to be tried by military commission. He failed to follow the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863 that required him to turn over the alleged accomplices to civilian authorities for prosecution. The accomplices were convicted on perjured testimony and the Government was allowed to drag in unrelated evidence of Confederate atrocities to poison the minds of the panel of officers.

The war is over, but in this world made for men can she carve her own path? 'A richly detailed historical drama' USA Today 1865. The American Civil War has just ended. When Vita Tenney's father tells her she must abandon her dream of becoming a doctor and get married instead, she looks for a means of escape - and finds one in war veteran Jacob Culhane. Damaged by what he's seen in battle and with all his family gone, Jacob is seeking a new start. Then he meets Vita and together they hatch a plan. But even the best plans have unexpected consequences . . . Sweeping and atmospheric, The Physician's Daughter is a compelling story of ambition, betrayal and love and of two people trying to make their way in a world that is struggling to escape its past. 'Vividly realised, and impeccably researched, with a determined female lead' Kayte Nunn, author of The Botanist's Daughter 'Historical fiction at its best' Tracy Rees, author of The Rose Garden Readers love The Physician's Daughter 'For women who decide not to take "no" as the final answer' 'Exceptionally detailed and atmospheric' 'A page turner . . . I read it in a day' 'A must for all fans of historical drama' 'Phenomenal'

Civil War officer, Reconstruction "carpetbagger," best-selling novelist, and relentless champion of equal rights, Albion Tourgee battled his entire life for racial justice. Now, in this engaging biography, Mark Elliott offers an insightful portrait of a fearless lawyer, jurist, and writer, who fought for equality long after most Americans had abandoned the ideals of Reconstruction. Elliott provides a fascinating account of Tourgee's life, from his childhood in the Western Reserve region of Ohio (then a hotbed of abolitionism), to his years as a North Carolina judge during Reconstruction, to his memorable role as lead plaintiff's counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. Tourgee's brief coined the phrase that justice should be "color-blind," and his career was one long campaign to made good on that belief. A redoubtable lawyer and an accomplished jurist, Tourgee wrote fifteen political novels, eight books of historical and social criticism, and several hundred newspaper and magazine articles that all told represent a mountain of dissent against the prevailing tide of racial oppression. Through the lens of Tourgee's life, Elliott illuminates the war of ideas about race that raged through the United States in the nineteenth century, from the heated debate over slavery before the Civil War, through the conflict over aid to freedmen during Reconstruction, to the backlash toward the end of the century, when Tourgee saw his country retreat from the goals of equality and freedom and utterly repudiate the work of Reconstruction. A poignant and inspiring study in courage and conviction, Color Blind Justice offers us an unforgettable portrayal of Albion Tourgee and the principles to which he dedicated his life.

The relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his two most influential ancestors, his mother and "the Virginia planter," a slaveholder, a shadowy grandfather he likely never met, is rarely mentioned in Lincoln biographies or in history texts. However, Lincoln, forever linked to the cause of freedom and equality in America, spoke candidly of the planter to his law partner, Billy Herndon, who recalled his words, "My mother inherited his qualities and I hers. All that I am or ever hope to be I get from my mother-God bless her." This vital two-generation relationship was nonetheless problematic. In Lincoln's boyhood the planter was a figure he ridiculed while in his young manhood the planter evolved into a role model whom Lincoln revered and associated with Jefferson's overdue ideal that "all men are created equal." Thus galvanized "by blood" to educate himself, to stand for election and to oppose slavery, Lincoln quit farming at age 22. This book explains how he thus followed an inherited family dream.

Leading historians from around the world have been commissioned to write 42 accessible and definitive guides to every major war throughout history, with an emphasis on the people who fought and the impact on the world at large. Eyewitness accounts are used to give a soldier's-eye view of the conflict and expose the reality of the battlefield. Illustrated with colour photographs and maps throughout, Essential Histories will provide for a deepened understanding of the nature of war and human history.

In the wake of the firing on Fort Sumter, outraged Northerners looked forward to a quick and decisive victory over the Confederate rebels. But after the First Battle of Bull Run it became clear to supporters of the Union that the Civil War would be prolonged and deadly. How Northern society mobilized to fight this first great modern war is the subject of J. Matthew Gallman's perceptive history. Drawing on a wide range of up-to-date scholarship and addressing the issues from a fresh perspective, his book fills a surprising void in Civil War literature. Gallman's focus is on continuity and change what traditions the North relied on in preparing for war, and what adjustments it made in its behavior and institutions. From his analysis it seems clear that the Civil War was not the great watershed in political, economic, and social development that is often supposed. Gallman's investigation of the status of women and blacks, for example, shows that wartime gains, if significant for a few, were on the whole decidedly modest. And while "total war" came to the battlefield in a frightening manner, its impact on the Northern home front was far less certain. American Ways Series."

This book offers a unique firsthand account of the experiences of a teenage officer in America's Civil War. Second Lieutenant Thomas James Howell was only seventeen years old when he received his commission to serve the 3rd New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Featuring sixty-five letters that Howell wrote home to his family, this book describes soldier life in the Army of the Potomac during the spring and summer of 1862, focusing on Howell's experiences during Major General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. Howell's letters tell the story of a young man coming of age in the army. He wrote to his mother and siblings about the particular challenges he faced in seeking to earn the respect of both the men he commanded and his superiors. Unfortunately, however, the young lieutenant's life was cut short in his very first combat experience when he was struck in the abdomen by a cannonball and nearly torn in two during the Battle of Gaines' Mill. This book records Howell's tragic story, and it traces his distinctive perception of the Civil War as a vehicle enabling him to transition into manhood and to prove his masculinity.

Hoping to deter the Union navy from aggressive action on southern waterways during the Civil War, the Confederacy led the way in developing torpedoes, a term that in the nineteenth century referred to contact mines floating on or just below the water's service. With this book, two little-known but important manuscripts related to these valuable weapons become available for the first time. General Gabriel J. Rains, director of the Confederate Torpedo Bureau, penned his Torpedo Book as a manual for the fabrication and use of land mines and offensive and defensive water mines. With 21 scale drawings, Notes Explaining Rebel Torpedoes and Ordnance by Captain Peter S. Michie documents from the Federal perspective the construction and use of these infernal machines. A detailed accounting, by the editor, of the vessels sunk or damaged by Confederate torpedoes and numerous photographs of existing specimens from museums and private collections complete this significant compilation.

The Confederacy had a great opportunity to turn the Civil War in its favor in 1864, but squandered this chance when it failed to finish off a Union army cornered in Louisiana because of concerns about another Union army coming south from Arkansas. The Confederates were so confused that they could not agree on a course of action to contend with both threats, thus the Union offensive advancing from Arkansas saved the one in Louisiana and became known to history as the Camden Expedition. The Camden Expedition is intriguing because of the "might-have-beens" had the key players made different decisions. The author contends that if Frederick Steele, commander of the Federal VII Army Corps, had not received a direct order from General Ulysses S. Grant to move south, disaster would have befallen not only the Army of the Gulf in Louisiana but the entire Union cause, and possibly would have prevented Abraham Lincoln from winning reelection.

"The best regiment of either army, North or South"--this was the description of Cobb's Legion offered by Confederate General Wade Hampton during the Civil War. This large and experienced unit played a crucial role for the South throughout the war. Their actions in more than 130 battles and other engagements over the course of the war are the subject of this book. Additionally, biographies of the officers and the nearly 1500 men of the regiment are included, as well as records of those who died, deserted, or were prisoners of war.

Thomas J. Wood, Kentuckian, graduated fifth in his West Point class in 1846 and joined the staff of General Zachary Taylor. The Mexican War was just beginning and Wood fought in several battles after which he served under General Winfield Scott in Mexico City. In 1861, Wood became a brigadier general of volunteers and began his Civil War service with the Army of the Cumberland, with whom he fought in every campaign and most of its major battles. Wood has never before been the subject of a full length biography but is well known for a notorious lapse of judgment resulting in a Confederate breakthrough at Chickamauga that shattered the Union right flank and threatened the survival of the Army of the Cumberland. It is a moment in the war still argued about. Wood learned from his mistake, became a better general from that time on (notably at Missionary Ridge and Nashville), and redeemed himself in the eyes of his fellow officers and his civilian superiors.

Previous histories of the press in the American Civil War have focused on how journalists covered military operations. Taking a cultural approach, this book is unique in its focus on the press as a social, political, and economic institution that both shaped and was shaped by the Confederacy's experience in the Civil War. It expertly documents how the press changed, how it stayed the same, and how it evolved by examining the role of the press in Confederate society, social and demographic characteristics of journalists and their audiences, legal regulation of the industry, and how the war influenced the business side of journalism as well as the editorial. The story of the Confederate press provides a prime opportunity to study how a domestic war affects the American press. By examining the actors as well as the roles, it is possible to draw a more complete picture of the place of the press in the Confederacy and how the war influenced Southern newspapers.

During the Civil War women did a lot more than keep the home fires burning. Expanding on his pioneering ""Patriots in Disguise"", Richard Hall has now produced the most accurate and up-to-date survey available of women who were determined to serve their nation in that time of crisis. Drawing on a wealth of regimental histories, newspaper archives, and a host of previously unreported accounts, Hall shows that women served in more capacities and in greater number - perhaps several thousand - than has previously been known. They served in the infantry, cavalry, and artillery and as spies, scouts, saboteurs, smugglers, and frontline nurses. From all walks of life, they followed husbands and lovers into battle, often in male disguise that remained undiscovered until they were wounded (or gave birth), and endured the same hardships and dangers as did their male counterparts. Hall presents the most complete portrait yet available of these courageous women - including Sarah Bradbury, Lizzie Compton, Frances Hook, and Confederate spy Loreta Janeta Velazquez - many of whom earned the praise of the male soldiers they served with and rose through the ranks to become sergeants, even officers. Through his investigation of specific case histories, he has authenticated many previously undocumented reports while debunking myths and exposing previously published errors about the subject. The book also includes a biographical directory of nearly 400 women participants and dozens of Civil War documents attesting to women's role in the war. As a new synthesis and critical appraisal, ""Women on the Civil War Battlefront"" is a richly anecdotal work that unearths a hidden history and opens a new window on women's lives in the nineteenth century. These women were determined to serve, and Hall's research confirms that they did so in significant numbers - and with distinction.

Most Americans believe that the Ohio River was a clearly defined and static demographic and political boundary between North and South, an extension of the Mason-Dixon Line. Once settled, the new states west of the Appalachians - the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri and of the free states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas - formed a fixed boundary between freedom and slavery, extending the border that inevitably produced the war. None of this is true, except perhaps the outcome of war. But the centrality of the Civil War and its outcome in the making of these tropes is undeniable. Historian Christopher Phillips contests the assumption that regional identities throughout the "Middle Border" states were stable in the era of the Civil War. States such as Missouri and Kentucky tended to identify as more western than southern during the first half of the nineteenth century. Conversely, much of the population of the lower Midwestern states of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana had stronger cultural, economic, and political ties to slave states than to New England or the Middle Atlantic. But across the region the Civil War left an indelible imprint on the way in which residents thought of themselves and other Americans, proving as much a shaper as a product of regional identities. A sweeping argument employing a strong narrative, telling vignettes, and the voices of regional and national figures, this book makes a major contribution to Civil War history and to American history on a broader scale.

A chronicle of Civil War activity in Florida, both land and sea maneuvers. For each engagement the author includes excerpts from official government reports by officers on both sides of the battle lines. Also a guide to Civil War sites you can visit. Includes photos and maps.

Sites include:

Fort Pickens, Natural Bridge Battlefield State Historic Site, Fort Clinch State Park, Olustee Battlefield, Suwannee River State Park, Castillo de San Marcos, Bronson-Mulholland House, Cedar Key Island Hotel, Gamble Plantation, Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site, Fort Zachary Taylor State Historic Site, Fort Jefferson State Historic Site

The American Civil War: A Literary and Historical Anthology brings together a wide variety of important writings from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, including short fiction, poetry, public addresses, memoirs, and essays, accompanied by detailed annotations and concise introductions. Now in a thoroughly revised second edition, this slimmer volume has been revamped to: Emphasize a diversity of perspectives on the war Showcase more women writers Expand the number of Southern voices Feature more soldiers' testimony Provide greater historical context. With selections from Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Sidney Lanier, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Kate Chopin, and many more, Ian Finseth's careful arrangement of texts remains an indispensable resource for readers who seek to understand the impact of the Civil War on the culture of the United States. The American Civil War reaffirms the complex role that literature, poetry, and non-fiction played in shaping how the conflict is remembered. To provide students with additional resources, the anthology is now accompanied by a companion website which you can find at [insert URL]. There you will find additional primary sources, a detailed timeline, and an extensive bibliography, among other materials.

Jewish Imaginaries of the Spanish Civil War inaugurates a new field of research in literary and Jewish studies at the intersection of Jewish history and the internationalist cultural phenomenon emerging from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Republican exile, and the Shoah. With the Spanish Civil War as a point of departure, this volume proposes a definition of Jewish textualities based on the entanglement of multiple poetic modes. Through the examination of a variety of narrative fiction and non-fiction, memoir, poetry, epistles, journalism, and music in Yiddish, Spanish, French, German, and English, these essays unveil non-canonic authors across the West and explore these works in the context of antisemitism, orientalism, and philo-Sephardism, among other cultural phenomena. Jewish writings from the war have much to tell about the encounter between old traditions and new experimentations, framed by urgency, migration, and messianic hope. They offer perspectives on memorial and post-memorial literatures triggered by transhistorical imagination, and many were written against the grain of canonic literature, where subtle forms of dissidence, manifested through language, structure, sound, and thought, sought to tune with the anti-fascist fight. This book revindicates the polyglossia of Jewish cultures and literatures in the context of genocide and epistemicide and proposes to remember the cultural phenomena produced by the Spanish Civil War, demanding a new understanding of the cosmopolitan imaginaries in Jewish literature.

Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War charts the way the English civil war of the 1640s mutated into a revolution, in turn paving the way for the later execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy. Focusing on parliament's most militant supporters, David Como reconstructs the origins and nature of the most radical forms of political and religious agitation that erupted during the war, tracing the process by which these forms gradually spread and gained broader acceptance. Drawing on a wide range of manuscript and print sources, the study situates these developments within a revised narrative of the period, revealing the emergence of new practices and structures for the conduct of politics. In the process, the book illuminates the eruption of many of the period's strikingly novel intellectual currents, including assumptions and practices we today associate with western representative democracy; notions of retained natural rights, religious toleration, freedom of the press, and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment. The study also chronicles the way that civil war shattered English protestantism - leaving behind myriad competing groupings, including congregationalists, baptists, antinomians, and others - while examining the relationship between this religious fragmentation and political change. It traces the gradual appearance of openly anti-monarchical, republican sentiment among parliament's supporters. Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War provides a new history of the English civil war, enhancing our understanding of the dramatic events of the 1640s, and shedding light on the long-term political and religious consequences of the conflict.

" While Father is Away reveals the intimate story of a British-American's role in the American Civil War. William Bradbury's letters home provide a rare window on the unique relationships among husband, wife, and children while a father was away at war. Yorkshire attorney turned Union volunteer soldier Bradbury became a "privileged private" with extraordinary access to powerful Union generals including Daniel Butterfield, future president Benjamin Harrison, and Clinton B. Fisk, the region's administrator for the Freedmen's Bureau during Reconstruction. The letters also provide an in-depth look at this driven land speculator and manager for the Atchison Topeka Santa Fe Railway. As a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and the Manchester Guardian, Bradbury was both eyewitness to and participant in the shaping of events in the world as it moved west.