Drawing upon original sources and published material, A Distant War Comes Home is a fascinating survey of the many individual stories that linked Maine with the war hundreds of miles away.

The American Civil War (1861-65) was the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century and its impact continues to be felt today. It, and its origins have been studied more intensively than any other period in American history, yet it remains profoundly controversial. Brian Holden Reid's formidable volume is a major contribution to this ongoing historical debate. Based on a wealth of primary research, it examines every aspect of the origins of the conflict and addresses key questions such as was it an avoidable tragedy, or a necessary catharsis for a divided nation? How far was slavery the central issue? Why should the conflict have errupted into violence and why did it not escalate into world war?

A Confusion of Tongues examines the complex interaction of religion, history, and law in the period before the outbreak of the wars of the Three Kingdoms. It questions interpretations of that conflict that emphasise either the purely doctrinal roots of religious tension, or the processes by which the law gained primacy over the Church, in what amounted to a secular revolution. Instead, religion took its place among a range of constitutional issues that undermined the authority of Charles I in both England and Scotland. Charles Prior offers a careful reconstruction of a number of printed debates on the nature of the relationship of church and realm: the introduction of altars into the Church of England; the Scottish National Covenant; and the legal consequences of the assertion of clerical power in a system of ecclesiastical courts. He reveals that these debates were concerned with the ambiguities of the relationship of civil and ecclesiastical power that were contained in the statutes that carved out the Church 'by law established'. Instead of being clearly separated as part of an 'Erastian' Reformation, religion and law were bound together in complex ways, and debates on the relationship of church and realm emerged as a vital conduit of political and constitutional thought. A Confusion of Tongues offers a synthetic and nuanced portrait of the politics of religion, and recovers the texture of contemporary debate at a vital point in early modern British history.

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.

Born into a Sephardic Jewish immigrant family, Dr. Issachar Zacharie was the preeminent foot doctor for the American political elite before and during the Civil War. An expert in pain management, Zacharie treated the likes of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, General George McClelland and most notably, President Abraham Lincoln. As Zacharie's professional and personal relationship with Lincoln deepened, the President began to entrust the doctor with political missions. Throughout Lincoln's presidency, Zacharie traveled to southern cities like New Orleans and Richmond in efforts to ally with some of the Confederacy's most influential Jewish citizens. This biography explores Dr. Zacharie's life, from his birth in Chatham, England, through his medical practice, espionage career and eventual political campaigning for President Lincoln.

During the Civil War, scoundrels from both the Union and Confederate sides were able to execute illicit, but ingenious, schemes to acquire Texas cotton. Texas was the only Confederate state that bordered a neutral country, it was never forcibly conquered, and its coast was impossible to effectively blockade. Using little known contemporary sources, this story reveals how charlatans exploited these conditions to run the blockade, import machinery and weapons, and defraud the state's most prominent political, military and civilian leaders in the process. Best known for his role in the romantic entanglements of his co-conspirator William Sprague, Harris Hoyt stands out due to his sharp intellect and fascinating character. Hoyt was able to draw most of Abraham Lincoln's inner circle into his web of deceit and even influenced the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. This is the first account to expose the depth and breadth of the many Texas cotton trading scams and the sheer audacity of the shadowy men who profited from them, but managed to escape the gallows.

The American Civil War caused upheaval and massive private bereavement, but the years 1861-1865 also defined a great nation. This book provides a concise introduction to events from the secession to the end of the war. It focuses on the military progress of the war Union and Confederate politics social change - particularly the emancipation of North American slaves The social history associated with the war is dealt with alongside the familiar military and political events. This inclusive approach allows the reader to consider equally the history of men and women, blacks and whites in the conflict. It deals with both the Union and the Confederacy, integrating the latest literature on the war and society into a clear account. The book concludes with an assessment of emancipation, the rebuilding of the economy, and the war's consequences. An array of primary documents supports the text, together with a chronology, glossary and Who's Who guide to key figures.

Drawing on six years of research, this book covers the military service and postwar lives of notable Confederate veterans who moved into Northern California at the end the Civil War. Biographies of hundreds of former rebels are provided, from the oldest brother of the Clanton Gang to the son of a President to plantation owners, dirt farmers, criminals and everything in between.

The Nashville Campaign, culminating with the last major battle of the Civil War, is one of the most compelling and controversial campaigns of the conflict. The campaign pitted the young and energetic James Harrison Wilson and his Union cavalry against the cunning and experienced Nathan Bedford Forrest with his Confederate cavalry. This book is an analysis of contributions made by the two opposing cavalry forces and provides new insights and details into the actions of the cavalry during the battle. This campaign highlighted important changes in cavalry tactics and never in the Civil War was there closer support by the cavalry for infantry actions than for the Union forces in the Battle of Nashville. The retreat by Cheatham's corps and the Battle of the Barricade receive a more in-depth discussion than in previous works on this battle. The importance of this campaign cannot be overstated as a different outcome of this battle could have altered history. The Nashville Campaign reflected the stark realities of the war across the country in December 1864 and would mark an important part of the death knell for the Confederacy.

'An unrivalled picture of the rumours, suspicions and treachery of civil war' Antony Beevor Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies. A firsthand account of the brutal conditions of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia includes an introduction by Julian Symons.

Lincoln Mediated provides new information about a historical figure everyone thinks they know. It describes how Abraham Lincoln worked with the press throughout his political career, beginning with his service in Congress in the late 1840s, and detailing how his ties to newspapers in Illinois, New York, and Washington played a central role in the success of his presidency. Gregory A. Borchard and David W. Bulla study how Lincoln used the press to deliver his written and spoken messages, how editors reacted to the president, and how Lincoln responded to their criticism. Reviewing his public persona through the lens of international media and visually based sources, a fascinating profile emerges. The authors cite the papers of Lincoln, the letters of influential figures, and content from leading newspapers. The book also features nineteenth-century illustrations and photographs. Lincoln Mediated ties the president's story directly to the press, illuminating his role as a writer and as a participant in making the news. Lincoln's legacy cannot be understood without understanding the role the press played in helping shape how he was viewed. As the authors show, Lincoln was a man, not just a political figure. Lincoln Mediated is a worthy addition to Transaction's Journalism series.

This volume brings together new interdisciplinary perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, its victims, its contentious ending, and its aftermath. In exploring the slow demise of the Spanish Republic and the course of the Civil War, the authors have chosen to range in turn over cinematic, literary and historical depictions of the era. In addition, reactions elsewhere in Europe to the Spanish conflict are examined; the role of the International Brigades is looked at afresh; the fate of children displaced during the Civil War is explored; and the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement is revisited. The volume shows that to be any kind of soldier in the armies of the Republic, or even to be seen as a Republican sympathiser, was to become a "non-person" in the new order in Spain under Franco, and sets what supporters of the Republic had to endure within the wider European and international context of the period. This book offers timely fresh insights into the failure of the Spanish Republic and into a society that tried in vain to unite its divided people during what was a seismic era in Spain's history. This book was originally published as a special issue of Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Analyses the role of long-term continuities in the political and religious culture of Wales from the eve of the Civil War in 1640 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 In Royalism, Religion and Revolution: Wales, 1640-1688, Sarah Ward Clavier provides a ground-breaking analysis of the role of long-term continuities in the political and religious culture of Wales from the eve of the Civil War in 1640 to the Glorious Revolution. A final chapter also extends the narrative to the Hanoverian succession. The book discusses three main themes: the importance of continuities (including concepts of Welsh history, identity and language); religious attitudes and identities; and political culture. As Ward Clavier shows, the culture of Wales in this period was not frozen but rather dynamic, one that was constantly deploying traditional cultural symbols and practices to sustain a distinctive religious and political identity against a tide of change. The book uses a wide range of primary research material: from correspondence, diaries and financial accounts, to architectural, literary and material sources, drawing on both English and Welsh language texts. As part of the 'New Regional History' this book discusses the distinctively Welsh alongside aspects common to English and, indeed, European culture, and argues that the creative construction of continuity allowed the gentry of North-East Wales to maintain and adapt their identity even in the face of rupture and crisis.

This book revisits the county study as a way of understanding the dynamics of civil war in England during the 1640s. It explores gentry culture and the extent to which early Stuart Cheshire could be said to be a 'county community'. It also investigates how the county's governing elite and puritan religious establishment responded to highly polarising interventions by the central government and Laudian ecclesiastical authorities during Charles I's Personal Rule. The second half of the book provides a rich and detailed analysis of petitioning movements and side-taking in Cheshire in 1641-2. An important contribution to understanding the local origins and outbreak of civil war in England, the book will be of interest to all students and scholars studying the English revolution. -- .

James Tanner may be the most famous person in nineteenth-century America that no one has heard of. During his service in the Union army, he lost the lower third of both his legs and afterward had to reinvent himself. After a brush with fame as the stenographer taking down testimony a few feet away from the dying President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Tanner eventually became one of the best-known men in Gilded Age America. He was a highly placed Republican operative, a popular Grand Army of the Republic speaker, an entrepreneur, and a celebrity. He earned fame and at least temporary fortune as "Corporal Tanner," but most Americans would simply have known him as "The Corporal." Yet virtually no one--not even historians of the Civil War and Gilded Age-- knows him today.

"America's Corporal" rectifies this startling gap in our understanding of the decades that followed the Civil War. Drawing on a variety of primary sources including memoirs, lectures, newspapers, pension files, veterans' organization records, poetry, and political cartoons, James Marten brings Tanner's life and character into focus and shows what it meant to be a veteran-- especially a disabled veteran--in an era that at first worshipped the saviors of the Union but then found ambiguity in their political power and insistence on collecting ever-larger pensions. This biography serves as an examination of the dynamics of disability, the culture and politics of the Gilded Age, and the aftereffects of the Civil War, including the philosophical and psychological changes that it prompted.

The book explores the sometimes corrupt, often gridlocked, but always entertaining politics of the era, from Tanner's days as tax collector in Brooklyn through his short-lived appointment as commissioner of pensions (one of the biggest jobs in the federal government of the 1880s). Marten provides a vivid case study of a classic Gilded Age entrepreneur who could never make enough money. "America's Corporal" is a reflection on the creation of celebrity--and of its ultimate failure to preserve the memory of a man who represented so many of the experiences and assumptions of the Gilded Age.

Published with the generous support of the Amanda and Greg Gregory Family Fund

The Lower Mississippi Valley is more than just a distinct geographical region of the United States; it was central to the outcome of the Civil War and the destruction of slavery in the American South. Beginning with Lincoln's 1860 presidential election and concluding with the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Freedom's Crescent explores the four states of this region that seceded and joined the Confederacy: Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. By weaving into a coherent narrative the major military campaigns that enveloped the region, the daily disintegration of slavery in the countryside, and political developments across the four states and in Washington DC, John C. Rodrigue identifies the Lower Mississippi Valley as the epicenter of emancipation in the South. A sweeping examination of one of the war's most important theaters, this book highlights the integral role this region played in transforming United States history.

This unique addition to Civil War literature examines the extensive influence Quaker belief and practice had on Lincoln's decisions relative to slavery, including his choice to emancipate the slaves. An important contribution to Lincoln scholarship, this thought-provoking work argues that Abraham Lincoln and the Religious Society of Friends faced a similar dilemma: how to achieve emancipation without extending the bloodshed and hardship of war. Organized chronologically so readers can see changes in Lincoln's thinking over time, the book explores the congruence of the 16th president's relationship with Quaker belief and his political and religious thought on three specific issues: emancipation, conscientious objection, and the relief and education of freedmen. Distinguishing between the reality of Lincoln's relationship with the Quakers and the mythology that has emerged over time, the book differs significantly from previous works in at least two ways. It shows how Lincoln skillfully navigated a relationship with one of the most vocal and politically active religious groups of the 19th century, and it documents the practical ways in which a shared belief in the "Doctrine of Necessity" affected the president's decisions. In addition to gaining new insights about Lincoln, readers will also come away from this book with a better understanding of Quaker positions on abolition and pacifism and a new appreciation for the Quaker contributions to the Union cause. Explains the critical role Quakers exercised in Lincoln's prosecution of the Civil War Reveals how Quakers employed their historic commitments to abolitionism and pacifism to convince Lincoln of the necessity of emancipation, freedmen's relief and education, and conscientious objection Highlights Lincoln's interactions and correspondence with individual British and American Quakers and Quaker groups Provides readers with important context necessary to understand one of the nation's most respected humanitarian groups Includes nearly two dozen period photographs that provide a fascinating glimpse into long-ago history Examines the Quakers' 150-year crusade against slavery, their efforts to improve the conditions of free blacks, and the religious beliefs that informed those activities

'My dear, I don't give a damn.'

Margaret Mitchell’s page-turning, sweeping American epic has been a classic for over eighty years. Beloved and thought by many to be the greatest of the American novels, Gone with the Wind is a story of love, hope and loss set against the tense historical background of the American Civil War.

The lovers at the novel’s centre – the selfish, privileged Scarlett O’Hara and rakish Rhett Butler – are magnetic: pulling readers into the tangled narrative of a struggle to survive that cannot be forgotten.

WINNER OF NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND PULITZER PRIZE

'For sheer readability I can think of nothing it must give way before' The New Yorker

'What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under?’ Margaret Mitchell

In Georgia you will find . . .

• The celebrated locomotive General
• Mrs. Robert E. Lee's rolling pin
• The original handwritten Confederate constitution
• A Confederate statue that was "lynched" and buried
• The world's largest sculpture
• The nation's largest national battlefield park
• A unique double-barreled cannon
• The grave of the last Confederate veteran

Georgia was so devastated during the Civil War that nearly a century was required to recover from its effects. During those one hundred years Georgians forged a state that has become a leader of the nation, but they have never forgotten their heritage.

"Civil War Sites in Georgia" is a brief history of the Civil War in Georgia and a comprehensive guide to more than 300 Civil War sites, including 25 battlefields, 35 museums, 40 Confederate cemeteries, 2 national cemeteries, 300 statues and monuments, 5 forts, 5 Confederate prisons, and 5 Civil War-related national, state, and municipal parks. Entries are arranged geographically. The book is illustrated with 42 photographs and 9 maps.

The heroics of black Union soldiers in the Civil War have been justly celebrated, but their postwar lives largely neglected. Donald Shaffer's illuminating study shines a bright light on this previously obscure part of African American history, revealing for the first time black veterans' valiant but often frustrating efforts to secure true autonomy and equality as civilians.

After the Glory shows how black veterans' experiences as soldiers provided them for the first time with a sense of manliness that shaped not only their own lives but also their contributions to the African American community. Shaffer makes clear, however, that their postwar pursuit of citizenship and a dignified manhood was never very easy for black veterans, their triumphs frequently neither complete nor lasting.

Shaffer chronicles the postwar transition of black veterans from the Union army, as well as their subsequent life patterns, political involvement, family and marital life, experiences with social welfare, comradeship with other veterans, and memories of the war itself. He draws on such sources as Civil War pension records to fashion a collective biography-a social history of both ordinary and notable lives-resurrecting the words and memories of many black veterans to provide an intimate view of their lives and struggles.

Like other African Americans from many walks of life, black veterans fought fiercely against disenfranchisement and Jim Crow and were better equipped to do so than most other African Americans. They carried a sense of pride instilled by their military service that made them better prepared to confront racism and discrimination and more respected in their own communities. As Shaffer reveals, they also had nearly equal access to military pensions, financial resources available to few other blacks, and even found acceptance among white Union veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic fraternity.

After the Glory is not merely another tale of black struggles in a racist America; it is the story of how a select group of African Americans led a quest for manhood-and often found it within themselves when no one else would give it to them.

In December 1864, Confederate and Union forces clashed in the Siege of Savannah. Using this guide you will tour the city's river defenses, witness the battered fortifications along the battle lines, and walk among the beautiful Southern homes, offices, and churches that survived it all. The 98 striking color photos and black and white historical views and maps enhance the experience. This useful guide is divided into four chapters. Two provide walking tours through the downtown area, including a narrative describing how events, people, and hardships of war affected the area. The other two are driving tours, allowing readers to retrace the city's defenses and the battle lines. Anyone fascinated by the Civil War or captivated by Savannah will need this book!