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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > Civil war
This collection of late antebellum U.S. Senate speeches exemplifies
the official statements of the public men from the South, North,
and West as they struggled with the questions of national identity
and the right of self-government within the context of the rule of
law.
The largest and most destructive military conflict between the
Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, the American Civil War has
inspired some of the best and most intriguing scholarship in the
field of United States history. This volume offers some of the most
important work on the war to appear in the past few decades and
offers compelling information and insights into subjects ranging
from the organization of armies, historiography, the use of
intelligence and the challenges faced by civil and military leaders
in the course of America's bloodiest war.
John Lilburne (1615-1657), or 'Freeborn John' as he was called by
the London crowd, was an important political agitator during the
English Revolution. He was one of the leading figures in the
Levellers, the short-lived but highly influential radical sect that
called for law reform, religious tolerance, extended suffrage, the
rights of freeborn Englishmen, and a new form of government that
was answerable to the people and underpinned by a written
constitution. This edited book assesses the legacy of Lilburne and
the Levellers 400 years after his birth, and features contributions
by leading historians. They examine the life of Lilburne, who was
often imprisoned and even tortured for his beliefs, and his role as
an inspirational figure even in contemporary politics. They also
assess his writings that fearlessly exposed the hypocrisy and
self-serving corruption of those in power - whether King Charles I
or Oliver Cromwell. They look at his contribution to political
ideas, his role as a revolutionary leader, his personal and
political relations with his wife Elizabeth, his exile in the
Netherlands, his late decision to become a Quaker, and his
reputation after his death. This collection will be of enormous
interest to academics, researchers, and readers with an interest in
the English Civil War, seventeenth-century history, and the
contemporary legacy of radical political tradition.
Experience the Civil War's most eerie occurrences, spooky events,
unsolved mysteries, and myths and legends related and debunked.
From the legend of the Yankee "human shield" behind Nathan Bedford
Forrest's saddle to the unexplained sinking of the Hunley, Civil
War Myths and Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain
on some of the most fascinating and compelling stories of the war
that almost tore America apart.
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.
This book brings together different and interdisciplinary
perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, its victims, its contentious
ending, and its aftermath. In exploring the slow demise of
republican ideals, contributors range over many diverse historical
and cultural topics - discussing, for instance, the attitudes of
both Left and Right to the poet Federico Garcia Lorca and to his
assassination, examining the documentary evidence offered in
surviving memoirs of the Civil War, and assessing the major
characteristics of the new order in Spain under Franco. Cinematic
and literary depictions of the Civil War and its consequences are
also studied. Other topics investigated include: contemporary
French reactions to the Spanish conflict, Stalinist policies
towards Spain, the activities and motives of the
anarcho-syndicalists and the role of the International Brigades.
This collection of essays published on the 75th anniversary of the
end of the Civil War, not only places the events and experiences
studied within the context of the 'new state' of Franco's Spain,
but also offers timely fresh insights into wider European and
international issues during what was a period of seismic change in
world history. This book was originally published as a special
issue of Bulletin of Spanish Studies.
In recent years, the intersection of religion and the American
Civil War has been the focus of a growing area of scholarship.
However, primary sources on this subject are housed in many
different archives and libraries scattered across the U.S., and are
often difficult to find. The Routledge Sourcebook of Religion and
the American Civil War collects these sources into a single
convenient volume, the most comprehensive collection of primary
source material on religion and the Civil War ever brought
together. With chapters organized both chronologically and
thematically, and highlighting the experiences of soldiers, women,
African Americans, chaplains, clergy, and civilians, this
sourcebook provides a rich array of resources for scholars and
students that highlights how religion was woven throughout the
events of the war. Sources collected here include: * Sermons * Song
lyrics * Newspaper articles * Letters * Diary entries * Poetry *
Excerpts from books and memoirs * Artwork and photographs
Introductions by the editor accompany each chapter and individual
document, contextualizing the sources and showing how they relate
to the overall picture of religion and the war. Beginning students
of American history and seasoned scholars of the Civil War alike
will greatly benefit from having easy access to the full texts of
original documents that illustrate the vital role of religion in
the country's most critical conflict.
United States historians have long regarded the U.S. Civil War and
its Reconstruction as a second American revolution. Literary
scholars, however, have yet to show how fully these years
revolutionized the American imagination. Emblematic of this moment
was the post-war search for a "Great American Novel"-a novel fully
adequate to the breadth and diversity of the United States in the
era of the Fourteenth Amendment. While the passage of the
Reconstruction Amendments declared the ideal of equality before the
law a reality, persistent and increasing inequality challenged
idealists and realists alike. The controversy over what full
representation should mean sparked debates about the value of
cultural difference and aesthetic dissonance, and it led to a
thoroughgoing reconstruction of the meaning of "realism" for
readers, writers, politics, and law. The dilemmas of incomplete
emancipation, which would damage and define American life from the
late nineteenth century onwards, would also force novelists to
reconsider the definition and possibilities of the novel as a genre
of social representation. Legal Realisms examines these
transformations in the face of uneven developments in the racial,
ethnic, gender and class structure of American society. Offering
provocative new readings of Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean
Howells, Helen Hunt Jackson, Albion Tourgee and others, Christine
Holbo explores the transformation of the novel's distinctive modes
of social knowledge in relation to developments in art, philosophy,
law, politics, and moral theory. As Legal Realisms follows the
novel through the worlds of California Native American removal and
the Reconstruction-era South, of the Mississippi valley and the
urban Northeast, this study shows how violence, prejudice, and
exclusion haunted the celebratory literatures of national equality,
but it demonstrates as well the way novelists' representation of
the difficulty of achieving equality before the law helped
Americans articulate the need for a more robust concept of social
justice.
The English Civil War of 1642-6 was one of the most formative
periods of British history. This book, originally published in
1974, was one of the first to explore in depth the situation of the
common soldier - how he was trained, clothed, equipped , fed and
paid; how he amused himself, was disciplined and cared for
medically. As well as discussing aspects such as uniforms, pensions
and the drill & establishment for artillery, cavalry, pike and
musketeers, a typical Civil War battle is dissected into 7 phases,
exploring the part played by both officers and men.
Historians have only recently established the scale of the violence
carried out by the supporters of General Franco during and after
the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. An estimated 88,000
unidentified victims of Francoist violence remain to be exhumed
from mass graves and given a dignified burial, and for decades, the
history of these victims has also been buried. This volume brings
together a range of Spanish and British specialists who offer an
original and challenging overview of this violence. Contributors
not only examine the mass killings and incarcerations, but also
carefully consider how the repression carried out in the government
zone during the Civil War - long misrepresented in Francoist
accounts - seeped into everyday life. A final section explores ways
of facing Spain's recent violent past.
This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines contemporary
public history's engagement with the Spanish Civil War. The
chapters discuss the history and mission of the main institutional
archives of the war, contemporary and forensic archaeology of the
conflict, burial sites, the affordances of digital culture in the
sphere of war memory, the teaching of the conflict in Spanish
school curricula, and the place of war memory within human rights
initiatives. Adopting a strongly comparative focus, the authors
argue for greater public visibility and more nuanced discussion of
the Civil War's legacy, positing a virtual museum as one means to
foster dialogue.
TRAVEL THROUGH A PIVOTAL TIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Jeff Shaara, America's premier Civil War novelist, gives a
remarkable guided tour of the ten Civil War battlefields every
American should visit: Shiloh, Antietam,
Fredericksburg/Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, New Market,
Chickamauga, the Wilderness/Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and
Petersburg/Appomattox. Shaara explores the history, the people, and
the places that capture the true meaning and magnitude of the
conflict and provides
- engaging narratives of the war's crucial battles
- intriguing historical footnotes about each site
- photographs of the locations-then and now
- detailed maps of the battle scenes
- fascinating sidebars with related points of interest
From Antietam to Gettysburg to Vicksburg, and to the many poignant
destinations in between, Jeff Shaara's Civil War Battlefields is
the ideal guide for casual tourists and Civil War enthusiasts
alike.
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?
From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times
Book Review), a newly updated abridged edition of the prize-winning
classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped modern
America.In this updated edition of the abridged Reconstruction,
Eric Foner redefines how the post-Civil War period was
viewed.Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans--black
and white--responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the
war and the end of slavery. It addresses the quest of emancipated
slaves' searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and
describes the remodeling of Southern society; the evolution of
racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence
of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and one
committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all
Americans.This "masterful treatment of one of the most complex
periods of American history" (New Republic) remains the standard
work on the wrenching post-Civil War period--an era whose legacy
still reverberates in the United States today.
In this fresh survey of foreign relations in the early years of the
American republic, William Earl Weeks argues that the construction
of the new nation went hand in hand with the building of the
American empire. Mr. Weeks traces the origins of this initiative to
the 1750s, when the Founding Fathers began to perceive the
advantages of colonial union and the possibility of creating an
empire within the British Empire that would provide security and
the potential for commercial and territorial expansion. After the
adoption of the Constitution and a far stronger central government
than had been popularly imagined the need to expand combined with a
messianic American nationalism. The result was aggressive diplomacy
by successive presidential administrations. From the acquisition of
Louisiana and Florida to the Mexican War, from the Monroe Doctrine
to the annexation of Texas, Mr. Weeks describes the ideology and
scope of American expansion in what has become known as the age of
Manifest Destiny. Relations with Great Britain, France, and Spain;
the role of missionaries, technology, and the federal government;
and the issue of slavery are key elements in this succinct and
thoughtful view of the making of the continental nation."
The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot: The Fort Stevens Story recounts
the story of President Abraham Lincoln s role in the Battle of Fort
Stevens in July 1864. This engagement stands apart in American
history as the only time a sitting American president came under
enemy fire while in office. In this new study of this overlooked
moment in American history, Cooling poses a troubling question:
What if Lincoln had been shot and killed during this short battle,
nine months prior to his death by John Wilkes Booth s hand in
Ford's Theater? A potential pivotal moment in the Civil War, the
Battle of Fort Stevens could have changed with Lincoln's demise the
course of American history. The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot,
however, is more than a meditation on an alternate history of the
United States. It is also a close study of the attempt by
Confederate general Jubal Early to capture Washington, D.C., to
remove Lincoln and the Union government from power, and to turn the
tide of the Civil War in the South's favor. The dramatic events of
this attempt to capture Washington and the president with it unfold
in stunning detail as Cooling taps fresh documentary sources and
offers a new interpretation of this story of the defense of the
nation s capital. Commemorating this largely forgotten and
under-appreciated chapter in the study of Lincoln and the Civil
War, The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot is a fascinating look at this
potential turning point in American history."
The ability to forget the violent twentieth-century past was long
seen as a virtue in Spain, even a duty. But the common wisdom has
shifted as increasing numbers of Spaniards want to know what
happened, who suffered, and who is to blame. Memory Battles of the
Spanish Civil War shows how historiography, fiction, and
photography have shaped our views of the 1936-39 war and its long,
painful aftermath. Faber traces the curious trajectories of iconic
Spanish Civil War photographs by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David
Seymour; critically reads a dozen recent Spanish novels and essays;
interrogates basic scholarly assumptions about history, memory, and
literature; and interviews nine scholars, activists, and
documentarians who in the past decade and a half have helped
redefine Spain's relationship to its past. In this book Faber
argues that recent political developments in Spain-from the
grassroots call for the recovery of historical memory to the
indignados movement and the foundation of Podemos-provide an
opportunity for scholars in the humanities to engage in a more
activist, public, and democratic practice.
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.
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.
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.
Shows how new developments in guns and artillery played a decisive
role in the English Civil War. NEW LOW PRICE The English Civil War
has frequently been depicted as a struggle between Cavaliers and
Roundheads in which technology played little part. The first-hand
sources now tell us that this romantic picture is deeply flawed -
revealing a reality of gunpowder, artillery, and a grinding
struggle of siege and starvation. As with naval warfare,
developments in gun technology drastically changed land warfare in
the years leading up to 1642. The Civil War was itself shaped
largely by the availability of munitions. A failure to procure them
in 1643 and 1644 - combined with abortive attempts on London -
ultimately proved the downfall of the Royalists. Moreover afinal
move away from fortified local garrisons reshaped both the nature
of warfare in England, and the country itself. STEPHEN BULL is
Curator of Military History and Archaeology, Lancashire Museums.
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