The first book-length treatment of an important Confederate regiment composed mostly of Irish immigrants who were involved in most of the important Civil War battles in the East.

Now in paperback, A Press Divided provides new insights regarding the sharp political divisions that existed among the newspapers of the Civil War era. These newspapers were divided between North and South - and also divided within the North and South. These divisions reflected and exacerbated the conflicts in political thought that caused the Civil War and the political and ideological battles within the Union and the Confederacy about how to pursue the war.In the North, dissenting voices alarmed the Lincoln administration to such a degree that draconian measures were taken to suppress dissenting newspapers and editors, while in the South, the Confederate government held to its fundamental belief in freedom of speech and was more tolerant of political attacks in the press. This volume consists of eighteen chapters on subjects including newspaper coverage of the rise of Lincoln, press reports on George Armstrong Custer, Confederate women war correspondents, Civil War photojournalists, newspaper coverage of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the suppression of the dissident press.This book tells the story of a divided press before and during the Civil War, discussing the roles played by newspapers in splitting the nation, newspaper coverage of the war, and the responses by the Union and Confederate administrations to press criticism.

From 1865, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led campaigns for equal rights for all but were ultimately defeated by a Congress and reformers intent on applying suffrage established with constitutional amendments and legislation to men only. Ignoring all women, black and white, advocates argued that enfranchising black men would solve race problems, masking the effect on women. This book weaves Anthony's and Stanton's campaigns together with national and congressional events, in the process uncovering relationships between events and revealing the devastating impact on the women and their campaign for civil rights for all citizens.

This first volume of three discusses the tactical decisions made on day one and the ensuing combat, while also including a brief summary of the grand strategy in the Eastern Theater of the war, the conduct of the Pennsylvania Campaign from June 6 to 30, 1863, and the plight of civilians caught up in the conflict. The Battle of Gettysburg, which took place July 1-3, 1863 in and around the town of Gettysburg, PA resulted in the largest number of casualties of the entire American Civil War and is seen as the key turning point in the conflict. On its first day, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia sought to destroy the Union army, forcing its men to retreat through the streets of the Pennsylvania town to the hills just to the south. This volume, the first of three to cover the battle in depth, includes the morning cavalry skirmish, the morning clash at the Herbst's Woodlot and at the railroad cut, the afternoon clash at Oak Ridge, the afternoon fight at the Edward McPherson farm, the afternoon rout of the 11th Corps, the last stand of the 1st Corps at Seminary Ridge, the Union retreat through town, and the positions of the armies at nightfall.

The 124th New York State Volunteers were one of the great fighting regiments of the Civil War. The author has used letters, diary entries, and remembrances, much of it previously unpublished, to offer the reader a view of the war as the men in the ranks saw it. At Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Petersburg, and many more battles, the ""Orange Blossoms"" earned a reputation for sacrifice and bravery--eloquently put into words by Private Henry Howell: As he lay wounded, he described the charge that broke the Confederate line at Spotsylvania--""everyone was borne irresistibly forward. There was no such thing as fail."" The book has a roster of all who served in the regiment and numerous photos of individuals.

The three civil wars that wracked England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, between 1642-1651 saw a greater percentage of the population killed than in the First World War. Hartlebury Castle, the home of the bishop of Worcester, saw involvement in all three wars. If you look for it in books on the civil war you will rarely find it mentioned and yet it was one of the two main fortresses guarding the north of the county and also a vital communication route for the Royalist troops from Wales and Ireland. Its troops were involved in skirmishes and battles and yet, when it was besieged in 1646, the governor of the Castle, William Sandys, is said to have surrendered without a shot being fired. A contemporary chronicler described this as done 'most poorly and cowardly'. Was this a justified accusation or did Sandys have no choice?

With Washington's proximity to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Union military operations in the first two years of the Civil War focused mainly on the Eastern Theater, where General McClellan commanded the Army of the Potomac. McClellan's ""On to Richmond"" battle cry dominated strategic thinking in the high command. When he failed and was sacked by President Lincoln, a coterie of senior officers sought his return. This re-examination of the high command and McClellan's war in the East provides a broader understanding of the Union's inability to achieve victory in the first two years, and takes the debate about the Union's leadership into new areas.

In June 1864, Grant attempted to seize the Confederate rail hub of Petersburg, Virginia. General P.G.T. Beauregard responded by rushing troops to Petersburg to protect the vital supply lines. A stalemate developed as both armies entrenched around the city. Union commander General Ambrose Burnside advanced the unusual idea of allowing the 48th Pennsylvania--a regiment from the mining town of Pottsville--to excavate a mine, effectively tunneling under Confederate entrenchments. One of the most inventive and creative conflicts of the war, the Battle of the Crater ultimately became one of the most controversial, as an almost certain Union victory turned into an astonishing Confederate triumph. With special emphasis on the role of the 48th Pennsylvania, this history provides an in-depth examination of the Battle of the Crater, which took place during July 1864. Here, bickering between Federal commanders and a general breakdown of communications allowed shattered Confederate troops the opportunity to regroup after a particularly devastating blow to their defenses. The work examines the ways in which the personality conflict between generals George Meade and Ambrose Burnside ultimately cost the Union an opportunity to capture Petersburg and bring an early end to the war. On the other hand, it details the ways in which the cooperation of Confederate commanders helped to turn this certain defeat into an unexpected Southern achievement. Appendices include a list of forces that took part in the Battle of the Crater, a table of casualties from the battle and a list of soldiers decorated for gallantry during the conflict.

Paying Freedom's Price provides a comprehensive yet brief and readable history of the role of African Americans-both slave and free-from the decade leading up to the Civil War until its immediate aftermath. Rather than focusing on black military service, the white-led abolitionist movement, or Lincoln's emergence as the great emancipator, Escott concentrates on the black military and civilian experience in the North as well as the South. He argues that African Americans-slaves, free Blacks, civilians, soldiers, men, and women- played a crucial role in transforming the sectional conflict into a war for black freedom. The book is organized chronologically as well as thematically. The chronological organization will help readers understand how the Civil War evolved from a war to preserve the Union to a war that sought to abolish slavery, but not racial inequality. Within this chronological framework, Escott provides a thematic structure, tracing the causes of the war and African American efforts to include abolition, black military service, and racial equality in the wartime agenda. Including a timeline, selected primary sources, and an extensive bibliographic essay, Escott's book will be provide a superb starting point for students and general readers who want to explore in greater depth this important aspect of the Civil War and African American history.

A brilliantly conceived and vividly drawn story--Washington, D.C. on the eve of Abraham Lincoln's historic second inaugural address as the lens through which to understand all the complexities of the Civil War By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. After a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington's Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war's unimaginable horrors--every drop of blood spilled--might well have been God's just verdict on the national sin of slavery. Edward Achorn reveals the nation's capital on that momentous day--with its mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians--as a microcosm of all the opposing forces that had driven the country apart. A host of characters, unknown and famous, had converged on Washington--from grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor in a Washington hospital and the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers' advocate Clara Barton and African American leader and Lincoln critic-turned-admirer Frederick Douglass (who called the speech "a sacred effort") to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth--all swirling around the complex figure of Lincoln. In indelible scenes, Achorn vividly captures the frenzy in the nation's capital at this crucial moment in America's history and the tension-filled hope and despair afflicting the country as a whole, soon to be heightened by Lincoln's assassination. His story offers new understanding of our great national crisis and echoes down the decades to resonate in our own time.

"We can no longer see ourselves as minor spectators or weary watchers of history a fter finishing this astonishing work of nonfiction." --Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy Connor Towne O'Neill's journey onto the battlefield of white supremacy began with a visit to Selma, Alabama, in 2015. There he had a chance encounter with a group of people preparing to erect a statue to celebrate the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most notorious Confederate generals, a man whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as "that devil." After that day in Selma, O'Neill, a white Northerner transplanted to the South, decided to dig deeply into the history of Forrest and other monuments to him throughout the South, which, like Confederate monuments across America, have become flashpoints in the fight against racism. Forrest was not just a brutal general, O'Neill learned; he was a slave trader and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. O'Neill encountered citizens who still hold Forrest in cult-like awe, desperate to preserve what they call their "heritage," and he also talked to others fighting to tear the monuments down. In doing so he discovered a direct line from Forrest's ugly history straight to the heart of the battles raging today all across America. The fight over Forrest reveals a larger battle, one meant to sustain white supremacy--a system that props up all white people, not just those defending the monuments. With clear-eyed passion and honest introspection, O'Neill takes readers on a journey to understand the many ways in which the Civil War, begun in 1860, has never ended. A brilliant and provocative blend of history, reportage, and personal essay, Down Along with That Devil's Bones presents an important and eye-opening account of how we got from Appomattox to Charlottesville, and of our vital need to confront our past in order to transcend it and move toward a more just society.

The squatter-defined by Noah Webster as "one that settles on new land without a title"-had long been a fixture of America's frontier past. In the antebellum period, white squatters propelled the Jacksonian Democratic Party to dominance and the United States to the shores of the Pacific. In a bold reframing of the era's political history, John Suval explores how Squatter Democracy transformed the partisan landscape and the map of North America, hastening clashes that ultimately sundered the nation. With one eye on Washington and the other on flashpoints across the West, Dangerous Ground tracks squatters from the Mississippi Valley and cotton lands of Texas, to Oregon, Gold Rush-era California, and, finally, Bleeding Kansas. The sweeping narrative reveals how claiming western domains became stubbornly intertwined with partisan politics and fights over the extension of slavery. While previous generations of statesmen had maligned and sought to contain illegal settlers, Democrats celebrated squatters as pioneering yeomen and encouraged their land grabs through preemption laws, Indian removal, and hawkish diplomacy. As America expanded, the party's power grew. The US-Mexican War led many to ask whether these squatters were genuine yeomen or forerunners of slavery expansion. Some northern Democrats bolted to form the Free Soil Party, while southerners denounced any hindrance to slavery's spread. Faced with a fracturing party, Democratic leaders allowed territorial inhabitants to determine whether new lands would be slave or free, leading to a destabilizing transfer of authority from Congress to frontier settlers. Squatters thus morphed from agents of Manifest Destiny into foot soldiers in battles that ruptured the party and the country. Deeply researched and vividly written, Dangerous Ground illuminates the overlooked role of squatters in the United States' growth into a continent-spanning juggernaut and in the onset of the Civil War, casting crucial light on the promises and vulnerabilities of American democracy.

In the summer of 1862, two great armies met outside of Richmond in a series of battles that would determine the course of the Civil War. The Union had time, men and materiel on its side, while the Confederates had mobility, esprit de corps and aggressive leadership. Untried General Robert E. Lee was tasked with driving the Yankees from their almost impregnable positions to save Richmond and end the war. Lee planned to isolate part of the Union Army, crush it, and then destroy the only supply base the remaining Federals had. To do so, he had to move thousands of troops hundreds of miles, bringing multiple forces together with intricate timing, all without the Yankees or their spies finding out. The largest and most important of these battles occurred at Gaines' Mill.

Was the Civil War preordained to last four years or were there reasons why neither side could land a knockout punch? From the outset, both North and South anticipated a brief conflict but despite more than 50 bloody battles neither could force a decisive conclusion. For most of the war, these battles followed a pattern: the victors claimed the field and the vanquished retreated to rest, resupply and fight another day.Some generals began to realize that pursuit to capture or destroy the retreating enemy was needed to end the war. Yet this was easier said than done. Taking a fresh look at the zero-sum tactics that characterized many major combat actions in the war, this book examines the performance of unsuccessful (sometimes insubordinate) commanders and credits two generals with eventually seeing the need for organized pursuit.

Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the dialogue of religious skepticism and faith shaped struggles over the place of religion in politics in the Revolutionary era. It then produced different visions of knowledge and education in an "enlightened" society. It fueled social reform in an era of economic transformation, territorial expansion, and social change. Ultimately, it molded the making and eventual unmaking of American nationalism. Yet religious skepticism has been rendered nearly invisible by the stories usually told about American religious history, which often stress the in-your-face evangelicalism of the era, or the "secularization" said to be happening behind people's backs, or assume that skepticism was for intellectuals while ordinary people who stayed away from church were merely indifferent. Certainly the efforts of small groups of vocal "infidels" or "freethinkers" were dwarfed by the legions conducting religious revivals, creating missions and moral reform societies, distributing Bibles and Christian tracts, and building churches across the land. Even if few Americans publicly challenged Christian truth claims, however, many more quietly doubted, and religious skepticism touched - and in some cases transformed - more lives than we might expect from standard accounts. Commentators considered religious doubt to be a persistent problem, too, not because there were armies of skeptics marching in the streets but because they believed that skeptical challenges to the grounds of faith - the Bible, the church, and personal experience - threatened the foundations of American society. Skepticism and American Faith examines the ways that Americans - ministers, merchants, and mystics; physicians, schoolteachers, and feminists; self-help writers, slaveholders, shoemakers, and soldiers - wrestled with faith and doubt as they lived their daily lives and tried to make sense of their world.

Banks failed, credit contracted, inequality grew, and people everywhere were out of work while political paralysis and slavery threatened to rend the nation in two. As financial crises always have, the Panic of 1837 drew forth a plethora of reformers who promised to restore America to greatness. Animated by an ethic of individualism and self-reliance, they became prophets of a new moral order: if only their fellow countrymen would call on each individual's God-given better instincts, the most intractable problems could be resolved. Inspired by this reformist fervor, Americans took to strict dieting, water cures, phrenology readings, mesmerism, utopian communities, free love, mutual banking, and a host of other elaborate self-improvement schemes. Vocal activists were certain that solutions to the country's ills started with the reformation of individuals, and through them communities, and through communities the nation. This set of assumptions ignored the hard political and economic realities at the core of the country's malaise, however, and did nothing to prevent another financial panic twenty years later, followed by secession and civil war. Focusing on seven individuals-George Ripley, Horace Greeley, William B. Greene, Orson Squire Fowler, Mary Gove Nichols, Henry David Thoreau, and John Brown-Philip Gura explores their efforts, from the comical to the homicidal, to beat a new path to prosperity. A narrative of people and ideas, Man's Better Angels captures an intellectual moment in American history that has been overshadowed by the Civil War and the pragmatism that arose in its wake.

This book offers an extensive overview of the myriad Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39. The conflict was the curtain-raiser to World War II, and the major international event of the 1930s. The study illustrates, textually and visually, how the Republican forces were initially varied in appearance and character. Loyal elements of the Spanish army that rejected the appeal of the rebel generals were supported by a wide range of volunteer regional units and political militias, and by volunteers from many other countries.
These disparate forces were later amalgamated--by force--into the Communist-dominated People's Army. Thereafter their motley array of clothing, weapons and equipment became rather more uniform as the Soviet Union provided support and supplies on a large scale. Featuring specially commissioned full-color artwork, this second part of a two-part study depicts the fighting men of the Republican forces that strove to retain control of Spain alongside thousands of international volunteers.

This book is an operational and tactical study of cavalry operations in Northern Virginia from September 1862 to July 1863. It examines in detail John Mosby's first six months as a partisan, within the context of the larger threat to the Union capital posed by Jeb Stuart. Previous studies of Mosby's career are largely based upon postwar memoirs. This narrative balances those accounts with previously unpublished official contemporary records left by the Union soldiers assigned to the defense of Washington, D.C. The formation of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade is fully documented, along with the exploits of the brigade in the months before George Custer took command. Largely forgotten events, such as Jeb Stuart's Christmas Raid, the fight at Fairfax Station during Stuart's Ride to Gettysburg, as well as the vital role played by Union general Julius Stahel's cavalry division in the critical month of June 1863 are examined at length.

Union Major General Gouverneur Warren participated in almost every major battle in the Civil War's Eastern Theater, from Big Bethel to Five Forks. He was held in such high esteem that he was often looked upon as the Union general most responsible for the victory at Gettysburg, and was considered the logical replacement for George Gordon Meade as commanding general of the Army of the Potomac. However, within days of the war's end he was relieved in disgrace on the battlefield by General Phil Sheridan. Warren spent the next fifteen years seeking the activation of a Court of Inquiry that he believed would vindicate his conduct. This book is the story of that court.

In this first book-length environmental history of the American Civil War, Lisa M. Brady argues that ideas about nature and the environment were central to the development and success of Union military strategy. From the start of the war, both sides had to contend with forces of nature, even as they battled one another. Northern soldiers encountered unfamiliar landscapes in the South that suggested, to them, an uncivilised society's failure to control nature. Under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan, the Union army increasingly targeted southern environments as the war dragged on. Whether digging canals, shooting livestock, or dramatically attempting to divert the Mississippi River, the Union aimed to assert mastery over nature by attacking the most potent aspect of southern identity and power-agriculture. Brady focuses on the siege of Vicksburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, marches through Georgia and the Carolinas, and events along the Mississippi River to examine this strategy and its devastating physical and psychological impact. Before the war, many Americans believed in the idea that nature must be conquered and subdued. Brady shows how this perception changed during the war, leading to a wider acceptance of wilderness. Connecting environmental trauma with the onset of American preservation, Brady pays particular attention to how these new ideas of wilderness can be seen in the creation of national battlefield memorial parks as unaltered spaces. Deftly combining environmental and military history with cultural studies, War upon the Land elucidates an intriguing, largely unexplored side of the nation's greatest conflict.

Welsh miners made up one of the largest contingents within the British Battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Coming from the valleys all across South Wales, they brought with them a political tradition unique in Britain in its combination of trade union militancy, radical extra-parliamentary activity and internationalism. Hywel Francis draws on a wide variety of contemporary sources to paint a vivid picture of the tumultuous politics of South Wales in the 1920s and 1930s - the context for the decision made by so many to volunteer. The book describes the process of volunteering, the militant role played by the Welsh volunteers, and the mass movements of political solidarity with Spain within Wales. It also includes many illustrations, and reproduces letters written by volunteers to their relatives and friends back in Wales. This updated 2012 edition includes a new preface and a newly compiled complete list of all Welsh volunteers.

Between 1936 and 1939, the Spanish Civil War showcased anarchism to the world. News of the revolution in Spain energised a moribund international anarchist movement, and activists from across the globe flocked to Spain to fight against fascism and build the revolution behind the front lines. Those that stayed at home set up groups and newspapers to send money, weapons and solidarity to their Spanish comrades. This book charts this little-known phenomenon through a transnational case study of anarchists from Britain, Ireland and the United States, using a thematic approach to place their efforts in the wider context of the civil war, the anarchist movement and the international left.

Honest Abe. The rail-splitter. The Great Emancipator. Old Abe. These are familiar monikers of Abraham Lincoln, appellations that admirers instantly recognize. They describe a man who has influenced the lives of everyday people as well as notables like Leo Tolstoy, Marilyn Monroe, and Winston Churchill. But there is also a multitude of fictional Lincolns almost as familiar as the original: time traveler, android, monster hunter, and more. This book explores Lincoln's evolution from martyred president to cultural icon and the struggle between the Lincoln of history and his fictional progeny. He has been Simpsonized by Matt Groening, charmed by Shirley Temple, and emulated by the Lone Ranger. Countless devotees have attempted to rescue him through time travel, to clone him, or to raise him from the dead. Lincoln's image and memory have been invoked to fight communism, mock a sitting president, and sell products. Lincoln has even been portrayed as the greatest example of goodness humanity has to offer. In short, Lincoln is the essential American myth.