In the eyes of many historians, Union General George B. McClellan single-handedly did more damage to the Union war effort than any other individual--including Confederate commander Robert E. Lee. McClellan's success in the Mexican War along with his prestigious position as president of the Eastern Division of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad had left him well positioned to enter the Union Army when hostilities began. Originally a major general in command of the Ohio Volunteers, McClellan attained the same rank in the regular Army three weeks after the beginning of the Civil War. Promoting his own ideas and career regardless of the consequences, McClellan spent his Civil War command defying his superiors and attempting to avoid battle, eventually becoming a thorn in the side of President Lincoln and the Union cause. Removed from command on November 5, 1862, McClellan's overly cautious attitude nevertheless permeated the Army of the Potomac for years. From West Point to Antietam, this volume examines his Army career. The main focus of the work is McClellan's Civil War service and the ways in which the man and his decisions affected the course of the war. The Union Army's invasion of northern Virginia, the Peninsula Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run are examined in detail with special emphasis on the roles which McClellan played--or did not play. Through a combination of incompetence and paranoia, McClellan managed to throw away numerous chances at a Union victory and, consequently, a quicker end to the war. Excerpts from McClellan's orders and correspondence provide a contemporary picture and firsthand motives for his actions. An appendix examines the treatment given McClellan by various historians. Assorted maps and an index are also included.

In the years following the American Civil War, many participants-generals, politicians, journalists, and soldiers-authored first-hand accounts of their unique experiences. As Alfred E. Smith of the Library of Congress wrote in 1998, "No chapter of American history has been so voluminously recorded." While the quality and reliability of the memoirs vary, a large number provide important perspectives that, taken together, offer vivid descriptions of major battles, political developments, and other momentous events from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. In Remembering the Civil War, historians Michael Barton and Charles Kupfer carefully select excerpts from the memoirs of key participants and weave them together to tell the story of the war in a single volume. Contributors include Union generals Ulysses Grant, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, W.T. Sherman, Abner Doubleday, and Philip Sheridan. Confederate authors include Robert E. Lee, Gen. James Longstreet, Cpl. Sam Watkins, Lt. John W. Worsham, Col. Edward Porter Alexander, Capt. John Wilkinson, and Jefferson Davies. Personal documents provide soldiers' perspectives of what fighting was like on the ground, as well as hospital and prison life. A comprehensive introduction and headnote for each excerpt provide background information and context.

A NATION TORN APART BY WAR. ONE WOMAN STEPS INTO THE CROSSFIRE. _____________________________ 'This amazing book has everything in it: love, war, history and relevance to today. Gripping.' Russell Kane 'I insist you read this intelligent empathetic novel. You won't regret it.' Frost Magazine 'Extraordinary events sensitively told.' Lucy Jago, A Net For Small Fishes 'I couldn't put it down.' Gill Paul, The Collector's Daughter 'A heartrending tale of love, courage and sacrifice.' Nikki Marmery, On Wilder Seas ____________ 1936. Civil war in Spain. A world on the brink of chaos ... Twenty-one-year-old Lucy is frustrated with her constrained life in Hertfordshire, teaching and keeping house for her domineering father. But she is happy to be living next door to Tom and Jamie, two brothers she has known since childhood, and whom she loves equally. But her life is turned upside down when Tom decides he must travel to Spain to fight in the bloody Spanish Civil War. He is quickly followed by Jamie who, much to Lucy's despair, is supporting General Franco. To the dismay of her irascible father, Lucy decides that the only way to bring her boys back safely is to travel to Spain herself to persuade them to come home. Yet when she sees the horrific effects of the war, she quickly becomes immersed in the lifesaving work the Quakers are doing to help the civilian population, many of whom are refugees. As the war progresses and the situation becomes increasingly perilous, Lucy realises that the challenge going forward is not so much which brother she will end up with, but whether any of them will survive the carnage long enough to decide ... ____________ More praise for Acts of Love and War ... 'Be prepared to lose your heart in the simmering heat of war-torn Spain.' Miranda Malins, The Puritan Princess 'This is a marvellous book on any level, I thoroughly enjoyed it and could hardly put it down.' Deborahjs 'Wide in scope and told with honesty, insight and tenderness, a moving and unputdownable story' Judith Allnatt, The Poet's Wife 'Accomplished and expansive' Anne Morgan, Reading The World 'Insightful and moving' Katherine Clements, The Crimson Ribbon 'One of historical fiction's most lyrical and intelligent voices' Rachel McMillan, The London Restoration 'Emotionally captivating and authentic ... an unforgettable story' Susan Meissner, The Nature of Fragile Things _______________ Readers can't get enough of Acts of Love and War ... ***** 'A tale of passion and passionate caring, and how that can manifest in very different ways.' ***** 'A masterpiece.' ***** 'Highly recommended if you enjoy historical fiction.' ***** 'An amazing and compelling read.' ***** 'An immersive and powerful story.'

Your Heritage Will Still Remain details how Mississippians, black and white, constructed their social identity in the aftermath of the crises that transformed the state beginning with the sectional conflict and ending in the late nineteenth century. Michael J. Goleman focuses primarily on how Mississippians thought of their place: asAmericans, as Confederates, or as both. In the midst of secession, white Mississippians held firm to an American identity and easily transformed it into a Confederateidentity venerating their version of American heritage. After the war, black Mississippians tried to etch their place within the Union and as part of transformed American society. Yet they continually faced white supremacist hatred and backlash. During Reconstruction, radical transformations within the state forced all Mississippiansto embrace, deny, or rethink their standing within the Union. Tracing the evolution of Mississippians' social identity from 1850 through the end of the century uncovers why white Mississippians felt the need to create the Lost Cause legend. With personal letters, diaries and journals, newspaper editorials, traveler's accounts, memoirs, reminiscences, and personal histories as its sources, Your Heritage Will Still Remain offers insights into the white creation of Mississippi's Lost Cause and into the battle for black social identity. It goes on to show how these cultural hallmarks continue to impact the state even now.

How would Lincoln view race relations, terrorism, gun control, women's equality, and the influence of special interest groups on Congress? How would he react to the invasion of Iraq and the Great Recession? How would he feel about the growing gap between the haves and the have- nots, a worker's right to strike, the minimum wage, and labor unions? Would Lincoln have a mobile phone and embrace the whirl of social media? Phillips grounds his analysis in an illuminating understanding of Lincoln's own words and actions and offers a fascinating thesis that longtime fans and newcomers alike will be eagerto debate.

This biography deals with the life of Henry Wilson, one of the most important figures of the middle third of the Nineteenth Century, up to the time of the Civil War. Among its concerns are the political antislavery movement, economic development, the rise of a working class politcian in an aristocratic-controlled state, prohibition, and Massachusetts state history.

Confederate Navy Ironclad Program is the account of the design, construction, and engagements of the Confederate Navy's ironclad warships. It is a perplexing story. On the one hand, it is the description of vision, ingenuity, and courage, coupled with grim perseverance and determination. On the other hand, it is a sad tale of frustration, innumerable delays, and proof of the ancient adage of "too little too late." Plagued by lack of materials and experienced shipbuilders, the South nevertheless managed to build and name 34 iron-armored warships of which the navy commissioned 25 and put into service. Except for the Albemarle, no Confederate ironclad was sunk or destroyed by enemy action. Overtaken by events on the ground, most were destroyed by their own crews to prevent them from falling into the hands of Union forces. Born amidst war and invasion, hampered by lack of materials and shipbuilding facilities, the Southern Navy in its four years-plus existence compiled a record of unsurpassed resourcefulness, courage, and ingenuity. A fundamental example of this courage and ingenuity was the design, construction, and performance in battle of their ironclad warships. These armored vessels best illustrate the hardships under which the naval construction program operated, as well as just what the Southern navy could accomplish once they were completed and were brought to bear against the enemy.

The American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865, killing nearly 700,000 Americans and costing the country untold millions of dollars. The events of this tragic war are so steeped in the collective memory of the United States and so taken for granted that it is sometimes difficult to take a step back and consider why such a tragic war occurred. To consider the series of events that led to this war are difficult and painful for students and teachers in American history classrooms. Classroom teachers must possess the appropriate pedagogical and historical resources to provide their students with an appropriate and meaningful examination of this challenging time period. Teaching the Causes of the American Civil War, 1850-1861 will attempt to provide these resources and teaching strategies to allow for the thoughtful inquiry, evaluation and assessment of this critical, complex and painful time period in American history.

In 1940, Daily Telegraph correspondent Henry Buckley published his eyewitness account of his experiences reporting form the Spanish Civil War. The copies of the book, stored in a warehouse in London, were destroyed during the Blitz and only a handful of copies of his unique chronicle were saved. Now, eighty years after its first publication, this exceptional eyewitness account of the war is republished with a new introduction by acclaimed scholar Paul Preston. The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic is a unique account of Spanish politics throughout the Second Republic, from its foundation of 14 April 1931 to its defeat at the end of March 1939. It combines personal recollections of meetings with the great politicians of the day and intimate accounts of dramatic events with a deep understanding of Spain - its people, politics and culture. Providing a fascinating portrait of a crucial decade of contemporary Spanish history and based on an abundance of the witness material, this important book is one of the most enduring records of the Second Republic and is therefore essential reading for anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War.

Emma Spaulding's life might have been the simple story of a nineteenth-century woman in rural Maine. Instead, wooed by the ambitious John Emory Bryant, the Yankee Reconstruction activist and Georgia politician, she became the Civil War bride of a Republican carpetbagger intent on reforming the South. The grueling years in the shadow of her husband's controversial political career gave her a backbone of steel and the convictions of an early feminist. Emma supported John's agenda-to "northernize" the South and work for civil rights for African-Americans- and frequently reflected on national political events. Struggling virtually alone to rear a daughter in near poverty, Emma became an independent thinker, suffragist, and officer in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In eloquent letters, Emma coached her husband's understanding of "the woman question;" their remarkable correspondence frames a marriage of love and summarizes John's career as it determined the contours of Emma's own storyafrom the bitter politics of Reconstruction Georgia to her world as a mother, writer, editor, and teacher in Tennessee and, with her husband, running a mission for the homeless in New York.In this extraordinary resource, Ruth Douglas Currie organizes and edits their voluminous correspondence, enhancing the letters with an extensive introduction to Emma Spaulding Bryant's life, times, and legacy.

This historical account covers the 25th Regiment North Carolina Infantry Troops during the Civil War. Farmers and farmers' sons left their mountain homesteads to enlist with the regiment at Asheville in July and August 1861 and to defend their homeland from a Yankee invasion. The book chronicles the unit's defensive activities in the Carolina coastal regions and the battlefield actions at Seven Days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Plymouth, Richmond and Petersburg. In addition, casualty and desertion statistics are included, along with a complete regimental roster and 118 photos, illustrations, and maps.

This volume analyzes the cultural and intellectual impact of the war, considering how it reshaped Americans' spiritual, cultural, and intellectual habits. The Civil War engendered an existential crisis more profound even than the changes of the previous decades. Its duration, scale, and intensity drove Americans to question how they understood themselves as people. The chapters in the third volume distinguish the varied impacts of the conflict in different places on people's sense of themselves. Focusing on particular groups within the war, including soldiers, families, refugees, enslaved people, and black soldiers, the chapters cover a broad range of ways that participants made sense of the conflict as well as how the war changed their attitudes about gender, religion, ethnicity, and race. The volume concludes with a series of essays evaluating the ways Americans have memorialized and remembered the Civil War in art, literature, film, and public life.

Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation's least effective heads of state. In President without a Party- the first fullA -scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades- Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler's early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his viceA -presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler's ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president's personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a ""traitor president."" The most complete accounting of Tyler's life and career, Leahy's biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South's dominant ideology of states' rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-A of-A theA -road, bipartisan approach to the nation's problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president- the annexation of Texas- exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.

Throughout film history, war films have been in constant dialogue with both previous depictions of war and contemporary debates and technology. War films remember older war film cycles and draw upon the resources of the present day to say something new about the nature of war. The American Civil War was viscerally documented through large-scale panorama paintings, still photography, and soldier testimonials, leaving behind representational principles that would later inform the development of the war film genre from the silent era up to the present. This book explores how each of these representational modes cemented different formulas for providing war stories with emotional content.

The American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865, killing nearly 700,000 Americans and costing the country untold millions of dollars. The events of this tragic war are so steeped in the collective memory of the United States and so taken for granted that it is sometimes difficult to take a step back and consider why such a tragic war occurred. To consider the series of events that led to this war are difficult and painful for students and teachers in American history classrooms. Classroom teachers must possess the appropriate pedagogical and historical resources to provide their students with an appropriate and meaningful examination of this challenging time period. Teaching the Causes of the American Civil War, 1850-1861 will attempt to provide these resources and teaching strategies to allow for the thoughtful inquiry, evaluation and assessment of this critical, complex and painful time period in American history.

The wealth of transatlantic scholarship to emerge in recent years has greatly enriched our understanding of the mutual, far-reaching cultural exchange between Great Britain and the United States. Yet scholars often lose sight of this relationship in the years immediately leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. Drawing on a capacious array of travel narratives, novels, poems, political scuffles, and more, Christopher Hanlon's innovative study examines the patterns of affiliation through which U.S. culture encoded the turmoil of antebellum America in terms of imagined connections with England. Through engagement with contemporaneous renditions of English race, history, landscape aesthetics, telecommunications, and economic discourse, America's England reveals how Northern and Southern partisans re-imagined the terms behind their antagonisms, forming a transatlantic surround for the otherwise cisatlantic political struggles that would dissolve the Union in 1861. Among other ramifications, the re-conceptualization of sectional issues in transatlantic terms undermined the notion that white citizens of the United States formed a unified biological or cultural community, effectively polarizing the imagined ethnic and cultural bases of the American polity. But beyond that, a continued reference to English historical, cultural, and political formations allowed figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Henry Timrod, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Sumner, and others to situate an era of developing national acrimony along longer historical and transnational curves, forming accounts of national crisis that situated questions of a domestic political bearing at oceanic removes from Northern and Southern combatants. Demonstrating that English genealogies, geographies, and economics shaped the sectional crisis for antebellum Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon, America's England locates the key crisis points of the period in a broader transatlantic constellation that provided distinctive circumstances for literary production.

When North and South went to war, millions of American families endured their first long separation. For men in the armies-and their wives, children, parents, and siblings at home-letter writing was the sole means to communicate. Yet for many of these Union and Confederate families, taking pen to paper was a new and daunting task. I Remain Yours narrates the Civil War from the perspective of ordinary people who had to figure out how to salve the emotional strain of war and sustain their closest relationships using only the written word. Christopher Hager presents an intimate history of the Civil War through the interlaced stories of common soldiers and their families. The previously overlooked words of a carpenter from Indiana, an illiterate teenager from Connecticut, a grieving mother in the mountains of North Carolina, and a blacksmith's daughter on the Iowa prairie reveal through their awkward script and expression the personal toll of war. Is my son alive or dead? Returning soon or never? Can I find words for the horrors I've seen or the loneliness I feel? Fear, loss, and upheaval stalked the lives of Americans straining to connect the battlefront to those they left behind. Hager shows how relatively uneducated men and women made this new means of communication their own, turning writing into an essential medium for sustaining relationships and a sense of belonging. Letter writing changed them and they in turn transformed the culture of letters into a popular, democratic mode of communication.

From 1861-1865, the American Civil War raged at sea as well as on land and saw the use of numerous technological innovations, chief among them the ironclad warship. While various Civil War biographical directories exist, none have been devoted exclusively to the men who served as ironclad captains along the coasts or on the great inland rivers. Based on the Official Records, earlier biographical compilations and memoirs, ship and operations histories, newspapers, primary sources, and internet data, this is the first work to profile the men North and South charged with outfitting and fighting these revolutionary metal warships. Each of the 158 biographies includes (where known) birth, death, and pre- and post-war careers. Information on wartime service includes vessels served upon or commanded, with ironclads bolded for emphasis. Each profile includes source documentation and an appendix, "Ironclad Index," alphabetically identifies the various covered ironclads and lists the covered captains of each.

A brilliant appraisal of the Civil War and its long-term consequences, by an acclaimed historian. The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule. In this wonderfully readable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins - the war between King and Parliament, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's rule and the Restoration - while aiming to reveal something more elusive: the motivations of contemporaries on both sides and the concerns of later generations.

This is the story of two Confederate spies, Tom Harbin and Charlie Russell. Harbin, among the most wanted of all Confederate agents, was also one of the leaders in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. It was Harbin who left a getaway horse for Booth outside Ford's Theatre, and Harbin who helped Booth escape across the Potomac. For a time there was a big price on Harbin's head, but he was never arrested. Tradition holds that he went into hiding, perhaps in Cuba or England, but this book demonstrates that he was again openly living and working in D.C. at least as early as 1866. The other half of this book presents a new Confederate spy: Tom Harbin's step-cousin Charlie Russell, a man who never talked and never left a paper trail. It was only while the author was conducting genealogical research into the Russell family of Clarksville, Virginia, that he stumbled across Russell's activities during the Civil War. Here the author presents a wealth of evidence to suggest that Russell, too, played a part in the dramatic history of Confederate espionage. Enhancing the life stories of both these men is detailed information on their genealogy and the lives of their forebears and descendants, many of whom were prominent in the history and society of Washington, D.C.

Anti-Catholicism has had a long presence in American history. The Civil War in 1861 gave Catholic Americans a chance to prove their patriotism once and for all. Exploring how Catholics sought to use their participation in the war to counteract religious and political nativism in the United States, Excommunicated from the Union reveals that while the war was an alienating experience for many of 200,000 Catholics who served, they still strove to construct a positive memory of their experiences in order to show that their religion was no barrier to their being loyal American citizens.

New Bedford's Civil War examines the social, political, economic, and military history of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the nineteenth century, with a focus on the Civil War homefront from 1861 to 1865 and on the city's black community, soldiers, and veterans.
Earl Mulderink's engaging work contributes to the growing body of Civil War studies that analyzes the "war at home" by focusing on the bustling center of the world's whaling industry in the nineteenth century. Using a broad chronological framework of the 1840s through the 1890s, this book contextualizes the rise and fall of New Bedford's whaling enterprise and details the war's multifaceted impacts between 1861 and 1865. A major goal of this book is to explore the war's social history by examining how the conflict touched the city's residents--both white and black.
Known before the war for both its wealth and its antislavery fervor, New Bedford offered a congenial home for a sizeable black community that experienced a "different Civil War" than did native-born whites. Drawing upon military pension files, published accounts, and welfare records, this book pays particular attention to soldiers and families connected with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the "brave black regiment" (made famous by the Academy Award-winning 1989 film Glory) that helped shape national debates over black military enlistment, equal pay, and notions of citizenship. New Bedford's enlightened white leaders, many of them wealthy whaling merchants with Quaker roots, actively promoted military enlistment that pulled 2,000 local citizen-soldiers (about 10 percent of the city's total population) into the Union ranks.
As the Whaling City gave way to a postwar landscape marked by textile manufacturing and heavy foreign immigration, the black community fought to keep alive the meaning and history of the Civil War. Joining their one-time neighbor Frederick Douglass, New Bedford's black veterans used the memory of the war and their participation in it to push for full equality--a losing battle by the turn of the twentieth century.