Written by one of the editors of the new complete works of Henry Vaughan, Keeping the Ancient Way is the first book-length study of the poet by a single author for twenty years. It deals with a number of key topics that are central to the understanding and appreciation of this major seventeenth-century writer. These include his debt to the hermetic philosophy espoused by his twin brother (the alchemist, Thomas Vaughan); his royalist allegiance in the Civil War; his loyalty to the outlawed Church of England during the Interregnum; the unusual degree of intertextuality in his poetry (especially with the Scriptures and the devotional lyrics of George Herbert); and his literary treatment of the natural world (which has been variously interpreted from Christian, proto-Romantic, and ecological perspectives). Each of the chapters is self-contained and places its topic in relation to past and current critical debates, but the book is organized so that the biographical, intellectual, and political focus of Part One informs the discussion of poetic craftsmanship in Part Two. A wealth of historical information and close critical readings provide an accessible introduction to the poet and his period for students and general readers alike. The up-to-date scholarship will also be of interest to specialists in the literature and history of the Civil War and Interregnum.

By late January of 1863, the 9th Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery has been stationed within the Washington, D.C. defenses the entirety of its five-month existence. The soldiers are badly demoralized, inadequately trained and poorly disciplined. When the inept captain of the battery believes that he's about to be fired, he hastily resigns, and the governor of Massachusetts promptly selects a twenty-three-year-old artillery officer with battlefield experience to take command. Captain John Bigelow institutes strict discipline and rigorous training which causes the men, including Chief Bugler Charles Wellington Reed, to consider him to be a heartless tyrant. However, Captain Bigelow's methods rapidly improve their capabilities and Reed reluctantly gains respect for the new captain. Nevertheless, subtle conflict between captain and bugler remains in a manner only constrained by military protocol. In late June of 1863 the battery is collected by the Army of the Potomac as it passes the Washington defenses to thwart an invasion by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. After days of hard marching, Bigelow's Battery arrives on the Gettysburg battlefield in the forenoon of July 2, 1863. Within hours they are immersed in violent combat during which the officers and men of the battery fight like veterans against the Confederates. Unbeknownst to Charlie, he will twice disobey a direct order from Captain Bigelow before the day is out. When furious fighting reaches a crescendo, the inexperienced light artillery battery is ordered to hold its position at all hazards, meaning until it's overrun. Without hesitation the batterymen stand to their guns and sacrifice their life's blood to gain the time necessary for a second line of artillery to be formed behind them, thus helping to prevent a disastrous defeat for the Federal Army on Northern soil. Charlie saves his captain's life and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

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

The American Civil War era continues to fascinate and in this essential reference guide to the period, Hugh Tulloch examines the war itself, alongside political, constitutional, social, economic, literary and religious developments and trends that informed and were formed by the turbulent events that took place during American's nineteenth century. Including a compendium of information through timelines, chronologies, bibliographies, and guides to sources, key themes examined here are:
* Emancipation and the quest for racial justice
* Abolitionism and debates regarding freedom versus slavery
* The Confederacy and Reconstruction
* Civil war military strategy
* Industry and agriculture
* Presidential elections and party politics
* Cultural and intellectual developments
The "Routledge Companion to the" "American Civil War" provides a complete guide to this vital period in US history.

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity as they planted and harvested the fields. By night, they clandestinely took to the woods and swamps to trap opossums and turtles, to visit relatives living on adjacent plantations, and at times to escape slave patrols and escape to freedom. Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce. They saw the landscape as disposable, relocating to more fertile prospects once they had leached the soils and cut down the forests. On the leading edge of the frontier, slavery laid waste to fragile ecosystems, draining swamps, clearing forests to plant crops and fuel steamships, and introducing devastating invasive species. On its trailing edge, slavery left eroded hillsides, rivers clogged with sterile soil, and the extinction of native species. While environmental destruction fueled slavery's expansion, no environment could long survive intensive slave labor. The scars manifested themselves in different ways, but the land too fell victim to the slave owner's lash. Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice.

The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of anti-slavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes's brilliant history of Lincoln's anti-slavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of anti-slavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the anti-slavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his anti-slavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action-in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade-they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He re-entered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas/Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonisation of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the anti-slavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King's cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.

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

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.

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century--but they've never been as intense as they are today. In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them and how a movement arose to force a reckoning. She lucidly shows the forces that drove white southerners to construct beacons of white supremacy, as well as the ways that antimonument sentiment, largely stifled during the Jim Crow era, returned with the civil rights movement and gathered momentum in the decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Monument defenders responded with gerrymandering and "heritage" laws intended to block efforts to remove these statues, but hard as they worked to preserve the Lost Cause vision of southern history, civil rights activists, Black elected officials, and movements of ordinary people fought harder to take the story back. Timely, accessible, and essential, No Common Ground is the story of the seemingly invincible stone sentinels that are just beginning to fall from their pedestals.

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

On the day in 1936 that Franco invaded Spain, a fifteen-year-old girl from Madrid was on vacation in the Sierra de Gredos, a mountain range popular for hikers. Isa (Conchita) Reyes fled Spain for Paris with her mother and sister, taking only what they could carry in their suitcases. Her father stayed behind to fight on the Loyalist side. It was not long before the last piece of jewelry had been sold, and ways had to be found to make a living. Working as a model, she was discovered and given the stage name Isa. A renowned Flamenco dancer, she performed in Paris and in the capitals and resorts of Europe. In 1938 she was crowned Miss Spain in Exile. In Venice, she was courted by Count Ciano, Mussolinis son-in-law, and used an imaginative lie to avoid his affections. In Berlin, in 1939, she performed (unwillingly) at Hitlers fiftieth birthday celebrations organized by Joseph Goebbels. Later in the year, whilst on a dancing tour in Athens, she met the man she would marry my father. Together, they escaped Europe for the New World. This is Isas story, from the nightclubs and ateliers of Paris, to the performance halls of Europe, to the harrowing inspections by the Gestapo while transiting Germany. This is a story of a young girl who had to grow up quickly when war turned her world upside down. Isa fulfilled her dream of becoming a dancer, albeit in ways she could not have imagined when growing up. Her story is told against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and Europes inexorable march to conflict. Isa never lost her optimism or her sense of humor. Her dream came true, but the circumstances were tragic and tumultuous.

Few works of history have succeeded so completely in forcing their readers to take a fresh look at the evidence as Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down - and that achievement is rooted firmly in Hill's exceptional problem-solving skills. Traditional interpretations of the English Civil War concentrated heavily on a top-down analysis of the doings of king and parliament. Hill looked at 'history from below,' focusing instead on the ways in which the people of Britain saw the society they lived in and nurtured hopes for a better future. Failing to understand these factors - and the impact they had on the origins and outcomes of the wars of the 1640s - means failing to understand the historical period. In this sense, Hill's influential work is a great example of the problem-solving skills of asking productive questions and generating alternative possibilities. It forced a generation of historians to re-evaluate the things they thought they knew about a key pivot point in British history - and went on to influence the generations that came after them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gerald Brenan's The Spanish Labyrinth has become the classic account of the background to the Spanish Civil War. Written during and immediately after the Civil War, this book has all the vividness of the author's experience. It represents a struggle to see the issues in Spanish politics objectively, whilst bearing witness to the deep involvement which is the only possible source of much of this richly detailed account. As a literary figure on the fringe of the Bloomsbury group, Gerald Brenan lends to this narrative an engaging personal style that has become familiar to many thousands of readers over the decades since it was first published.

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.

Originally published in 1948, this book tells the story of the three fateful days of Gettysburg in the words of the men and women who lived it. No mere chronicle of troop movements and military decisions, it is a path-breaking work in the reporting of Civil War history. Praised by "The New York Times Book Review" as "the very best collection of firsthand accounts, written by soldiers and civilians" of the battle of Gettysburg, this volume has been out of print for many years. Edited by Earl Schenk Miers (1910-1972), one of the pioneers in reviving popular interest in the American Civil War and in Lincoln, this new edition is enriched with a foreword by noted Civil War scholar James I. Robertson, Jr. For many years a favourite among Civil War buffs and enthusiasts, this edition is ideally suited for use in American history courses on the Civil War and military history and in American history survey courses.