Not much has been written about the Italian immigrant experience prior to 1880. This book, through careful analysis of primary and archival sources, brings to life the Civil War-time trials and tribulations of several notable Italian Americans--Bancroft Gherardi, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Francis B. Spinola, Decimus et Ultimus Barziza, and Edward Ferrero, among others. Though their numbers were few, Italian Americans played central roles in the bloodiest war in our country's history. Included in this book are samples of John Garibaldi's wartime correspondence to his wife, lists of Italian Americans who served as officers and noncommissioned sailors in the Union Navy, and first-hand correspondence of William Howell Reed (Virginia hospitals overseer under President Grant) and the brother of a young Italian who died in the hospital during the war. Sons of Garibaldi in Blue and Gray fills a critical gap in studies of Italian American life in the United States in the late 1800s.

Because of Union victories at Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry, the outer perimeter of defenses that protected western and middle Tennessee left the city of Memphis, Tennessee exposed to Union attack by river. After Grant's victory at Shiloh the Confederate forces would concentrate their strength along the Ohio and Mobile Railroad in northern Mississippi. The disastrous defeat of General Earl Van Dorn at Corinth, Mississippi left the door wide open for a union victory at Vicksburg and the fall of her sister fortress at Port Hudson, Louisiana. The Mississippi River represents the jugular vein of the South. The capture of New Orleans by Admiral Farrago effectively shut commerce that the South depended upon. The northern strategist fully recognized that the control of the Mississippi and her tributaries would prevent any Southern expansion into Missouri and Kentucky. The 18th Arkansas infantry played a role in the defense of both the upper and lower Mississippi River. This is their story.

A great deal has been written about the military career of Comfederate General Earl Van Dorn, but his death at the hands of infuriated Dr. George B. Peters hinted spying and espionage. A baby a short time later by Jessie McKissack Peters, the young wife of a much older physician and state senator husband who had been absent for a year, came into question. The fascinating families left to cope with the situations include servants who were taught trades that allowed them to erebuild the area. Descendants became the first blacks to receive architectural licenses.

On April 16, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued a blockade of the Confederate coastline. The largely agrarian South did not have the industrial base to succeed in a protracted conflict. What it did have - and what England and other foreign countries wanted - was cotton and tobacco. Industrious men soon began to connect the dots between Confederate and British needs. As the blockade grew, the blockade runners became quite ingenious in finding ways around the barriers. Boats worked their way back and forth from the Confederacy to Nassau and England, and everyone from scoundrels to naval officers wanted a piece of the action. Poor men became rich in a single transaction, and dances and drinking - from the posh Royal Victoria hotel to the boarding houses lining the harbor - were the order of the day. British, United States, and Confederate sailors intermingled in the streets, eyeing each other warily as boats snuck in and out of Nassau. But it was all to come crashing down as the blockade finally tightened and the final Confederate ports were captured. The story of this great carnival has been mentioned in a variety of sources but never examined in detail. Breaking the Blockade: The Bahamas during the Civil War focuses on the political dynamics and tensions that existed between the United States Consular Service, the governor of the Bahamas, and the representatives of the southern and English firms making a large profit off the blockade. Filled with intrigue, drama, and colorful characters, this is an important Civil War story that has not yet been told.

First published in 1882, Samuel Watkins' 'Co. Aytch - A Sideshow of the Big Show' is widely recognized as one of the most important Civil War memoirs. Written in a lively, engaging style, the book captures the pride, misery, glory, and horror experienced by the common foot soldier.

The Civil War resulted from the insistence of Southern "firebrands" that the 1820 restrictions on where slavery could be practiced in the Western territories of the USA be removed. And the dogged determination of some Northerners to restrict the brutal treatment of blacks and finally put slavery on the road to extinction. In the 1850's big shoes dropped one after another in staccato fashion to dash such hopes. The final straws were the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 saying blacks weren't even people and Congress had no power to restrict slavery anywhere And Civil War was going on in "bleeding Kansas" between adherents of the two stances. John Brown was radicalized there by the sacking of Abolitionist stronghold Lawrence. He and his sons killed some Jayhawkers (slavery adherents) from Missouri. Then Brown, his sons, and a few others, lit a fuse in Oct 1859 by a hare brained scheme to seize the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to arm slaves and precipitate action to free them. So when Lincoln was elected in 1860-the South bolted As they had threatened for 15 years. America was almost destroyed. Until July 4, 1863 when two Union victories insured: "that these honored dead (800,000) shall not have died in vain" Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg, Pa Nov. 1863.

Cavalryman, Infantryman and Prisoner of War
This personable first hand account of the American Civil War was written by William Tyler of the 9th Illinois Cavalry of the Union Army. It is an eye-witness narrative where the good nature of the author shines through the text and, as a consequence, as well as being a first rate source work of the horse soldiers in blue it is also a story full of humour, adventure and anecdote. The first part of the narrative deals with the business of war from the perspective of a trooper in the Union Cavalry, but Tyler's role was soon to change due to his singular success in the carrying of an important dispatch. As often happens, especially in military life, having demonstrated some talent Tyler became the 'expert on hand' and was given further dispatches to carry through perilous, enemy occupied country on a regular basis. He gives the impression that he relished the independence of action and the adventures that came his way. Discharged after a wound, Tyler re-enlisted, not to return to his old unit but in the 95th Illinois Infantry because he wished to be close to his brother who had joined that regiment. In a battle near Guntown, Mississippi, against Forrest's Confederates, Tyler was captured and sent to the notorious Andersonville prisoner of war jail. In the final part of his book he describes the appalling conditions and brutality suffered by the Union men in Andersonville which makes for revealing if harrowing reading.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

The Battle of Gettysburg remains one of the most controversial military actions in America's history, and one of the most studied.Professor Coddington's is an analysis not only of the battle proper, but of the actions of both Union and Confederate armies for the six months prior to the battle and the factors affecting General Meade's decision not to pursue the retreating Confederate forces. This book contends that Gettysburg was a crucial Union victory, primarily because of the effective leadership of Union forces--not, as has often been said, only because the North was the beneficiary of Lee's mistakes. Scrupulously documented and rich in fascinating detail, The Gettysburg Campaign stands as one of the landmark works in the history of the Civil War.

Lasting from June 1864 through April 1965, the RichmondPetersburg Campaign was the longest of the Civil War, dwarfing even the Atlanta and Vicksburg campaigns in its scope and complexity. This compact yet comprehensive guide allows armchair historian and battlefield visitor alike to follow the campaign's course, with a clear view of its multifaceted strategic, operation, tactical, and human dimensions.
A concise, single-volume collection of official reports and personal accounts, the guide is organized in one-day and multi-day itineraries that take the reader to all the battlefields of the campaign, some of which have never before been interpreted and described for the visitor so extensively. Comprehensive campaign and battle maps reflect troop movements, historical terrain features, and modern roads for ease of understanding and navigation. A uniquely useful resource for the military enthusiast and the battlefield traveler, this is the essential guide for anyone hoping to see the historic landscape and the human face of this most decisive campaign of the Civil War.

The South Carolina 23rd Infantry Regiment [also called Coast Rangers] was assembled at Charleston, South Carolina, in November, 1861. Most of the men were from Horry, Georgetown, Charleston, and Colleton counties. After being stationed in South Carolina, the regiment moved to Virginia and during the war served in General Evans', Elliot's, and Wallace's Brigade.

"Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War" discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. It focuses in particular on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Its formation and short-lived history on the battlefield were closely connected to the activities and propaganda of Yiddish-speaking Jewish migrant communists in Paris who described Jewish volunteers as 'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People' in their daily newspaper "Naye Prese."Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.

A battle badly conducted and the destruction of one brave man
This an account of the battle of Shiloh by one who was present as a colonel of the Ohio Volunteer infantry, but it is also much more than that. In every line of this book the reader feels the anger and vitriol of a deeply offended man. This work transcends history to become an exposure-according to the author's viewpoint-of incompetence, double dealing and cover-up on behalf of the senior officers of the Union Army. The particular target of Worthington's accusation is his superior officer W. T. Sherman. Certainly the two men were enemies-a situation which for Worthington, as the subordinate officer, was to have disastrous consequences. It is now recognised that Worthington's own conduct during the battle itself was exemplary, contributing much to the benefit of the Union action. Nevertheless, Sherman court martialled Worthington after the battle and he was cashiered from the service. Notwithstanding the illegality of his trial and its subsequent over turning by Lincoln himself, Sherman, in concert with Grant, ensured Worthington was never reinstated. This is a vital analysis of a Civil War battle with no holds barred and a story of great injustice done to a man of principle.

At its core, the Civil War was a conflict over the meaning of citizenship. Most famously, it became a struggle over whether or not to grant rights to a group that stood outside the pale of civil-society: African Americans. But other groups--namely Jews, Germans, the Irish, and Native Americans--also became part of this struggle to exercise rights stripped from them by legislation, court rulings, and the prejudices that defined the age. Grounded in extensive research by experts in their respective fields, Civil War Citizens is the first volume to collectively analyze the wartime experiences of those who lived outside the dominant white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant citizenry of nineteenth-century America. The essays examine the momentous decisions made by these communities in the face of war, their desire for full citizenship, the complex loyalties that shaped their actions, and the inspiring and heartbreaking results of their choices-- choices that still echo through the United States today. Contributors: Stephen D. Engle, William McKee Evans, David T. Gleeson, Andrea Mehrlander, Joseph P. Reidy, Robert N. Rosen, and Susannah J. Ural.

Slavery on the Periphery focuses on nineteen counties on the Kansas-Missouri border, tracing slavery's rise and fall from the earliest years of American settlement through the Civil War along this critical geographical, political, and social fault line. Kristen Epps explores slavery's emergence from an upper South slaveholding culture and its development into a small-scale system characterised by slaves' diverse forms of employment, close contact between slaves and slaveholders, a robust hiring market, and the prevalence of abroad marriages. She demonstrates that space and place mattered to enslaved men and women most clearly because slave mobility provided a means of resistance to the strictures of daily life. Mobility was a medium for both negotiation and confrontation between slaves and slaveholders, and the ongoing political conflict between proslavery supporters and antislavery proponents opened new doors for such resistance. Slavery's expansion on the Kansas-Missouri border was no mere intellectual debate within the halls of Congress. Its horrors had become a visible presence in a region so torn by bloody conflict that it captivated the nineteenth - century American public. Foregrounding African Americans' place in the border narrative illustrates how slavery's presence set the stage for the Civil War and emancipation here, as it did elsewhere in the United States.

This is one volume in a library of Confederate States history, in twelve volumes, written by distinguished men of the South, and edited by Gen. Clement A. Evans of Georgia. A generation after the Civil War, the Southern protagonists wanted to tell their story, and in 1899 these twelve volumes appeared under the imprint of the Confederate Publishing Company. The first and last volumes comprise such subjects as the justification of the Southern States in seceding from the Union and the honorable conduct of the war by the Confederate States government; the history of the actions and concessions of the South in the formation of the Union and its policy in securing the territorial dominion of the United States; the civil history of the Confederate States; Confederate naval history; the morale of the armies; the South since the war, and a connected outline of events from the beginning of the struggle to its close. The other ten volumes each treat a separate State with details concerning its peculiar story, its own devotion, its heroes, and its battlefields.