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In Lincoln's Mercenaries, renowned Civil War historian William
Marvel considers whether poor northern men bore the highest burden
of military service during the American Civil War. Examining data
on median family wealth from the 1860 United States Census, Marvel
reveals the economic conditions of the earliest volunteers from
each northern state during the seven major recruitment and
conscription periods of the war. The results consistently support
the conclusion that the majority of these soldiers came from the
poorer half of their respective states' population, especially
during the first year of fighting. Marvel further suggests that the
largely forgotten economic depression of 1860 and 1861 contributed
in part to the disproportionate participation in the war of men
from chronically impoverished occupations. During this fiscal
downturn, thousands lost their jobs, leaving them susceptible to
the modest emoluments of military pay and community support for
soldiers' families. From newspaper accounts and individual
contemporary testimony, he concludes that these early recruits,
whom historians have generally regarded as the most patriotic of
Lincoln's soldiers, were motivated just as much by money as those
who enlisted later for exorbitant bounties, and that those generous
bounties were made necessary partly because war production and
labor shortages improved economic conditions on the home front. A
fascinating, comprehensive study, Lincoln's Mercenaries illustrates
how an array of social and economic factors drove poor northern men
to rely on military wages to support themselves and their families
during the war.
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy
Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive
selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to
reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional
imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor
pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues
beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we
have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting,
preserving and promoting the world's literature.
Ambrose Burnside, the Union general, was a major player on the
Civil War stage from the first clash at Bull Run until the final
summer of the war. He led a corps or army during most of this time
and played important roles in various theaters of the war. But
until now, he has been remembered mostly for his distinctive
side-whiskers that gave us the term "sideburns" and as an
incompetent leader who threw away thousands of lives in the bloody
battle of Fredericksburg.
In a biography focusing on the Civil War years, William Marvel
reveals a more capable Burnside who managed to acquit himself
creditably as a man and a soldier. Along the Carolina coast in
1862, Burnside won victories that catapulted him to fame. In that
same year, he commanded a corps at Antietam and the Army of the
Potomac at Fredericksburg. In East Tennessee in the summer and fall
of 1863, he captured Knoxville, thereby fulfilling one of Lincoln's
fondest dreams. Back in Virginia during the spring and summer of
1864, he once again led a corps at the battles of the Wilderness,
Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. But after the fiasco of
the Crater he was denied another assignment, and he resigned from
the army the day that Lincoln was assassinated.
Marvel challenges the traditional evaluation of Burnside as a nice
man who failed badly as a general. Marvel's extensive research
indicates that Burnside was often the scapegoat of his superiors
and his junior officers and that William B. Franklin deserves a
large share of the blame for the Federal defeat at Fredericksburg.
He suggests that Burnside's Tennessee campaign of 1863 contained
much praiseworthy effort and shows during the Overland campaign
from the Wilderness to Petersburg, and at the battle of the Crater,
Burnside consistently suffered slights from junior officers who
were confident that they could get away with almost any slur
against "Old Burn." Although Burnside's performance included an
occasional lapse, Marvel argues that he deserved far better
treatment than he has received from his peers and subsequently from
historians.
In ""A Place Called Appomattox"", William Marvel turns his
extensive Civil War scholarship toward Appomattox County, Virginia,
and the village of Appomattox Court House, which became synonymous
with the end of the Civil War when Robert E. Lee surrendered to
Ulysses S. Grant there in 1865. Marvel presents a formidably
researched and elegantly written analysis of the county from 1848
to 1877, using it as a microcosm of Southern attitudes, class
issues, and shifting cultural mores that shaped the Civil War and
its denouement.With an eye toward correcting cultural myths and
enriching the historical record, Marvel analyzes the rise and fall
of the village and county from 1848 to 1877, detailing the
domestic, economic, and social vicissitudes of the village, and
setting the stage for the flight of Lee's Army toward Appomattox
and the climactic surrender that still resonates today.Now
available for the first time in paperback, ""A Place Called
Appomattox"" reveals a new view of the Civil War, tackling some of
the thorniest issues often overlooked by the nostalgic
exaggerations and historical misconceptions that surround Lee's
surrender.
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy
Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive
selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to
reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional
imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor
pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues
beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we
have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting,
preserving and promoting the world's literature.
On June 19, 1864, the Confederate cruiser Alabama and the USS
Kearsarge faced off in the English Channel outside the French port
of Cherbourg. The Kearsarge had seen little action, and its men
greeted the battle with enthusiasm. The Alabama, on the other hand,
had limped into the harbor with a near-mutinous crew after spending
months sinking Union ships all over the globe. Commander Raphael
Semmes intended to put the ship into drydock for a few months - but
then the Kearsarge steamed onto the scene, setting the stage for
battle. About an hour after the Alabama fired the first shot, it
began to sink, and its crew was forced to wave the white flag of
surrender. Marvel consulted the original muster rolls and logbooks
for both ships, the virtually unknown letters of Confederate
paymaster Clarence Yonge, and census and pension information. The
letters and diaries of officers and crewmen describe the tensions
aboard the ships, as do excerpts from the little-used original logs
of Alabama commander Raphael Semmes. French sources also help to
illuminate the details of the battle between the two ships. Marvel
challenges the accuracy of key memoirs on which most previous
histories of the Alabama have been based and in so doing corrects a
number of long-standing misinterpretations, including the myth that
the English builders of the Alabama did not know what Confederate
officials intended to do with the vessel. Marvel's greatest
contribution is his compelling description of the everyday life of
the men on board the ships, from the Liverpool urchins who served
as cabin boys on the Alabama to the senior officers on both of the
warships.
Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most
impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence
and power as Lincoln's Secretary of War during most of the Civil
War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In
the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years,
William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life,
career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a
formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly
benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power,
Stanton used his authority - and the public coffers - to pursue
political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with
a cavalier disregard for civil liberties. Though Lincoln's ability
to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities
is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises
important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the
executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men
like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who
was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and
personal preservation.
Although Appomattox Court House is one of the most symbolically
charged places in America, it was an ordinary tobacco-growing
village both before and after an accident of fate brought the
armies of Lee and Grant together there. It is that Appomattox-the
typical small Confederate community-that William Marvel portrays in
this deeply researched, compelling study. He tells the story of the
Civil War from the perspective of those who inhabited one of the
conflict's most famous sites. The village sprang into existence
just as Texas became a state and reached its peak not long before
Lee and Grant met there. The postwar decline of the village
mirrored that of the rural South as a whole, and Appomattox served
as the focal point for both Lost Cause myth-making and
reconciliation reveries. Marvel draws on original documents,
diaries, and letters composed as the war unfolded to produce a
clear and credible portrait of everyday life in this town, as well
as examining the galvanizing events of April 1865. He also
scrutinizes Appomattox the national symbol, exposing and explaining
some of the cherished myths surrounding the surrender there. In
particular, he challenges the fable that enemies who had battled
each other for four years suddenly laid down their arms and
welcomed each other as brothers.
This groundbreaking work of history investigates the mystery of how
the Civil War began, reconsidering the big question: Was it
inevitable? William Marvel vividly depicts President Lincoln's
tumultuous first year in office, from his inauguration through the
rising crisis of secession and the first several months of the war.
Drawing on original sources, Marvel suggests that Lincoln not only
missed opportunities to avoid conflict with the South but actually
fanned the flames of war. Then he wittingly violated the
Constitution in his effort to preserve the Union.
With a keen eye for the telling detail -- on the battlefield as
well as in the White House -- William Marvel delivers a satisfying
revisionist history of Lincoln and the early days of the Civil War.
Between February 1864 and April 1865, 41,000 Union prisoners of war
were taken to the stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia, where
nearly 13,000 - one-third of them - died. Most contemporary
accounts placed the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders
of the Confederates who administered the prison or on a conspiracy
of higher-ranking officials. In this carefully researched and
compelling revisionist account, William Marvel provides a
comprehensive history of Andersonville Prison and conditions within
it. Based on reliable primary sources - including diaries, Union
and Confederate government documents, and letters - rather than
exaggerated postwar recollections and such well-known but spurious
"diaries" as that of John Ransom, Marvel's analysis exonerates camp
commandant Henry Wirz and others from charges that they
deliberately exterminated prisoners, a crime for which Wirz was
executed after the war. According to Marvel, virulent disease and
severe shortages of vegetables, medical supplies, and other
necessities combined to create a crisis beyond Wirz's control. He
also argues that the tragedy was aggravated by the Union decision
to suspend prisoner exchanges, which meant that many men who might
have returned home were instead left to sicken and die in
captivity.
Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate
myth-making as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. William Marvel
shows that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee's
troops were more numerous yet far less faithful to their cause than
has been suggested: Lee himself made mistakes in this campaign, and
defeat wrung from him an unusual display of fault-finding. Finally,
Marvel proves accounts of the congenial intermingling of the armies
at Appomattox to be shamelessly overblown and the renowned exchange
of salutes to be apocryphal.
Born into a distinguished military family, Fitz John Porter
(1822-1901) was educated at West Point and breveted for bravery in
the war with Mexico. Already a well-respected officer at the outset
of the Civil War, as a general in the Union army he became a
favorite of George B. McClellan, who chose him to command the Fifth
Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Porter and his troops fought
heroically and well at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill. His devotion
to the Union cause seemed unquestionable until fellow Union
generals John Pope and Irvin McDowell blamed him for their own
battlefield failures at Second Bull Run. As a confidant of the
Democrat and limited-war proponent McClellan, Porter found himself
targeted by Radical Republicans intent on turning the conflict to
the cause of emancipation. He made the perfect scapegoat, and a
court-martial packed with compliant officers dismissed him for
disobedience of orders and misconduct before the enemy. Porter
tenaciously pursued vindication after the war, and in 1879 an army
commission finally reviewed his case, completely exonerating him.
Obstinately partisan resistance from old Republican enemies still
denied him even nominal reinstatement for six more years. This
revealing new biography by William Marvel cuts through received
wisdom to show Fitz John Porter as he was: a respected commander
whose distinguished career was ruined by political machinations
within Lincoln's administration. Marvel lifts the cloud that
shadowed Porter over the last four decades of his life, exposing
the spiteful Radical Republicans who refused to restore his rank
long after his exoneration and never restored his benefits.
Reexamining the relevant primary evidence from the full arc of
Porter's life and career, Marvel offers significant insights into
the intersections of politics, war, and memory.
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