Sam Smith fought heroically in the American Revolution and was personally close with George Washington. He was one of the most successful businessmen in Baltimore. As a politician, he worked closely with Thomas Jefferson and served for 40 years in Congress, with 18 years in the House and 22 in the Senate. After the British burned Washington, D.C. in the War of 1812, he rallied the people of Baltimore to defend the city. Under his inspired leadership, Baltimore withstood British attack from both land and sea. This is the story of how he inspired citizens from all walks of life to work and fight together, and is a tale of extraordinary leadership and heroism--not just from Smith himself, but from those he led, too.

Story of the Sioux uprising of 1862 along the Mississippi River in Minnesota. 300 Dakota Indians were sentenced to death.

On the bright Sunday morning of August 17, 1862, four Sioux warriors emerged from the Big Woods northwest of St. Paul, Minnesota, on their way home from an unsuccessful hunt. When they came upon the homestead of Robinson Jones, a white man who ran a post office and general store and offered lodging for travelers, the Indians opened fire on the settlers, killing almost all of them. Soon bands of Sioux were rampaging across southwestern Minnesota, attacking farms and trading posts and murdering everywhere they wentósplitting the skulls of men; clubbing children to death; raping daughters and wives before disemboweling them; cutting off hands, breasts, and genitals; and looting whatever could be taken before setting fire to what remained. Perhaps as many as two thousand settlers were brutally massacred, although the number has never been firmly established. Once the uprising was suppressed, 303 Sioux warriors were sentenced to death. The people of Minnesota called for their immediate execution, a sentiment that matched the national mood. Abraham Lincoln suspected that most of those convicted were marginal players in the rebellion and that the worst culprits had escaped, and he carefully reviewed each case before selecting the 39ólater reduced to 38ómen to hang whom he believed to be guilty of the worst crimes. The remainder were committed to life in prison. "I could not hang men for votes," he later explained. On December 26 the 38 were simultaneously hanged on a gallows construction especially for them. The Sioux Uprising of 1862, also known as the Dakota War, sounded the first shots of a war that continued for another 28 years, culminating in the massacre of Indian women and children at Wounded Knee in 1890. Lincoln's death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth ended his intention to reform the government's Indian policy, and both political parties continued to use the system to reward their supporters, a practice that largely continues to this day.

Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, commander of the Service of Supply (SOS) for the European Theater of Operations (ETO) during World War II, is a legendary military figure historians and servicemen love to hate. In this long-overdue biography of the brilliant yet eccentric commander, Hank H. Cox delves into the perplexing details of how Lt. Gen. John "Jesus Christ Himself" Lee let his idiosyncrasies get the better of him-or at least polarize him against his fellow officers. Though having had an illustrious and successful military career, Lee has gone down in history as "a pompous little son-of-a-bitch only interested in self-advertisement." Few can doubt this as he famously moved his headquarters to Paris where, during the height of the American Army supply crisis, 29,000 of his SOS troops shacked up in the finest hotels and, due to sheer number, created a black market on a grand scale. Since the main function of the SOS was to supply the combat troops with essential food, clothing, and medicine, it made little logistical sense to move the suppliers farther away from the battlefront. Yet, Cox argues, Lee's strategic genius throughout the war has been underappreciated not only by his contemporaries but also by WWII historians. Considering that one out of every four U.S. soldiers on the continent was under Lee's command, the man held a lot of power, which, many historians say, he abused. Drawing on Lee's own unpublished memoir as well as dense documentation of the supply situation in the ETO during WWII, Cox paints a vivid picture of the logistical supply chain during WWII and the man who ruled it all.