Civil War Military History

Spring of 1864 brought a whole new war to the Western Theater, with new commanders and what would become a new style of warfare. Federal armies, perched in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after their stunning victories there the previous fall, poised on the edge of Georgia for the first time in the war. Atlanta sat in the far distance. Major General William T. Sherman, newly elevated to command the Union’s western armies, eyed it covetously - the South’s last great untouched prize.

A General Who Will Fight is a detailed study of leadership that explores Grant's rise from undisciplined cadet to commanding general of the United States Army. Some experts have attributed Grant's success to superior manpower and technology, to the help he received from other Union armies, or even to a ruthless willingness to sacrifice his own men. Harry S. Laver, however, refutes these arguments and reveals that the only viable explanation for Grant's success lies in his leadership skill, professional competence, and unshakable resolve.

Surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion stings itself to death. The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War, captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: They would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom. They planned to use federal power wherever they could to establish freedom. For their part the southern states fully understood this antislavery strategy. They cited it repeatedly as they adopted secession ordinances in response to Lincoln's election.

The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but two weeks later, deep in central Virginia along the line of the Rappahannock. Once Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the swollen Potomac back to Virginia, the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit - and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high, wooded terrain.

Despite the abundance of books on the Civil War, not one has focused exclusively on what was in fact the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict: differences in union and southern strategy. In The Grand Design, Stoker examines how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis identified their political goals and worked with their generals to craft the military means to achieve them - or how they often failed to do so.

This was a decade-long struggle that toppled a dictatorship, reshaped the nation's social fabric, and set the stage for modern Mexico. This turbulent conflict pitted revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Venustiano Carranza against the oppressive regimes of Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta, leading to sweeping political and social reforms. In this concise yet comprehensive book, you'll explore the revolutionary battles, shifting alliances, and the fight for land reform that defined the era.

In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."

Spies! Treason! Conspiracy! The American Civil War? Civil War spying had all the ingredients of a modern spy movie - just replaces gadgets with Saber's and Colt's. This audiobook looks at the incredible history of espionage in the Civil War. With a gripping narrative, this audiobook will sund more like a John le Carré spy novel than a history audiobook.

The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.

New York Times best-selling author and Newbery Honor-recipient Steve Sheinkin gives young listeners the causes and curses that divided America into Union and Confederate nations. Unraveling a very complicated string of events - the small things, the personal ones, the big issues - Steve Sheinkin takes listeners behind the scenes that led to the Civil War. It is a time and a war that threatened America's very existence, revealed in the surprising true stories of the soldiers and statesmen who battled it out.

One of the enduring yet little-examined themes in Civil War lore is the widespread belief that on the field of battle and afterward, members of Masonic lodges would give aid and comfort to wounded or captured enemy Masons, often at great personal sacrifice and danger. This work is a deeply researched examination of the recorded, practical effects of Freemasonry among Civil War participants on both sides.

The novel and fiery thesis of Break It Up is simple: the United States has never lived up to its name - and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn't limited to the South or the 19th century. With a scholar's command and a journalist's curiosity, Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region.

The Real Custer takes a good hard look at the life and storied military career of George Armstrong Custer - from cutting his teeth at Bull Run in the Civil War, to his famous and untimely death at Little Bighorn in the Indian Wars. Author James Robbins demonstrates that Custer, having graduated last in his class at West Point, went on to prove himself again and again as an extremely skilled cavalry leader.

In compelling poetry, the spirits of Frederick Douglas, John Brown, and William Tecumseh Sherman come alive. So does the heart-rending tale of a Confederate son and Union father, the desperate struggle of boys fighting like men, the horrifying shrieks of the wounded, and the pitiful plight of a toil-weary slave. One poetic letter finds distraught parents aching for a son who hasn’t been heard from in months. Another spotlights a wounded lad languishing in a POW camp, determined to survive his living nightmare.

New York Times reported a most surprising piece of news. On May 12-13, the last battle of the Civil War had been fought at the southernmost tip of Texas—resulting in a Confederate victory. Although Palmetto Ranch did nothing to change the war's outcome, it added the final irony to a conflict replete with ironies, unexpected successes, and lost opportunities. For these reasons, it has become both one of the most forgotten and most mythologized battles of the Civil War.

En el septuagésimo aniversario del estallido del trágico conflicto español, Paul Preston, hispanista de prestigio internacional, actualizó y amplió su estudio de la Guerra Civil teniendo en cuenta tanto las últimas investigaciones y polémicas historiográficas como abundante material inédito, ofreciendo su versión definitiva de La guerra civil española.

October 1917, heralded as the culmination of the Russian Revolution, remains a defining moment in world history. Even a hundred years after the events that led to the emergence of the world's first self-proclaimed socialist state, debate continues over whether, as historian E. H. Carr put it decades ago, these earth-shaking days were a "landmark in the emancipation of mankind from past oppression" or "a crime and a disaster."

History for busy people. The American Civil War was fought between the Confederates and the Union from 1861 to 1865. This is a concise history of this tumultuous period.The American Civil War started when eleven southern ‘slave’ states declared their independence from the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln’s Republican government were strongly against slavery and fought to abolish it and keep the country united.

The 16 case studies in this volume examine the culture of armies, navies, and air forces from the Civil War to the Iraq War and how and why culture affected their performance in the ultimate arbitration of war.

Gen. Robert E. Lee began moving part of his Army of Northern Virginia from the Old Dominion toward Pennsylvania on June 3, 1863. Lee believed his army needed to win a major victory on Northern soil if the South was to have a chance at winning the war. Transferring the fighting out of war-torn Virginia would allow the state time to heal while he supplied his army from untapped farms and stores in Maryland and the Keystone State. Lee had also convinced Pres. Jefferson Davis that his offensive would interfere with the Union effort to take Vicksburg in Mississippi.