Civil War Military

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When Vicksburg fell to Union forces under General Grant in July 1863, the balance turned against the Confederacy in the trans-Appalachian theater. The Federal success along the river opened the way for advances into central and eastern Tennessee, which culminated in the bloody battle of Chickamauga and then a struggle for Chattanooga. Chickamauga is usually counted as a Confederate victory, albeit a costly one.

A quiet, wealthy plantation owner, Jack Hinson watched the start of the Civil War with disinterest. Opposed to secession and a friend to Union and Confederate commanders alike, he did not want a war. After Union soldiers seized and murdered his sons, placing their decapitated heads on the gateposts of his estate, Hinson could remain indifferent no longer. He commissioned a special rifle for long-range accuracy, he took to the woods, and he set out for revenge.

Overlapping with and overshadowed by the First World War, the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War was one of the most ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. Launched in the summer of 1918, it drew in 180,000 troops from fifteen different countries in theaters ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic, and from Poland to the Pacific. Though little remembered today, its consequences stoked global political turmoil for decades to come. In A Nasty Little War, top Russia historian Anna Reid offers a sweeping and deeply researched account of the conflict.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war.

The high command of the Army of the Potomac was a changeable, often dysfunctional band of brothers, going through the fires of war under seven commanding generals in three years, until Grant came east in 1864. The men in charge all too frequently appeared to be fighting against the administration in Washington instead of for it, increasingly cast as political pawns facing down a vindictive congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.

Honor and conviction clash with loyalty and love in this epic Civil War novel that pits brother against brother. Winner of the coveted John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction, Noble Cause chronicles the clash of a Confederate cavalry officer with a Union spy as they defend their beliefs, their country, and their honor.

Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the US Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Ty Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning.

The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and Lincoln's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency. Lincoln and Taney's bitter disagreements began with Taney's Dred Scott opinion in 1857, when the chief justice declared that the Constitution did not grant the black man any rights that the white man was bound to honor.

In The Accident of Color, Daniel Brook journeys to 19th-century New Orleans and Charleston and introduces us to cosmopolitan residents who elude the racial categories the rest of America takes for granted. Before the Civil War, these free, openly mixed-race urbanites enjoyed some rights of citizenship and the privileges of wealth and social status. But after Emancipation, as former slaves move to assert their rights, the black-white binary that rules the rest of the nation begins to intrude.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

Beginning with the birth of the nation, slavery divided and caused conflict for the United States of America, worsening during the country's early decades as the practice became more economically vital. Finally, in 1861, the American Civil War erupted after the election of President Abraham Lincoln. Never acknowledging the South’s right to secede, Lincoln and the North fought the South through four long, bloody, destructive years; much longer than anyone thought the war would last.

Meredith I. "Andy" Anderson teams with Kristi Sandgren for Civil War Women of Courage. A collection of exciting stories about 13 young women, 11 to 24 years of age, based on actual events reported in letters and newspapers during our nation's greatest conflict. From the streets of Baltimore to the Indian ravaged frontier of Minnesota and across the battlefields of the South, it's nonstop adventure. History in the words of those who lived it. Be part of each life as their story unfolds.

Taken from George Armstrong Custer's own writings, An Autobiography of General Custer is the “true story” of one of the most praised, most despised, but surely most remembered American military heroes. Indeed, few figures in our history were - in their own time, as well as in our own - so wildly cheered and so roundly hated.

There exists, an indispensable subculture based within a 500-mile radius of the coastal South Atlantic states and Sea Islands. These culture bearers, who refer to themselves as the Gullah Geechee, or the “Gullah” for short, are the descendants and rightful heirs of the once-shackled slaves who resided in these parts. As the guardians and torch holders of the incredible legacy left behind by their persevering ancestors, the modern Gullah spare no effort in preserving the inherently unique customs and traditions, complete with their own creole tongue.

The consensus view of the Civil War - that it was first and foremost a war to restore the Union, and an antislavery war only later when it became necessary for Union victory - dies here. James Oakes’s groundbreaking history shows how deftly Lincoln and congressional Republicans pursued antislavery throughout the war, pragmatic in policy but steadfast on principle. In the disloyal South the federal government quickly began freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines.

Stranded in the past in 1836, Will Travers woke up in the body of William Barret Travis, commander of the doomed Alamo command, and did what any self-respecting Texan would do when handed a bag of lemons: He made lemonade - defeating Santa Anna's army, twice, forging a lasting peace with the Comanche and rescuing his son from a band of kidnappers. Sixteen years later and just months after he wins the presidency of the Republic of Texas, Will faces the worst crisis of his life. The young republic is being torn apart by civil war. On paper, it appears Will holds all the cards: The rebels are ...

A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.

In this revelatory study, award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards outlines the links between the Gold Rush and the Civil War. He explains that Southerners envisioned California as a new market for slaves, schemed to tie California to the South via railroad, and imagined splitting off the state's southern half as a slave state. Richards recounts the political battles and the fiery California feuds, duels, and, perhaps, outright murders as the state came shockingly close to being divided in two.

The first installment in a sweeping family saga that will convey the reader through the drama and sorrow of the American Civil War. Follow the members of one Pittsburgh family as they embark on a journey through America's most consequential and searing experience. From the halls of Congress to the bloody fields of battle, from the windswept decks of gunboats to the solitude of Lincoln's telegraph office, The Heavens Falling will transport you into the middle of this harrowing American experience, while plumbing the deepest depths of its meaning for the world of today.