The Union that Shaped the Confederacy

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Union that Shaped the Confederacy by : William C. Davis

Download or read book The Union that Shaped the Confederacy written by William C. Davis and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography tells how two Georgia men--Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens--dominated the formation of the Confederacy and served as its vice president and secretary of state. 2 photos.

Lincoln's Loyalists

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Publisher : UPNE
ISBN 13 : 9781555531249
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (312 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln's Loyalists by : Richard Nelson Current

Download or read book Lincoln's Loyalists written by Richard Nelson Current and published by UPNE. This book was released on 1992 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this path-breaking book, Richard Nelson Current closes a major gap in our understanding of the important role of white southerners who fought for the Union during the Civil War. The ranks of the Union forces swelled by more than 100,000 of these men known to their friends as "loyalists" and to their enemies as "tories". They substantially strengthened the Union, weakened the Confederacy, and affected the outcome of the Civil War. Despite the assertions of southern governors that Lincoln would get no troops from the South to preserve the Union, every Confederate state except South Carolina provided at least a battalion of white troops for the Union Army. The role of black soldiers (including those from the South) continues to receive deserved attention. Curiously, little heed has been paid to the white southern supporters of the Union cause, and nothing has been published about the group as a whole. Relying almost entirely on primary sources, Current here opens the long-overdue investigation of these many Americans who, at great risk to themselves and their families, made a significant contribution to the Union's war effort. Current meticulously explores the history of the loyalists in each Confederate state during the war. Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia provided over 70 percent of the loyalist troops, but 10,000 from Arkansas, 7,000 from Louisiana, and thousands from North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama volunteered as well. The author weaves the separate state stories into an intriguing and detailed tapestry. The loyalists served in a variety of capacities--some performing mundane tasks, some fighting with valor. Whatever his individual role, each southerner joining the Unionconstituted a double loss to the Confederacy: a subtraction from its own ranks and an addition to the Union's. Undoubtedly, this played an important role in the Confederate defeat.

War on the Waters

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807837326
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis War on the Waters by : James M. McPherson

Download or read book War on the Waters written by James M. McPherson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because they represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war's naval campaigns and their military leaders. McPherson recounts how the Union navy's blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war's early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports. Meanwhile, the Confederate navy, dwarfed by its giant adversary, demonstrated daring and military innovation. Commerce raiders sank Union ships and drove the American merchant marine from the high seas. Southern ironclads sent several Union warships to the bottom, naval mines sank many more, and the Confederates deployed the world's first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. But in the end, it was the Union navy that won some of the war's most important strategic victories--as an essential partner to the army on the ground at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and all by itself at Port Royal, Fort Henry, New Orleans, and Memphis.

Government of Our Own

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439105855
Total Pages : 550 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Government of Our Own by : William C. Davis

Download or read book Government of Our Own written by William C. Davis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For four crucial months in 1861, delegates from all over the South met in Montgomery, Alabama, to establish a new nation. Davis (Jefferson Davis: The Man and the Hour, LJ 11/15/91) tells their story in this new work, another example of Davis's fine storytelling skill and an indispensable guide to understanding the formation of the Confederate government. Among the issues Davis examines are revising the Constitution to meet Southern needs, banning the importation of slaves, and determining whether the convention could be considered a congress. Also revealed are the many participating personalities, their ambitions and egos, politicking and lobbying for the presidency of the new nation, and the nature of the city of Montgomery itself.

The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim

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Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813047501
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim by : Robert E. May

Download or read book The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim written by Robert E. May and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From French intervention in Mexico to British interests in the Caribbean, the impact of the Civil War extended far beyond military campaigns in Virginia, diffusing widely into the Atlantic world. Revised to take into account the outpouring of scholarship on Civil War diplomacy that has appeared since the book was first published, The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim features essays by acclaimed historians Howard Jones, R. J. M. Blackett, Thomas Schoonover, and James M. McPherson.

The Seventh Star of the Confederacy

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Publisher : University of North Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1574412590
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis The Seventh Star of the Confederacy by : Kenneth Wayne Howell

Download or read book The Seventh Star of the Confederacy written by Kenneth Wayne Howell and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On February 1, 1861, delegates at the Texas Secession Convention elected to leave the Union. The people of Texas supported the actions of the convention in a statewide referendum, paving the way for the state to secede and to officially become the seventh state in the Confederacy. Soon the Texans found themselves engaged in a bloody and prolonged civil war against their northern brethren. During the curse of this war, the lives of thousands of Texans, both young and old, were changed forever. This new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, incorporates the latest scholarly research on how Texans experienced the war. Eighteen contributors take us from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields, and from the halls of the governor’s mansion to the halls of the county commissioner’s court in Colorado County. Also explored are well-known battles that took place in or near Texas, such as the Battle of Galveston, the Battle of Nueces, the Battle of Sabine Pass, and the Red River Campaign. Finally, the social and cultural aspects of the war receive new analysis, including the experiences of women, African Americans, Union prisoners of war, and noncombatants.

The Three-Cornered War

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Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 1501152556
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Three-Cornered War by : Megan Kate Nelson

Download or read book The Three-Cornered War written by Megan Kate Nelson and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History A dramatic, riveting, and “fresh look at a region typically obscured in accounts of the Civil War. American history buffs will relish this entertaining and eye-opening portrait” (Publishers Weekly). Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict—involving not just the North and South, but also the West. Against the backdrop of this larger series of battles, Nelson introduces nine individuals: John R. Baylor, a Texas legislator who established the Confederate Territory of Arizona; Louisa Hawkins Canby, a Union Army wife who nursed Confederate soldiers back to health in Santa Fe; James Carleton, a professional soldier who engineered campaigns against Navajos and Apaches; Kit Carson, a famous frontiersman who led a regiment of volunteers against the Texans, Navajos, Kiowas, and Comanches; Juanita, a Navajo weaver who resisted Union campaigns against her people; Bill Davidson, a soldier who fought in all of the Confederacy’s major battles in New Mexico; Alonzo Ickis, an Iowa-born gold miner who fought on the side of the Union; John Clark, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s who embraced the Republican vision for the West as New Mexico’s surveyor-general; and Mangas Coloradas, a revered Chiricahua Apache chief who worked to expand Apache territory in Arizona. As we learn how these nine charismatic individuals fought for self-determination and control of the region, we also see the importance of individual actions in the midst of a larger military conflict. Based on letters and diaries, military records and oral histories, and photographs and maps from the time, “this history of invasions, battles, and forced migration shapes the United States to this day—and has never been told so well” (Pulitzer Prize–winning author T.J. Stiles).

Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy

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Publisher : Public Affairs
ISBN 13 : 1610391543
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy by : Peter Carlson

Download or read book Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy written by Peter Carlson and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of two correspondents for the New York Tribune who escaped the Confederacy's most notorious prison after being captured at the Battle of Vicksburg and relied on secret signals and covert sympathizers to travel back to Union territory.

Union And Confederate Submarine Warfare In The Civil War

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Publisher : Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis Union And Confederate Submarine Warfare In The Civil War by : Mark K. Ragan

Download or read book Union And Confederate Submarine Warfare In The Civil War written by Mark K. Ragan and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 1999-11-21 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Submarine use and experimentation during the Civil War was far more widespread than generally known. Drawing on years of archival research, submarine expert Mark Ragan outlines the building programs, construction plans, and underwater operations of both the Union and the Confederacy. 50 photos/illustrations. 6 maps. Nationwide book signings.

A More Civil War

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469630524
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis A More Civil War by : D. H. Dilbeck

Download or read book A More Civil War written by D. H. Dilbeck and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War, Americans confronted profound moral problems about how to fight in the conflict. In this innovative book, D. H. Dilbeck reveals how the Union sought to wage a just war against the Confederacy. He shows that northerners fought according to a distinct "moral vision of war," an array of ideas about the nature of a truly just and humane military effort. Dilbeck tells how Union commanders crafted rules of conduct to ensure their soldiers defeated the Confederacy as swiftly as possible while also limiting the total destruction unleashed by the fighting. Dilbeck explores how Union soldiers abided by official just-war policies as they battled guerrillas, occupied cities, retaliated against enemy soldiers, and came into contact with Confederate civilians. In contrast to recent scholarship focused solely on the Civil War's carnage, Dilbeck details how the Union sought both to deal sternly with Confederates and to adhere to certain constraints. The Union's earnest effort to wage a just war ultimately helped give the Civil War its distinct character, a blend of immense destruction and remarkable restraint.

Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742551268
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865 by : Ethan S. Rafuse

Download or read book Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865 written by Ethan S. Rafuse and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this reexamination of the last two years of Lee's storied military career, Ethan S. Rafuse offers a clear, informative, and insightful account of Lee's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to defend the Confederacy against a relentless and determined foe. This book provides a comprehensive, yet concise and entertaining narrative of the battles and campaigns that highlighted this phase of the war and analyzes the battles and Lee's generalship in the context of the steady deterioration of the Confederacy's prospects for victory.

Why the Confederacy Lost

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199879729
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Why the Confederacy Lost by : Gabor S. Boritt

Download or read book Why the Confederacy Lost written by Gabor S. Boritt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-10-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Civil War, someone asked General Pickett why the Battle of Gettysburg had been lost: Was it Lee's error in taking the offensive, the tardiness of Ewell and Early, or Longstreet's hesitation in attacking? Pickett scratched his head and replied, "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it." This simple fact, writes James McPherson, has escaped a generation of historians who have looked to faulty morale, population, economics, and dissent as the causes of Confederate failure. These were all factors, he writes, but the Civil War was still a war--won by the Union army through key victories at key moments. With this brilliant review of how historians have explained the Southern defeat, McPherson opens a fascinating account by several leading historians of how the Union broke the Confederate rebellion. In every chapter, the military struggle takes center stage, as the authors reveal how battlefield decisions shaped the very forces that many scholars (putting the cart before the horse) claim determined the outcome of the war. Archer Jones examines the strategy of the two sides, showing how each had to match its military planning to political necessity. Lee raided north of the Potomac with one eye on European recognition and the other on Northern public opinion--but his inevitable retreats looked like failure to the Southern public. The North, however, developed a strategy of deep raids that was extremely effective because it served a valuable political as well as military purpose, shattering Southern morale by tearing up the interior. Gary Gallagher takes a hard look at the role of generals, narrowing his focus to the crucial triumvirate of Lee, Grant, and Sherman, who towered above the others. Lee's aggressiveness may have been costly, but he well knew the political impact of his spectacular victories; Grant and Sherman, meanwhile, were the first Union generals to fully harness Northern resources and carry out coordinated campaigns. Reid Mitchell shows how the Union's advantage in numbers was enhanced by a dedication and perseverance of federal troops that was not matched by the Confederates after their home front began to collapse. And Joseph Glatthaar examines black troops, whose role is entering the realm of national myth. In 1960, there appeared a collection of essays by major historians, entitled Why the North Won the Civil War, edited by David Donald; it is now in its twenty-sixth printing, having sold well over 100,000 copies. Why the Confederacy Lost provides a parallel volume, written by today's leading authorities. Provocatively argued and engagingly written, this work reminds us that the hard-won triumph of the North was far from inevitable.

Faces of the Confederacy

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421400308
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Faces of the Confederacy by : Ronald S. Coddington

Download or read book Faces of the Confederacy written by Ronald S. Coddington and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-01-19 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Extensive research, fascinating characters . . . The author has done an admirable job of literally placing a face on the ordinary Confederate soldier.” —The Journal of Southern History “The history of the Civil War is the stories of its soldiers,” writes Ronald S. Coddington in the preface to Faces of the Confederacy. This book tells the stories of seventy-seven Southern soldiers—young farm boys, wealthy plantation owners, intellectual elites, uneducated poor—who posed for photographic portraits, cartes de visite, to leave with family, friends, and sweethearts before going off to war. Coddington, a passionate collector of Civil War-era photography, conducted a monumental search for these previously unpublished portrait cards, then unearthed the personal stories of their subjects, putting a human face on a war rife with inhuman atrocities. The Civil War took the lives of twenty-two of every hundred men who served. Coddington follows the exhausted survivors as they return home to occupied cities and towns, ravaged farmlands, a destabilized economy, and a social order in the midst of upheaval. This book is a haunting and moving tribute to those brave men. Like its companion volume, Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories, this book offers readers a unique perspective on the war and contributes to a better understanding of the role of the common soldier. “With his meticulous research and a journalist’s eye for good stories, Ron Coddington has brought new life to Civil War photographic portraits of obscure and long-forgotten Confederates whose wartime experiences might otherwise have been lost to history.” —Bob Zeller, cofounder and president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography

Gateway to the Confederacy

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 080715511X
Total Pages : 469 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Gateway to the Confederacy by : Evan C. Jones

Download or read book Gateway to the Confederacy written by Evan C. Jones and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of ten new essays from some of our finest Civil War historians working today, Gateway to the Confederacy offers a reexamination of the campaigns fought to gain possession of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Each essay addresses how Americans have misconstrued the legacy of these struggles and why scholars feel it necessary to reconsider one of the most critical turning points of the American Civil War. The first academic analysis that delineates all three Civil War campaigns fought from 1862 to 1863 for control of Chattanooga -- the trans-portation hub of the Confederacy and gateway to the Deep South -- this book deals not only with military operations but also with the campaigns' origins and consequences. The essays also explore the far-reaching social and political implications of the battles and bring into sharp focus their impact on postwar literature and commemoration. Several chapters revise the traditional portraits of both famous and con-troversial figures including Ambrose Bierce and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Others investigate some of the more salient moments of these cam-paigns such as the circumstances that allowed for the Confederate breakthrough assault at Chickamauga. Gateway to the Confederacy reassesses these pivotal battles, long in need of reappraisal, and breaks new ground as each scholar re-shapes a particular aspect of this momentous part of the Civil War. CONTRIBUTORS Russell S. Bonds Stephen Cushman Caroline E. Janney Evan C. Jones David A. Powell Gerald J. Prokopowicz William Glenn Robertson Wiley Sword Craig L. Symonds

Sing Not War

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807877689
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Sing Not War by : James Marten

Download or read book Sing Not War written by James Marten and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Civil War, white Confederate and Union army veterans reentered--or struggled to reenter--the lives and communities they had left behind. In Sing Not War, James Marten explores how the nineteenth century's "Greatest Generation" attempted to blend back into society and how their experiences were treated by nonveterans. Many soldiers, Marten reveals, had a much harder time reintegrating into their communities and returning to their civilian lives than has been previously understood. Although Civil War veterans were generally well taken care of during the Gilded Age, Marten argues that veterans lost control of their legacies, becoming best remembered as others wanted to remember them--for their service in the war and their postwar political activities. Marten finds that while southern veterans were venerated for their service to the Confederacy, Union veterans often encountered resentment and even outright hostility as they aged and made greater demands on the public purse. Drawing on letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources, Sing Not War illustrates that during the Gilded Age "veteran" conjured up several conflicting images and invoked contradicting reactions. Deeply researched and vividly narrated, Marten's book counters the romanticized vision of the lives of Civil War veterans, bringing forth new information about how white veterans were treated and how they lived out their lives.

Confederate Reckoning

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674265912
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Confederate Reckoning by : Stephanie McCurry

Download or read book Confederate Reckoning written by Stephanie McCurry and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist Winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize Winner of the Merle Curti Prize “Perhaps the highest praise one can offer McCurry’s work is to say that once we look through her eyes, it will become almost impossible to believe that we ever saw or thought otherwise.”—Drew Gilpin Faust, The New Republic 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. When the grandiosity of Southerners’ national ambitions met the harsh realities of wartime crises, unintended consequences ensued. Although Southern statesmen and generals had built the most powerful slave regime in the Western world, they had excluded the majority of their own people—white women and slaves—and thereby sowed the seeds of their demise. Wartime scarcity of food, labor, and soldiers tested the Confederate vision at every point and created domestic crises to match those found on the battlefields. Women and slaves became critical political actors as they contested government enlistment and tax and welfare policies, and struggled for their freedom. The attempt to repress a majority of its own population backfired on the Confederate States of America as the disenfranchised demanded to be counted and considered in the great struggle over slavery, emancipation, democracy, and nationhood. That Confederate struggle played out in a highly charged international arena. The political project of the Confederacy was tried by its own people and failed. The government was forced to become accountable to women and slaves, provoking an astounding transformation of the slaveholders’ state. 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.

For Cause and Comrades

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199741052
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis For Cause and Comrades by : James M. McPherson

Download or read book For Cause and Comrades written by James M. McPherson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-04-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.