Bøger i Vintage Civil War Library serien

He was short, foul-mouthed, and so constitutionally pugnacious that he once thrashed a Southern train conductor who treated him rudely. He rose from the undistinguished rank of quartermaster to command the Union cavalry at the battles of Yellow Tavern (where he defeated his flamboyant rebel counterpart, J.E.B. Stuart) and Winchester. And when the Civil War was over, General Phil Sheridan continued to fight, whether that meant plunging into the bloody and byzantine politics of Reconstruction Louisiana or managing the inglorious war against the Plains Indians.This outstanding biography restores Sheridan to his place in American military history; examines his relationships with contemporaries like Grant, Sherman, and his ill-fated subordinate George Armstrong Custer, and makes the momentous age he lived in come back to life.

In this carefully researched book William J. Cooper gives us a fresh perspective on the period between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, during which all efforts to avoid or impede secession and prevent war failed. Here is the story of the men whose decisions and actions during the crisis of the Union resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War.Sectional compromise had been critical in the history of the country, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through to 1860, and was a hallmark of the nation. On several volatile occasions political leaders had crafted solutions to the vexing problems dividing North and South. During the postelection crisis many Americans assumed that once again a political compromise would settle yet another dispute. Instead, in those crucial months leading up to the clash at Fort Sumter, that tradition of compromise broke down and a rapid succession of events led to the great cataclysm in American history, the Civil War. All Americans did not view this crisis from the same perspective. Strutting southern fire-eaters designed to break up the Union. Some Republicans, crowing over their electoral triumph, evinced little concern about the threatened dismemberment of the country. Still others—northerners and southerners, antislave and proslave alike—strove to find an equitable settlement that would maintain the Union whole. Cooper captures the sense of contingency, showing Americans in these months as not knowing where decisions would lead, how events would unfold. The people who populate these pages could not foresee what war, if it came, would mean, much less predict its outcome.We Have the War Upon Us helps us understand what the major actors said and did: the Republican party, the Democratic party, southern secessionists, southern Unionists; why the pro-compromise forces lost; and why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. It reveals how the major actors perceived what was happening and the reasons they gave for their actions: Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, William Henry Seward, John J. Crittenden, Charles Francis Adams, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and a host of others. William J. Cooper has written a full account of the North and the South, Republicans and Democrats, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives that deepens our insight into what is still one of the most controversial periods in American history.

On July 2nd, 1863, forces from the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia and the Union’s Army of the Potomac clashed over the steep, rocky hill known as Little Round Top. This battle was one of the most brutal and devastating engagements of the American Civil War, and the North’s bloody victory there insured their triumph at Gettysburg, setting the stage for the South’s ultimate defeat. Using newly discovered documents and rare firsthand sources, acclaimed historian Glenn LaFantasie sheds new light on the dramatic story of this pivotal battle and tells the story as it truly unfolded, from the perspective of the brave men who fought and died there.

As most Americans of the 1860s fixed their attention on the battlefields of Shiloh and Manassas, another war raged on the largely unsettled Western frontier. This splendid work by the author of The Patriot Chiefs restores this "other" Civil War to its true, epic proportions. With formidable scholarship and irresistible narrative ease, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., tells of the Yankee armada that foundered in the Louisiana bayous; of the bloody fighting on the ridges and prairies of the border states. where a Cherokee guerrilla leader was the last Confederate general to surrender -- two months after Appomattox: and of the U.S. Army's brutal campaigns against the Plains Indians in theaters as far apart as Minnesota and Colorado.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year In August 1862, after suffering decades of hardship, broken treaties, and relentless encroachment on their land, the Dakota leader Little Crow reluctantly agreed that his people must go to war. After six weeks of fighting, the uprising was smashed, thousands of Indians were taken prisoner by the US army, and 303 Dakotas were sentenced to death. President Lincoln, embroiled in the most devastating period of the Civil War, personally intervened to save the lives of 265 of the condemned men, but in the end, 38 Dakota men would be hanged in the largest government-sanctioned execution in U.S. history. Writing with uncommon immediacy and insight, Scott W. Berg details these events within the larger context of the Civil War, the history of the Dakota people and the subsequent United States-Indian wars, and brings to life this overlooked but seminal moment in American history.

A sweeping history of the 1840s, Manifest Destinies captures the enormous sense of possibility that inspired America's growth and shows how the acquisition of western territories forced the nation to come to grips with the deep fault line that would bring war in the near future.Steven E. Woodworth gives us a portrait of America at its most vibrant and expansive. It was a decade in which the nation significantly enlarged its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, California, and the Pacific Northwest; William Henry Harrison ran the first modern populist campaign, focusing on entertaining voters rather than on discussing issues; prospectors headed west to search for gold; Joseph Smith founded a new religion; railroads and telegraph lines connected the country's disparate populations as never before. When the 1840s dawned, Americans were feeling optimistic about the future: the population was growing, economic conditions were improving, and peace had reigned for nearly thirty years. A hopeful nation looked to the West, where vast areas of unsettled land seemed to promise prosperity to anyone resourceful enough to take advantage. And yet political tensions roiled below the surface; as the country took on new lands, slavery emerged as an irreconcilable source of disagreement between North and South, and secession reared its head for the first time.Rich in detail and full of dramatic events and fascinating characters, Manifest Destinies is an absorbing and highly entertaining account of a crucial decade that forged a young nation's character and destiny.

In this masterful portrait of life in Savannah before, during, and after the Civil War, prize-winning historian Jacqueline Jones transports readers to the balmy, raucous streets of that fabled Southern port city. Here is a subtle and rich social history that weaves together stories of the everyday lives of blacks and whites, rich and poor, men and women from all walks of life confronting the transformations that would alter their city forever. Deeply researched and vividly written, Saving Savannah is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the Civil War years.

From the acclaimed Civil War historian, a brilliant new history-the most intimate and richly readable account we have had-of the climactic three-day battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), which draws the reader into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier.

Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that was to come. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Americans of all stripes saw the potential for both wealth and power. Among the more calculating were Southern slave owners. By making California a slave state, they could increase the value of their slaves-by 50 percent at least, and maybe much more. They could also gain additional influence in Congress and expand Southern economic clout, abetted by a new transcontinental railroad that would run through the South. Yet, despite their machinations, California entered the union as a free state. Disillusioned Southerners would agitate for even more slave territory, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and, ultimately, to the Civil War itself.

In this luminous portrait of wartime Washington, Ernest B. Furgurson-author of the widely acclaimed Chancellorsville 1863, Ashes of Glory, and Not War but Murder--brings to vivid life the personalities and events that animated the Capital during its most tumultuous time. Here among the sharpsters and prostitutes, slaves and statesmen are detective Allan Pinkerton, tracking down Southern sympathizers; poet Walt Whitman, nursing the wounded; and accused Confederate spy Antonia Ford, romancing her captor, Union Major Joseph Willard. Here are generals George McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, railroad crew boss Andrew Carnegie, and architect Thomas Walter, striving to finish the Capitol dome. And here is Abraham Lincoln, wrangling with officers, pardoning deserters, and inspiring the nation. Freedom Rising is a gripping account of the era that transformed Washington into the world's most influential city.

"Albert Cashier” served three years in the Union Army and passed successfully as a man until 1911 when the aging veteran was revealed to be a woman named Jennie Hodgers. Frances Clayton kept fighting even after her husband was gunned down in front of her at the Battle of Murfreesboro. And more than one soldier astonished "his” comrades-in-arms by giving birth in camp.This lively and authoritative book opens a hitherto neglected chapter of Civil War history, telling the stories of hundreds of women who adopted male disguise and fought as soldiers. It explores their reasons for enlisting; their experiences in combat, and the way they were seen by their fellow soldiers and the American public. Impeccably researched and narrated with verve and wit, They Fought Like Demons is a major addition to our understanding of the Civil War era.

This final volume of Shelby Foote's masterful narrative history of the Civil War brings to life the military endgame, the surrender at Appomattox, and the tragic dénouement of the war-the assassination of President Lincoln. Features maps throughout. "An unparalleled achievement, an American Iliad, a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist." -Walker Percy "To read this chronicle is an awesome and moving experience. History and literature are rarely so thoroughly combined as here; one finishes this volume convinced that no one need undertake this particular enterprise again." -Newsweek "In objectivity, in range, in mastery of detail, in beauty of language and feeling for the people involved, this work surpasses anything else on the subject. . . . Written in the tradition of the great historian-artists-Gibbon, Prescott, Napier, Freeman-it stands alongside the work of the best of them." -The New Republic "The most written-about war in history has, with this completion of Shelby Foote's trilogy, been given the epic treatment it deserves." -Providence Journal