Download or read book The Letters of Henry Adams written by Henry Adams and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Unsung Hero of Gettysburg written by Edward G. Longacre and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-05 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg (1833–1917) was one of the ablest and most successful commanders of cavalry in any Civil War army. Pennsylvania-born, West Point–educated, and deeply experienced in cavalry operations prior to the conflict, his career personified that of the typical cavalry officer in the mid-nineteenth-century American army. Gregg achieved distinction on many battlefields, including those during the Peninsula, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe, Overland, and Petersburg campaigns, ultimately gaining the rank of brevet major general as leader of the Second Division, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac. The highlight of his service occurred on July 3, 1863, the climactic third day at Gettysburg, when he led his own command as well as the brigade of Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer in repulsing an attempt by thousands of Confederate cavalry under the legendary J. E. B. Stuart in attacking the right flank and rear of the Union Army while Pickett’s charge struck its front and center. Historians credit Gregg with helping preserve the security of his army at a critical point, making Union victory inevitable. Unlike glory-hunters such as Custer and Stuart, Gregg was a quietly competent veteran who never promoted himself or sought personal recognition for his service. Rarely has a military commander of such distinction been denied a biographer’s tribute. Gregg’s time is long overdue.

Download or read book The Civil War The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It LOA 212 written by Brooks D. Simpson and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume in a four-volume series on the American Civil War—featuring first-hand writings from Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and more This “mesmerizing and deeply troubling” glimpse into the Civil War era “will forever deepen the way you see this central chapter in our history . . . a masterpiece” (Newsweek). After 150 years the Civil War is still our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic-our Iliad, but also our Bible, a story of sin and judgment, suffering and despair, death and resurrection in a "new birth of freedom.” Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs, The Civil War: The First Year gathers over 120 pieces by more than sixty participants to create a unique firsthand narrative of this great historical crisis. Beginning on the eve of Lincoln's election in November 1860 and ending in January 1862 with the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war, this volume presents writing by figures well-known—Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Mary Chesnut, Frederick Douglass, and Lincoln himself among them—and less familiar, like proslavery advocate J.D.B. DeBow, Lieutenants Charles B. Haydon of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and Henry Livermore Abbott of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and plantation mistresses Catherine Edmondston of North Carolina and Kate Stone of Mississippi. Together, the selections provide a powerful sense of the immediacy, uncertainty, and urgency of events as the nation was torn asunder. Includes headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, full-color hand-drawn endpaper maps, and an index. Companion volumes will gather writings from the second, third, and final years of the conflict. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Download or read book Six Encounters with Lincoln written by Elizabeth Brown Pryor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Barondess/Lincoln Award from The Civil War Round Table of New York “Fascinating reading. . .this book eerily reflects some of today’s key issues.” – The New York Times Book Review From an award-winning historian, an engrossing look at how Abraham Lincoln grappled with the challenges of leadership in an unruly democracy An awkward first meeting with U.S. Army officers, on the eve of the Civil War. A conversation on the White House portico with a young cavalry sergeant who was a fiercely dedicated abolitionist. A tense exchange on a navy ship with a Confederate editor and businessman. In this eye-opening book, Elizabeth Brown Pryor examines six intriguing, mostly unknown encounters that Abraham Lincoln had with his constituents. Taken together, they reveal his character and opinions in unexpected ways, illustrating his difficulties in managing a republic and creating a presidency. Pryor probes both the political demons that Lincoln battled in his ambitious exercise of power and the demons that arose from the very nature of democracy itself: the clamorous diversity of the populace, with its outspoken demands. She explores the trouble Lincoln sometimes had in communicating and in juggling the multiple concerns that make up being a political leader; how conflicted he was over the problem of emancipation; and the misperceptions Lincoln and the South held about each other. Pryor also provides a fascinating discussion of Lincoln’s fondness for storytelling and how he used his skills as a raconteur to enhance both his personal and political power. Based on scrupulous research that draws on hundreds of eyewitness letters, diaries, and newspaper excerpts, Six Encounters with Lincoln offers a fresh portrait of Lincoln as the beleaguered politician who was not especially popular with the people he needed to govern with, and who had to deal with the many critics, naysayers, and dilemmas he faced without always knowing the right answer. What it shows most clearly is that greatness was not simply laid on Lincoln’s shoulders like a mantle, but was won in fits and starts.

Download or read book Lincoln s Informer written by Carl J. Guarneri and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a recent poll of leading historians, Charles A. Dana was named among the “Twenty-Five Most Influential Civil War Figures You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” If you have heard of Dana, it was probably from his classic Recollections of the Civil War (1898), which was ghostwritten by muckraker Ida Tarbell and riddled with errors cited by unsuspecting historians ever since. Lincoln’s Informer at long last sets the record straight, giving Charles A. Dana his due in a story that rivals the best historical fiction. Dana didn’t just record history, Carl J. Guarneri notes: he made it. Starting out as managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, he led the newspaper’s charge against proslavery forces in Congress and the Kansas territory. When his criticism of the Union’s prosecution of the war became too much for Greeley, Dana was drafted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be a special agent—and it was in this capacity that he truly made his mark. Drawing on Dana’s reports, letters, and telegrams—“the most remarkable, interesting, and instructive collection of official documents relating to the Rebellion,” according to the custodian of the Union war records—Guarneri reconstructs the Civil War as Dana experienced and observed it: as a journalist, a confidential informant to Stanton and Lincoln, and, most controversially, an administration insider with surprising influence. While reporting most of the war’s major events, Dana also had a hand in military investigations, the cotton trade, Lincoln’s reelection, passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and, most notably, the making of Ulysses S. Grant and the breaking of other generals. Dana’s reporting and Guarneri’s lively narrative provide fresh impressions of Lincoln, Stanton, Grant, and other Union war leaders. Lincoln’s Informer shows us the unlikely role of a little-known confidant and informant in the Lincoln administration’s military and political successes. A remarkable inside look at history unfolding, this book draws the first complete picture of a fascinating character writing his chapter in the story of the Civil War.

Download or read book The Enduring Civil War written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-09-02 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the seventy-three succinct essays gathered in The Enduring Civil War, celebrated historian Gary W. Gallagher highlights the complexity and richness of the war, from its origins to its memory, as topics for study, contemplation, and dispute. He places contemporary understanding of the Civil War, both academic and general, in conversation with testimony from those in the Union and the Confederacy who experienced and described it, investigating how mid-nineteenth-century perceptions align with, or deviate from, current ideas regarding the origins, conduct, and aftermath of the war. The tension between history and memory forms a theme throughout the essays, underscoring how later perceptions about the war often took precedence over historical reality in the minds of many Americans. The array of topics Gallagher addresses is striking. He examines notable books and authors, both Union and Confederate, military and civilian, famous and lesser known. He discusses historians who, though their names have receded with time, produced works that remain pertinent in terms of analysis or information. He comments on conventional interpretations of events and personalities, challenging, among other things, commonly held notions about Gettysburg and Vicksburg as decisive turning points, Ulysses S. Grant as a general who profligately wasted Union manpower, the Gettysburg Address as a watershed that turned the war from a fight for Union into one for Union and emancipation, and Robert E. Lee as an old-fashioned general ill-suited to waging a modern mid-nineteenth-century war. Gallagher interrogates recent scholarly trends on the evolving nature of Civil War studies, addressing crucial questions about chronology, history, memory, and the new revisionist literature. The format of this provocative and timely collection lends itself to sampling, and readers might start in any of the subject groupings and go where their interests take them.

Download or read book Emancipation the Union Army and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln written by Jonathan W. White and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Union army's overwhelming vote for Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864 has led many Civil War scholars to conclude that the soldiers supported the Republican Party and its effort to abolish slavery. In Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln Jonathan W. White challenges this reigning paradigm in Civil War historiography, arguing instead that the soldier vote in the presidential election of 1864 is not a reliable index of the army's ideological motivation or political sentiment. Although 78 percent of the soldiers' votes were cast for Lincoln, White contends that this was not wholly due to a political or social conversion to the Republican Party. Rather, he argues, historians have ignored mitigating factors such as voter turnout, intimidation at the polls, and how soldiers voted in nonpresidential elections in 1864. While recognizing that many soldiers changed their views on slavery and emancipation during the war, White suggests that a considerable number still rejected the Republican platform, and that many who voted for Lincoln disagreed with his views on slavery. He likewise explains that many northerners considered a vote for the Democratic ticket as treasonous and an admission of defeat. Using previously untapped court-martial records from the National Archives, as well as manuscript collections from across the country, White convincingly revises many commonly held assumptions about the Civil War era and provides a deeper understanding of the Union Army.

Download or read book The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-12-15 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generally regarded as the most important of the Civil War campaigns conducted in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, that of 1864 lasted more than four months and claimed more than 25,000 casualties. The armies of Philip H. Sheridan and Jubal A. Early contended for immense stakes. Beyond the agricultural bounty and the boost in morale a victory would bring, events in the Valley also would affect Abraham Lincoln's chances for reelection in the November 1864 presidential canvass. The eleven original essays in this volume reexamine common assumptions about the campaign, its major figures, and its significance. Taking advantage of the most recent scholarship and a wide range of primary sources, contributors examine strategy and tactics, the performances of key commanders on each side, the campaign's political repercussions, and the experiences of civilians caught in the path of the armies. The authors do not always agree with one another, yet, taken together, their essays highlight important connections between the home front and the battlefield, as well as ways in which military affairs, civilian experiences, and politics played off one another during the campaign. Contributors: William W. Bergen, Charlottesville, Virginia Keith S. Bohannon, State University of West Georgia Andre M. Fleche, University of Virginia Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia Joseph T. Glatthaar, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Robert E. L. Krick, Richmond, Virginia Robert K. Krick, Fredericksburg, Virginia William J. Miller, Churchville, Virginia Aaron Sheehan-Dean, University of North Florida William G. Thomas, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Joan Waugh, University of California, Los Angeles

Download or read book Grant written by Jean Edward Smith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-04-09 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magnificent biography, Jean Edward Smith skillfully reconciles the disparate, conflicting assessments of Ulysses S. Grant, confirming his genius as a general, but convincingly showing that Grant's presidential accomplishments were as considerable as his military victories. 40 photos.

Download or read book Critical Americans written by Leslie Butler and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this intellectual history of American liberalism during the second half of the nineteenth century, Leslie Butler examines a group of nationally prominent and internationally oriented writers who sustained an American tradition of self-consciously progressive and cosmopolitan reform. She addresses how these men established a critical perspective on American racism, materialism, and jingoism in the decades between the 1850s and the 1890s while she recaptures their insistence on the ability of ordinary citizens to work toward their limitless potential as intelligent and moral human beings. At the core of Butler's study are the writers George William Curtis, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton, a quartet of friends who would together define the humane liberalism of America's late Victorian middle class. In creative engagement with such British intellectuals as John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Leslie Stephen, John Ruskin, James Bryce, and Goldwin Smith, these "critical Americans" articulated political ideals and cultural standards to suit the burgeoning mass democracy the Civil War had created. This transatlantic framework informed their notions of educative citizenship, print-based democratic politics, critically informed cultural dissemination, and a temperate, deliberative foreign policy. Butler argues that a careful reexamination of these strands of late nineteenth-century liberalism can help enrich a revitalized liberal tradition at the outset of the twenty-first century.

Download or read book The Shenandoah Valley Campaigns Omnibus E book written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 1361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Omnibus ebook contains the two-volume collection of essays, edited by Gary Gallagher, that covers the Shenandoah Valley Campaigns of 1862 and 1864. 1862: This volume explores the Shenandoah Valley campaign, best known for its role in establishing Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's reputation as the Confederacy's greatest military idol. The authors address questions of military leadership, strategy and tactics, the campaign's political and social impact, and the ways in which participants' memories of events differed from what is revealed in the historical sources. In the process, they offer valuable insights into one of the Confederacy's most famous generals, those who fought with him and against him, the campaign's larger importance in the context of the war, and the complex relationship between history and memory. The contributors are Jonathan M. Berkey, Keith S. Bohannon, Peter S. Carmichael, Gary W. Gallagher, A. Cash Koeniger, R. E. L. Krick, Robert K. Krick, and William J. Miller. 1864: Generally regarded as the most important Civil War military operation conducted in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the campaign of 1864 lasted more than four months and claimed more than 25,000 casualties. Beyond the loss of agricultural bounty to the Confederacy and the boost in Union morale a victory would bring, events in the Valley also would affect Abraham Lincoln's chances for reelection in the November 1864 presidential canvass. The eleven original essays in this volume reexamine common assumptions about the campaign, its major figures, and its significance. Taking advantage of the most recent scholarship and a wide range of primary sources, contributors consider strategy and tactics, the performances of key commanders on each side, the campaign's political repercussions, and the experiences of civilians caught in the path of the armies. The contributors are William W. Bergen, Keith S. Bohannon, Andre M. Fleche, Gary W. Gallagher, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Robert E. L. Krick, Robert K. Krick, William J. Miller, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, William G. Thomas, and Joan Waugh. The editor is Gary W. Gallagher.

Download or read book Lincoln s Hundred Days written by Louis P. Masur and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-22 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution. Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.

Download or read book The Gospel of Kindness written by Janet M. Davis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gospel of Kindness explores the historical significance of the American animal welfare movement at home and overseas from the Second Great Awakening to the Second World War. Focused on laboring animals at its inception, the movement evolved into an expansive "gospel of kindness," transforming animal mercy into a signature American value.

Download or read book Conflict of Command written by George C. Rable and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2023-08-30 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fraught relationship between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan is well known, so much so that many scholars rarely question the standard narrative casting the two as foils, with the Great Emancipator inevitably coming out on top over his supposedly feckless commander. In Conflict of Command, acclaimed Civil War historian George C. Rable rethinks that stance, providing a new understanding of the interaction between the president and his leading wartime general by reinterpreting the political aspects of their partnership. Rable pays considerable attention to Lincoln’s cabinet, Congress, and newspaper editorials, revealing the role each played in shaping the dealings between the two men. While he surveys McClellan’s military campaigns as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Rable focuses on the political fallout of the fighting rather than the tactical details. This broadly conceived approach highlights the army officers and enlisted men who emerged as citizen-soldiers and political actors. Most accounts of the Lincoln-McClellan feud solely examine one of the two individuals, and the vast majority adopt a steadfast pro-Lincoln position. Taking a more neutral view, Rable deftly shows how the relationship between the two developed in a political context and ultimately failed spectacularly, profoundly altering the course of the Civil War itself.

Download or read book Emancipating Slaves Enslaving Free Men written by Jeffrey Hummel and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combines a sweeping narrative history of the Civil War with a bold new look at the war's significance for American society. Professor Hummel sees the Civil War as America's turning point: simultaneously the culmination and repudiation of the American revolution. A unique feature of the book is the bibliographical essays which follow every chapter. Here the author surveys the literature and points out where his own interpretation fits into the continuing clash of viewpoints which informs historical debate on the Civil War.

Download or read book The Commanders of Chancellorsville written by Edward G. Longacre and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2005-07-31 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning Civil War historian explores the battle between two strikingly different generals: “Fighting Joe” Hooker and Robert E. Lee. As equally matched in skill as they were opposite in personality, the brash Union Gen. Joseph Hooker boasted of a sure defeat of the reserved Gen. Robert E. Lee. “I’ve got Robert E. Lee right where I want him, and even God Himself cannot stop me from destroying him,” boasted Hooker. Yet the battle of Chancellorsville stands as Lee’s greatest triumph. The story of the two generals has never been explored as it is here. “Fighting Joe” Hooker was brilliant, but also profane and bombastic, and his army so undisciplined that their pursuit of camp “followers” spawned the modern euphemism for prostitute. Robert E. Lee, equally gifted, was known as the definitive devout, self-controlled Southern gentleman, leading an army that was exhausted, underfed, and outmanned. Chancellorsville stands not just as a pivotal battle of the Civil War but as the personal war between two warriors—stalking, striking, and counter-striking their way to ultimate victory or defeat. Praise for the work of Edward G. Longacre, a winner of the Fletcher Pratt and Douglas Southall Freeman awards “Breezy and informative . . . Longacre remains even handed throughout and maintains a lively pace.” —Publishers Weekly “Well-researched, fast paced.” —Pennsylvania History

Download or read book The Long Road to Antietam How the Civil War Became a Revolution written by Richard Slotkin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful account of the Civil War's turning point in the tradition of James McPherson's Crossroads of Freedom. In the summer of 1862, after a year of protracted fighting, Abraham Lincoln decided on a radical change of strategy—one that abandoned hope for a compromise peace and committed the nation to all-out war. The centerpiece of that new strategy was the Emancipation Proclamation: an unprecedented use of federal power that would revolutionize Southern society. In The Long Road to Antietam, Richard Slotkin, a renowned cultural historian, reexamines the challenges that Lincoln encountered during that anguished summer 150 years ago. In an original and incisive study of character, Slotkin re-creates the showdown between Lincoln and General George McClellan, the “Young Napoleon” whose opposition to Lincoln included obsessive fantasies of dictatorship and a military coup. He brings to three-dimensional life their ruinous conflict, demonstrating how their political struggle provided Confederate General Robert E. Lee with his best opportunity to win the war, in the grand offensive that ended in September of 1862 at the bloody Battle of Antietam.