Download or read book Hellmira written by Derek Maxfield and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth history of the inhumane Union Civil War prison camp that became known as “the Andersonville of the North.” Long called by some the “Andersonville of the North,” the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all Union-run POW camps. It existed only from the summer of 1864 to July 1865, but in that time, and for long after, it became darkly emblematic of man’s inhumanity to man. Confederate prisoners called it “Hellmira.” Hastily constructed, poorly planned, and overcrowded, prisoner of war camps North and South were dumping grounds for the refuse of war. An unfortunate necessity, both sides regarded the camps as temporary inconveniences—and distractions from the important task of winning the war. There was no need, they believed, to construct expensive shelters or provide better rations. They needed only to sustain life long enough for the war to be won. Victory would deliver prisoners from their conditions. As a result, conditions in the prisoner of war camps amounted to a great humanitarian crisis, the extent of which could hardly be understood even after the blood stopped flowing on the battlefields. In the years after the war, as Reconstruction became increasingly bitter, the North pointed to Camp Sumter—better known as the Andersonville POW camp in Americus, Georgia—as evidence of the cruelty and barbarity of the Confederacy. The South, in turn, cited the camp in Elmira as a place where Union authorities withheld adequate food and shelter and purposefully caused thousands to suffer in the bitter cold. This finger-pointing by both sides would go on for over a century. And as it did, the legend of Hellmira grew. In this book, Derek Maxfield contextualizes the rise of prison camps during the Civil War, explores the failed exchange of prisoners, and tells the tale of the creation and evolution of the prison camp in Elmira. In the end, Maxfield suggests that it is time to move on from the blame game and see prisoner of war camps—North and South—as a great humanitarian failure. Praise for Hellmira “A unique and informative contribution to the growing library of Civil War histories...Important and unreservedly recommended.” —Midwest Book Review “A good book, and the author should be congratulated.” —Civil War News

Download or read book Decision in the West written by Albert Castel and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following a skirmish on June 28, 1864, a truce is called so the North can remove their dead and wounded. For two hours, Yankees and Rebels mingle, with some of the latter even assisting the former in their grisly work. Newspapers are exchanged. Northern coffee is swapped for Southern tobacco. Yanks crowd around two Rebel generals, soliciting and obtaining autographs.

Download or read book The Vicksburg Campaign written by Ulysses S. Grant and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-11-20 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 19th century, one of the surest ways to rise to prominence in American society was to be a war hero, like Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison. But few would have predicted such a destiny for Hiram Ulysses Grant, who had been a career soldier with little experience in combat and a failed businessman when the Civil War broke out in 1861. However, while all eyes were fixed on the Eastern theater at places like Manassas, Richmond, the Shenandoah Valley and Antietam, Grant went about a steady rise up the ranks through a series of successes in the West. His victory at Fort Donelson, in which his terms to the doomed Confederate garrison earned him the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, could be considered the first major Union victory of the war, and Grant's fame and rank only grew after that at battlefields like Shiloh and Vicksburg. Along the way, Grant nearly fell prey to military politics and the belief that he was at fault for the near defeat at Shiloh, but President Lincoln famously defended him, remarking, "I can't spare this man. He fights." Lincoln's steadfastness ensured that Grant's victories out West continued to pile up, and after Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Grant had effectively ensured Union control of the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the entire Mississippi River. At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln put him in charge of all federal armies, and he led the Army of the Potomac against Robert E. Lee in the Overland campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and famously, the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Although Grant was instrumental in winning the war and eventually parlayed his fame into two terms in the White House, his legacy and accomplishments are still the subjects of heavy debate today. His presidency is remembered mostly due to rampant fraud within his Administration, although he was never personally accused of wrongdoing, and even his victories in the Civil War have been countered by charges that he was a butcher. Like the other American Legends, much of Grant's personal life has been eclipsed by the momentous battles and events in which he participated, from Fort Donelson to the White House.

Download or read book A Private Chapter of the War written by Bailey George W and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book The Battle of Monroe s Crossroads written by Eric J. Wittenberg and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2006-04-19 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed tactical narrative of one of the most important but least known engagements of William T. Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign during the Civil War. As General Sherman’s infantry crossed into North Carolina, Maj. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick’s veteran Federal cavalry division fanned out in front, screening the advance. When Kilpatrick learned that Confederate cavalry under Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton was hot on his trail, he decided to set a trap for the Southern horsemen near a place called Monroe’s Crossroads. Hampton, however, learned of the plan and decided to do something Kilpatrick was not expecting: attack. On March 10, 1865, Southern troopers under Hampton and Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler launched a savage surprise attack on Kilpatrick’s sleeping camp. After three hours of some of the toughest cavalry fighting of the entire Civil War, Hampton broke off and withdrew. His attack, however, stopped Kilpatrick’s advance and bought another precious day for Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee to evacuate his command from Fayetteville. This, in turn, permitted Hardee to join the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and set the stage for the climactic Battle of Bentonville nine days later. Noted Civil War author Eric J. Wittenberg has written the first history of this important but long-forgotten battle, and places it in its proper context within the entire Carolinas Campaign. His study features twenty-eight original maps and dozens of illustrations. Finally, an author of wide experience and renown has brought to vivid life this overlooked portion of the Carolinas Campaign. Praise for The Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads “All the elements that we expect in great battle are here: high drama, command decisions good, bad, and ugly; courage and cowardice, sacrifice, and fortitude. Readers both new to the genre and veteran to the literature will find much of value in The Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads.” —Noah Andre Trudeau, author of The Last Citadel: Petersburg, June 1864–April 1865 “Features a marvelous cast of characters and a riveting story impeccably researched and judiciously interpreted. It is the definitive account of this fascinating battle.” —Mark L. Bradley, author of Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville

Download or read book The Civil War in Georgia written by John C. Inscoe and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A project of the New Georgia Encyclopedia"

Download or read book Camp Oglethorpe written by Stephen Hoy and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Camp Oglethorpe is largely overshadowed by that of nearby Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia. It exists primarily as a footnote in the telling of Civil War prison narratives. A comprehensive reckoning reveals a saga that brings to light Camp Oglethorpe's decades-long role as a military training ground for Georgia's volunteer regiments and as a venue for national agricultural fairs which drew thousands of visitors to Macon. Its proud heritage, however, attracted the attention of leaders of the Confederate government. To the chagrin of Macon's citizens, the acreage at the foot of Seventh Street was surreptitiously repurposed for brief periods in 1862 and 1864. Although conditions at Camp Oglethorpe never approached the appalling state experienced by POWs at Andersonville, its proximity to and association with Camp Sumter cast a specter-haunted pall over the site. As Central Georgia recovered from the tangible vestiges of war. bitter memories minimized interest in restoring the property to any of its previous incarnations. The deafening sounds of the rail commerce that would eventually be situated there were inadequate to drown out the distressful noise of raw silence. The story of Camp Oglethorpe is predominantly remembered by its association with the atrocities of war as reflected in prisoner-of-war narratives. Indeed, the cries of those who demand to be heard haunt its memory. Smith and Hoy tell this story not only as an admonition to the consciences of humanity, but to illuminate history and paint a more complete recollection of the encampment at the foot of Seventh Street. Book jacket.

Download or read book Sherman written by John F. Marszalek and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2007-11-08 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General William Tecumseh Sherman has come down to us as the implacable destroyer of the Civil War, notorious for his burning of Atlanta and his brutal march to the sea. A probing biography that explains Sherman's style of warfare and the threads of self-possession and insecurity that made up his character. Photos.

Download or read book The March to the Sea and Beyond written by Joseph T. Glatthaar and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1995-11-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November, 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led an army of veteran Union troops through the heart of the Confederacy, leaving behind a path of destruction in an area that had known little of the hardships of war, devastating the morale of soldiers and civilians alike, and hastening the end of the war. In this intensively researched and carefully detailed study, chosen by Civil War Magazine as one of the best one hundred books ever written about the Civil War, Joseph T. Glatthaar examines the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns from the perspective of the common soldiers in Sherman's army, seeking, above all, to understand why they did what they did. Glatthaar graphically describes the duties and deprivations of the march, the boredom and frustration of camp life, and the utter confusion and pure chance of battle. Quoting heavily from the letters and diaries of Sherman's men, he reveals the fears, motivations, and aspirations of the Union soldiers and explores their attitudes toward their comrades, toward blacks and southern whites, and toward the war, its destruction, and the forthcoming reconstruction.

Download or read book The Beach Trap written by Ali Brady and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two best friends torn apart by a life-altering secret. One summer to set the record straight. When twelve-year-olds Kat Steiner and Blake O’Neill meet at Camp Chickawah, they have an instant connection. But everything falls apart when they learn they’re not just best friends—they’re also half sisters. Confused and betrayed, the girls break off all contact. Fifteen years later, when their father dies suddenly, Kat and Blake discover he’s left them a joint inheritance: the family beach house in Destin, Florida. The two sisters are immediately at odds. Blake, who has recently been demoted from regular nanny to dog nanny, wants to sell the house, while social media influencer Kat is desperate to hold on to the place where she lived so many happy memories. Kat and Blake reluctantly join forces to renovate the dilapidated house, with the understanding that Kat will try to buy Blake out at the end of the summer. The women clash as Blake’s renovation plans conflict with Kat’s creative vision; meanwhile, each sister finds herself drawn into a summer romance. As the weeks pass, the two women realize the most difficult project they face this summer will be coming to grips with their shared past—and learning how to become sisters.

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).

Download or read book Lee s Miserables written by J. Tracy Power and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never did so large a proportion of the American population leave home for an extended period and produce such a detailed record of its experiences in the form of correspondence, diaries, and other papers as during the Civil War. Based on research in more than 1,200 wartime letters and diaries by more than 400 Confederate officers and enlisted men, this book offers a compelling social history of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during its final year, from May 1864 to April 1865. Organized in a chronological framework, the book uses the words of the soldiers themselves to provide a view of the army's experiences in camp, on the march, in combat, and under siege--from the battles in the Wilderness to the final retreat to Appomattox. It sheds new light on such questions as the state of morale in the army, the causes of desertion, ties between the army and the home front, the debate over arming black men in the Confederacy, and the causes of Confederate defeat. Remarkably rich and detailed, Lee's Miserables offers a fresh look at one of the most-studied Civil War armies.

Download or read book Slavery by Another Name written by Douglas A. Blackmon and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Download or read book The Road Past Kennesaw written by Richard M. Mac Murry and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Road Past Kennesaw: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 The Atlanta Campaign had an importance reaching beyond the immediate military and political consequences. It was conducted in a manner that helped establish a new mode of warfare. From beginning to end, it was a railroad campaign, in that a major transportation center was the prize for which the contestants vied, and both sides used rail lines to marshal, shift, and sustain their forces. Yanks and Rebs made some use of repeating rifles, and Confederate references to shooting down moving bushes indicate resort to camouflage by Sherman's soldiers. The Union commander maintained a command post under signal tree at Kennesaw Mountain and directed the movement of his forces through a net of telegraph lines running out to subordinate head quarters. Men oi both armies who early in the war had looked askance at the employment of pick and shovel, now, as a matter of course, promptly scooped out protective ditches at each change of position. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Download or read book The 100 Day War written by Ray Henderson and published by . This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The following is a day by day account of the events of the Civil War along the Chattahoochee River west of Atlanta. The timeline begins June 29, 1864 and ends on November 11, when Atlanta was burned. The events described cover an area from what is now Cobb, Fulton, Douglas, Carroll, and Coweta counties. . . . Included in the text are numerous maps. Day by day situation maps and maps used by both sides will be found. Pictures of locations, historic sites, artifacts and the people involved in the drama are reproduced to add life to the day to day activities of the armies"--Page 5.

Download or read book Bitterly Divided written by David Williams and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010-04-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The little-known history of anti-secession Southerners: “Absolutely essential Civil War reading.” —Booklist, starred review Bitterly Divided reveals that the South was in fact fighting two civil wars—the external one that we know so much about, and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness. In this fascinating look at a hidden side of the South’s history, David Williams shows the powerful and little-understood impact of the thousands of draft resisters, Southern Unionists, fugitive slaves, and other Southerners who opposed the Confederate cause. “This fast-paced book will be a revelation even to professional historians. . . . His astonishing story details the deep, often murderous divisions in Southern society. Southerners took up arms against each other, engaged in massacres, guerrilla warfare, vigilante justice and lynchings, and deserted in droves from the Confederate army . . . Some counties and regions even seceded from the secessionists . . . With this book, the history of the Civil War will never be the same again.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Most Southerners looked on the conflict with the North as ‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight,’ especially because owners of 20 or more slaves and all planters and public officials were exempt from military service . . . The Confederacy lost, it seems, because it was precisely the kind of house divided against itself that Lincoln famously said could not stand.” —Booklist, starred review

Download or read book The Calculus of Violence written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jefferson Davis Award Winner of the Johns Family Book Award Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A work of deep intellectual seriousness, sweeping and yet also delicately measured, this book promises to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of the Civil War.” —Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg—tens of thousands of soldiers died on these iconic Civil War battlefields, and throughout the South civilians suffered terrible cruelty. At least three-quarters of a million lives were lost during the American Civil War. Given its seemingly indiscriminate mass destruction, this conflict is often thought of as the first “total war.” But Aaron Sheehan-Dean argues for another interpretation. The Calculus of Violence demonstrates that this notoriously bloody war could have been much worse. Military forces on both sides sought to contain casualties inflicted on soldiers and civilians. In Congress, in church pews, and in letters home, Americans debated the conditions under which lethal violence was legitimate, and their arguments differentiated carefully among victims—women and men, black and white, enslaved and free. Sometimes, as Sheehan-Dean shows, these well-meaning restraints led to more carnage by implicitly justifying the killing of people who were not protected by the laws of war. As the Civil War raged on, the Union’s confrontations with guerrillas and the Confederacy’s confrontations with black soldiers forced a new reckoning with traditional categories of lawful combatants and raised legal disputes that still hang over military operations around the world today. In examining the agonizing debates about the meaning of a just war in the Civil War era, Sheehan-Dean discards conventional abstractions—total, soft, limited—as too tidy to contain what actually happened on the ground.