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Far removed from the main centers of commerce and population, and thus remote from the priorities of Confederate political leaders in the East, the Trans-Mississippi Theater experienced a different sort of war during America’s great fratricidal conflict of 1861–1865. Not only was its distance from Richmond a distinguishing factor, but it was also a theater where the Union army and navy gained a foothold far sooner than elsewhere in the South, first in Missouri and then in Louisiana and the Mississippi River Valley. Confederate generals were tasked with ousting, not merely halting, an enemy closing from two directions; guerrilla warfare was more often the norm than the exception; and the ...
The Red River Campaign in the spring of 1864 was one of the most destructive of the Civil War. The agricultural wealth of the Red River Valley tempted Union General Nathaniel P. Banks to invade with 30,000 troops in an attempt to seize control of the river and confiscate as much cotton as possible from local plantations. After three months of chaos, during which the countryside was destroyed and many slaves freed themselves, Banks was defeated by a smaller Confederate force under General Richard Taylor. This book takes a fresh look at the fierce battles at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, the Union army's escape from Monett's Ferry and the burning of Alexandria, and explains the causes and consequences of the war in Central Louisiana.
"A haunting tapestry of interwoven stories that inform us not just about our past but about the resentment-bred demons that are all too present in our society today . . . The interconnected strands of race and history give Ball's entrancing stories a Faulknerian resonance." —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review A 2020 NPR staff pick | One of The New York Times' thirteen books to watch for in August | One of The Washington Post's ten books to read in August | A Literary Hub best book of the summer| One of Kirkus Reviews' sixteen best books to read in August The life and times of a militant white supremacist, written by one of his offspring, National Book Award–winner Edward Bal...
This massive guide, sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University and compiled by renowned experts, offers a compendium of information and interpretation on over 500 years of black experience in America.
Born to an affluent family in 1836, Hylan B. Lyon claimed ancestors among Irish rebels, patriots of the American Revolution, and slaveowners in his native Kentucky. Biographer Dan Lee chronicles Lyon’s military career, which began with service in the Third US Artillery after his graduation from West Point in 1856. Lyon first saw action in the Third Seminole War. Later stationed at Fort Yuma in California, he went on to fight in the Coeur d’Alene War. Witnessing the execution of Yakima chief Qualchan during this last conflict nearly made Lyon leave the army. Yet the young lieutenant persevered. After serving with troops building the Mullan Road between Washington and Montana, Lyon returne...
In this fifth and final volume of his renowned series detailing the campaign for Vicksburg, Tim Smith sheds much-needed light to this often-misunderstood episode of the Union’s efforts to take Vicksburg. In the entire nine-month-long campaign, there was no more tension and drama than in these seventeen days when Grant’s Army of the Tennessee marched through the wilds of Mississippi, claiming victory after victory, tearing the heart out of the State of Mississippi and the Confederacy. By the end of the swift assault, Grant arrived victorious at the exact place he had worked to gain for months: the high ground east of Vicksburg where he had access to both the city and an open and unchallen...
In Early Struggles for Vicksburg, Timothy Smith covers the first phase of the Vicksburg campaign (October 1862–July 1863), involving perhaps the most wide-ranging and complex series of efforts seen in the entire campaign. The operations that took place from late October to the end of December 1862 covered six states, consisted of four intertwined mini-campaigns, and saw the involvement of everything from cavalry raids to naval operations in addition to pitched land battles in Ulysses S. Grant’s first attempts to reach Vicksburg. This fall/winter campaign that marked the first of the major efforts to reach Vicksburg was the epitome of the by-the-book concepts of military theory of the day...
The dawn of 1863 brought a new phase of the Union’s Mississippi Valley operations against Vicksburg. For the first four months, Union attempts to reach high and dry ground east of the Mississippi River would be plagued by high water everywhere, and the resulting bayou and river expeditions would test everyone involved, including the defending Confederates. In Bayou Battles for Vicksburg, the latest volume in his five-volume history of the Vicksburg Campaign of the US Civil War, Timothy B. Smith offers the first book-length examination of Ulysses S. Grant’s winter waterborne attempts to capture the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The accepted strategy up to this point in...
This new edition of the definitive guide to Civil War battlefields is really a completely new book. While the first edition covered 60 major battlefields, from Fort Sumter to Appomattox, the second covers all of the 384 designated as the "principal battlefields" in the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report. As in the first edition, the essays are authoritative and concise, written by such leading historians as James M. McPherson, Stephen W. Sears, Edwin C. Bearss, James I. Robinson, Jr., and Gary W. Gallager. The second edition also features 83 new four-color maps covering the most important battles. The Civil War Battlefield Guide is an essential reference for anyone interested in the Civil War.