Black Flag Over Dixie
Black Flag Over Dixie

Author: Gregory J. W. Urwin

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2005-08-29

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780809326785

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Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War highlights the central role that race played in the Civil War by examining some of the ugliest incidents that played out on its battlefields. Challenging the American public’s perception of the Civil War as a chivalrous family quarrel, twelve rising and prominent historians show the conflict to be a wrenching social revolution whose bloody excesses were exacerbated by racial hatred. Edited by Gregory J. W. Urwin, this compelling volume focuses on the tendency of Confederate troops to murder black Union soldiers and runaway slaves and divulges the details of black retaliation and the resulting cycle of fear and violence that poisoned race relations during Reconstruction. In a powerful introduction to the collection, Urwin reminds readers that the Civil War was both a social and a racial revolution. As the heirs and defenders of a slave society’s ideology, Confederates considered African Americans to be savages who were incapable of waging war in a civilized fashion. Ironically, this conviction caused white Southerners to behave savagely themselves. Under the threat of Union retaliation, the Confederate government backed away from failing to treat the white officers and black enlisted men of the United States Colored Troops as legitimate combatants. Nevertheless, many rebel commands adopted a no-prisoners policy in the field. When the Union’s black defenders responded in kind, the Civil War descended to a level of inhumanity that most Americans prefer to forget. In addition to covering the war’s most notorious massacres at Olustee, Fort Pillow, Poison Spring, and the Crater, Black Flag over Dixie examines the responses of Union soldiers and politicians to these disturbing and unpleasant events, as well as the military, legal, and moral considerations that sometimes deterred Confederates from killing all black Federals who fell into their hands. Twenty photographs and a map of massacre and reprisal sites accompany the volume. The contributors are Gregory J. W. Urwin, Anne J. Bailey, Howard C. Westwood, James G. Hollandsworth Jr., David J. Coles, Albert Castel, Derek W. Frisby, Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., Gerald W. Thomas, Bryce A. Suderow, Chad L. Williams, and Mark Grimsley.

In the Name of God and Country
In the Name of God and Country

Author: Michael Fellman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0300155018

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With insight and originality, Michael Fellman argues that terrorism, in various forms, has been a constant and driving force in American history. In part, this is due to the nature of American republicanism and Protestant Christianity, which he believes contain a core of moral absolutism and self-righteousness that perpetrators of terrorism use to justify their actions. Fellman also argues that there is an intrinsic relationship between terrorist acts by non-state groups and responses on the part of the state; unlike many observers, he believes that both the action and the reaction constitute terrorism.Fellman’s compelling narrative focuses on five key episodes: John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry; terrorism during the American Civil War, especially race warfare and guerrilla warfare; the organized “White Line” paramilitary destruction of Reconstruction in Mississippi; the Haymarket Affair and its aftermath; and the Philippine-American war of 1899–1902. In an epilogue, he applies this history to illuminate the Bush-Cheney administration’s use of terrorism in the so-called war on terror. In the Name of God and Country demonstrates the centrality of terrorism in shaping America even to this day.

A People's History of the U.S. Military
A People's History of the U.S. Military

Author: Michael A. Bellesiles

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2012-09-11

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1595587136

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In A People's History of the U.S. Military, historian Michael A. Bellesiles draws from three centuries of soldiers' personal encounters with combat—through fascinating excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, as well as audio recordings, film, and blogs—to capture the essence of the American military experience firsthand, from the American Revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military service can shatter and give meaning to lives; it is rarely a neutral encounter, and has contributed to a rich outpouring of personal testimony from the men and women who have literally placed their lives on the line. The often dramatic and always richly textured first-person accounts collected in this book cover a wide range of perspectives, from ardent patriots to disillusioned cynics; barely literate farm boys to urbane college graduates; scions of founding families to recent immigrants, enthusiasts, and dissenters; women disguising themselves as men in order to serve their country to African Americans fighting for their freedom through military service. A work of great relevance and immediacy—as the nation grapples with the return of thousands of men and women from active military duty—A People's History of the U.S. Military will become a major new touchstone for our understanding of American military service.

Beyond Combat
Beyond Combat

Author: Edward G. Longacre

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13:

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Contents: Emancipation, Black Troops, & Hard War, by J. Paradis; A Reinterpretation of Sherman’s Generalship during the 1864 March to Atlanta in Light of the Logistic Strategy, by J. Britt McCarley; The U.S. Navy & the Genesis of Maritime Education, by J. Speelman; U.S. Military Attaches & Military Intelligence, 1885-1920, by J. Votaw; Col. Conrad Babcock & Command Development during WW1, by D. Johnson; The Politics of Soldier Voting in the Elections of 1944, by C. DeRosa; Eisenhower as Ground-Forces Commander: The Brit. Viewpoint, by G.E. Murray; Operation Rollup: The U.S. Army’s Rebuild Program during the Korean War, by P. Kindsvatter; Considerations on the Weakness of Brit. Imperial Power, by A. Lynde; & Weigley Bibliography.

Bitterly Divided
Bitterly Divided

Author: David Williams

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2010-04-16

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1595585958

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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

American Lynching
American Lynching

Author: Ashraf H. A. Rushdy

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0300184743

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A history of lynching in America over the course of three centuries, from colonial Virginia to twentieth-century Texas. After observing the varying reactions to the 1998 death of James Byrd Jr. in Texas, called a lynching by some, denied by others, Ashraf Rushdy determined that to comprehend this event he needed to understand the long history of lynching in the United States. In this meticulously researched and accessibly written interpretive history, Rushdy shows how lynching in America has endured, evolved, and changed in meaning over the course of three centuries, from its origins in early Virginia to the present day. “A work of uncommon breadth, written with equally uncommon concision. Excellent.” —N. D. B. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University “Provocative but careful, opinionated but persuasive . . . Beyond synthesizing current scholarship, he offers a cogent discussion of the evolving definition of lynching, the place of lynchers in civil society, and the slow-in-coming end of lynching. This book should be the point of entry for anyone interested in the tragic and sordid history of American lynching.” —W. Fitzhugh Brundage, author of Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 “A sophisticated and thought-provoking examination of the historical relationship between the American culture of lynching and the nation’s political traditions. This engaging and wide-ranging meditation on the connection between democracy, lynching, freedom, and slavery will be of interest to those in and outside of the academy.” —William Carrigan, Rowan University “In this sobering account, Rushdy makes clear that the cultural values that authorize racial violence are woven into the very essence of what it means to be American. This book helps us make sense of our past as well as our present.” —Jonathan Holloway, Yale University

Invisible Southerners
Invisible Southerners

Author: Anne J. Bailey

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 0820327573

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Most Southerners who fought in the Civil War were native born, white, and Confederate. However, thousands with other ethnic backgrounds also took a stand--and not always for the South. Invisible Southerners recounts the wartime experiences of the region's German Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans. As Anne J. Bailey looks at how such outsiders responded to demands on their loyalties, she recaptures the atmosphere of suspicion and prosecession, proslavery sentiment in which they strove to understand, and be understood by, their neighbors. Divisions within groups complicated circumstances even after members had cast their lot with the Union or Confederacy. Europe's slavery-free legacy swayed many German Americans against the South. Even so, one pro-Union German soldier could still look askance at another, because he was perhaps from a different province in the Old Country or of a different religious sect. Creeks and Cherokees faced wartime questions made thornier by tribal rifts based on wealth, racial mixture, and bitter memories of their forced transport to the Indian Territory decades earlier. The decision was easiest for former slaves, says Bailey, but the consequences more dire. They joined the Union Army in search of freedom and a new life--often to be persecuted by Yankee soldiers and, if captured, punished severely by Rebels.

Freedom by the Sword
Freedom by the Sword

Author: William A. Dobak

Publisher: Department of the Army

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13:

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From late 1862 to the spring of 1865, the federal government accepted more than 180,000 black men as soldiers, something it had never done before on such a scale. Known collectively as the United States Colored Troops and organized in segregated regiments led by white officers, some of these soldiers guarded army posts along major rivers; others fought Confederate raiders to protect Union supply trains; and still others took part in major operations like the siege of Petersburg and the battle of Nashville. After the war, many of the black regiments garrisoned the former Confederacy to enforce federal Reconstruction policy. This book tells the story of these soldiers' recruitment, organization, and service.

Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S. Military [2 volumes]
Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S. Military [2 volumes]

Author: Alexander M. Bielakowski

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 1064

ISBN-13:

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This encyclopedia details the participation of individual ethnic and racial minority groups throughout U.S. military history. Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S. Military: An Encyclopedia is unique in its coverage of nearly all major ethnic and racial minority groups, as opposed to reference works that have focused only on individual ethnic or racial minority groups. It acknowledges the military contributions of African Americans, Asian Americans, French Americans, German Americans, Hispanic Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans. This timely work highlights the individuals and events that have shaped the experience of minorities in U.S. conflicts. The work provides a comprehensive encyclopedia covering the role of all major ethnic and racial minorities in the United States during wartime. Additionally, it considers how the integration of servicemen in the U.S. military set the precedent for the eventual desegregation of America's civilian population.