Two Civil Wars

Two Civil Wars

Author: Katherine Bentley Jeffrey

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2016-04-11

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0807162264

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Two Civil Wars is both an edition of an unusual Civil War--era double journal and a narrative about the two writers who composed its contents. The initial journal entries were written by thirteen-year-old Celeste Repp while a student at St. Mary's Academy, a prominent but short-lived girls school in midcentury Baton Rouge. Celeste's French compositions, dating from 1859 to 1861, offer brief but poignant meditations, describe seasonal celebrations, and mention by name both her headmistress, Matilda Victor, and French instructor and priest, Father Darius Hubert. Immediately following Celeste's prettily decorated pages a new title page intervenes, introducing "An Abstract Journal Kept by William L. Park, of the U.S. gunboat Essex during the American Rebellion." Park's diary is a fulsome three-year account of military engagements along the Mississippi and its tributaries, the bombardment of southern towns, the looting of plantations, skirmishes with Confederate guerillas, the uneasy experiment with "contrabands" (freed slaves) serving aboard ship, and the mundane circumstances of shipboard life. Very few diaries from the inland navy have survived, and this is the first journal from the ironclad Essex to be published. Jeffrey has read it alongside several unpublished accounts by Park's crewmates as well as a later memoir composed by Park in his declining years. It provides rare insight into the culture of the ironclad fleet and equally rare firsthand commentary by an ordinary sailor on events such as the sinking of CSS Arkansas and the prolonged siege of Port Hudson. Jeffrey provides detailed annotation and context for the Repp and Park journals, filling out the biographies of both writers before and after the Civil War. In Celeste's case, Jeffrey uncovers surprising connections to such prominent Baton Rouge residents as the diarist Sarah Morgan, and explores the complexity of wartime allegiances in the South through the experiences of Matilda Victor and Darius Hubert. She also unravels the mystery of how a southern youngster's school scribbler found its way into the hands of a Union sailor. In so doing, she provides a richly detailed picture of occupied Baton Rouge and especially of events surrounding the Battle of Baton Rouge in August 1862. These two unusual personal journals, linked by curious happenstance in a single notebook, open up intriguing, provocative, and surprisingly complementary new vistas on antebellum Baton Rouge and the Civil War on the Mississippi.


Double Duty in the Civil War

Double Duty in the Civil War

Author: George S Burkhardt

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2009-06-10

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780809329106

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In 1861 at the age of eighteen, Edward Woolsey Bacon, a Yale student and son of well-known abolitionist minister Leonard Bacon, left his home in New Haven, Connecticut, to fight for the United States. Over the next four years Bacon served in both the Union navy and army, which gave him a sweeping view of the Civil War. His postings included being a captain’s clerk on the USS Iroquois, a hospital clerk in his hometown, a captain in the 29th Connecticut Infantry (Colored), and a major in the 117th U.S. Colored Infantry, and he described these experiences in vibrant letters to his friends and family. Historian George S. Burkhardt has compiled these letters, as well as Bacon’s diary in the impressive Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon. Bacon tells of hunting Confederate commerce raiders on the high seas, enduring the tedium of blockade duty, and taking part in riverine warfare on the Mississippi. He recalls sweating in South Carolina as an infantry officer during drill and picket duty, suffering constant danger in the battlefield trenches of Virginia, marching victoriously on fallen Richmond, and tolerating the boredom of occupation duty in Texas. His highly entertaining letters shed new light on naval affairs and reveal a close-knit family life. The narrative of his duty with black troops is especially valuable, since few first-hand accounts from white officers of the U.S. Colored Troops exist. Furthermore, his beliefs about race, slavery, and the Union cause were unconventional for the time and stand in contrast to those held by many of his contemporaries. Double Duty in the Civil War is filled with lively descriptions of the men Bacon met and the events he experienced. With Burkhardt’s careful editing and useful annotations, Bacon’s letters and diary excerpts give rare insight into areas of the Civil War that have been neglected because of a lack of available sources. Given the scarcity of eyewitness testimonies to navy life and life in African American regiments, this book is a rarity indeed.


Battle History of the United States Marine Corps, 1775-1945

Battle History of the United States Marine Corps, 1775-1945

Author: George B. Clark

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0786456213

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Designed as a reference work for those interested in the combat history of the U.S. Marine Corps, this book describes the engagements from the formation of the Continental Marines to the Corps' great exercise at the Battle of Okinawa. Organized chronologically, the individual skirmishes illustrate how each of the Marine Corps' engagements contributed to the formation and evolution of the United States. Persons and divisions of note are mentioned, including key players, commanders and medal recipients.


One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End

One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End

Author: Gary Dillard Joiner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1461639751

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In the spring of 1864, as the armies of Grant and Lee waged a highly scrutinized and celebrated battle for the state of Virginia, a no- less important, but historically obscured engagement was being conducted in the pine barrens of northern Louisiana. In a year of stellar triumphs by Union armies across the South, the Red River Campaign stands out as a colossal failure. General William Tecumseh Sherman's scathing summation describes it best, "One damn blunder from beginning to end." Taking its title from Sherman's blunt description, One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 is a fresh inspection of what was the Civil War's largest operation between the Union Army and Navy west of the Mississippi River. In a bold, but poorly managed effort to wrest Louisiana and Texas from Confederate control, a combined force of 40,000 Union troops and 60 naval vessels traveled up the twisting Red River in an attempt to capture the capital city of Shreveport. Gary D. Joiner provides not a recycled telling of the campaign, but a strategic and tactical overview based on a stunning new array of facts gleaned from recently discovered documents. This never-before-published information reveals that the Confederate army had laid a clever trap by engineering a drop in the water level of the Red River to try to maroon the Union naval flotilla. Only the equally amazing ingenuity of the Union troops saved the fleet from certain destruction, despite a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Mansfield. The Red River campaign had lasting implications. One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End magnifies just how devastating the diversion of so many men and so much material to this failed campaign was to the Union effort in the pivotal year of 1864. Because of the Union Army's failures, Northern plans to capture Mobile were scrapped. Military careers were made and lost. And at time when the Confederacy was teetering on the brink of oblivion, Southern morale was bolstered. Joiner puts together


Theater of a Separate War

Theater of a Separate War

Author: Thomas W. Cutrer

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2023-04-04

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 1469666286

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Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the Trans-Mississippi Theater was site of major clashes from the war's earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater's distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle.


War on the Waters

War on the Waters

Author: James M. McPherson

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0807835889

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A book with 23 illustrations, 19 maps, notes, a bibliography and an index offers a sweeping history of the Civil War navies in action.


Civil War Biographies from the Western Waters

Civil War Biographies from the Western Waters

Author: Myron J. Smith, Jr.

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-01-28

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1476616981

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From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War raged along the great rivers of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. While various Civil War biographies exist, none have been devoted exclusively to participants in the Western river war as waged down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Red River, and up the Ohio, the Tennessee and the Cumberland. Based on the Official Records, county histories, newspapers and internet sources, this is the first work to profile personnel involved in the fighting on these great streams. Included in this biographical encyclopedia are Union and Confederate naval officers down to the rank of mate; enlisted sailors who won the Medal of Honor, or otherwise distinguished themselves or who wrote accounts of life on the gunboats; army officers and leaders who played a direct role in combat along Western waters; political officials who influenced river operations; civilian steamboat captains and pilots who participated in wartime logistics; and civilian contractors directly involved, including shipbuilders, dam builders, naval constructors and munitions experts. Each of the biographies includes (where known) birth, death and residence data; unit organization or ship; involvement in the river war; pre- and post-war careers; and source documentation. Hundreds of individuals are given their first historic recognition.


A Dog Before a Soldier

A Dog Before a Soldier

Author: Chuck Veit

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0557374979

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A collection of "almost lost" episodes from the U.S. Navy in the Civil War--most of which have lain hidden for 150 years. Navy spies, cattle raids, deep inland recons and shore assaults as well as a daunting battle on the far side of the planet--Civil War history you've never read before. Included in this new research is the story of Monitor's Unknown Mission; the first all-black Navy crew (months before the Emancipation Proclamation); and the solution to the riddle of the First Battle of Fort Butler. There are no "big name" battles here--just the story of the many critical roles played by the U.S. Navy, told through small-unit actions. After a century and a half, these stories are something new in Civil War history.