Turning Points
Turning Points

Author: Douglas Smock

Publisher: Page Publishing Inc

Published: 2024-04-17

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13:

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This book, the third in a series on forgotten battles, challenges some of the most sacred myths taught in American schools. One is the concept that the US Constitution was conceived by idealists for the public good. New research, however, shows that most of the Founding Fathers were strongly motivated by their own financial self-interest and a desire to suppress highly democratic state legislatures that had provided relief to citizens facing taxes that were triple the rate charged under British rule. Turning Points also presents a fresh perspective on Indian tribes in Ohio and Indiana, who defeated two American armies sent to deny their claims to land that had been told was theirs forever. Modern archaeological research redefined the scope of a battle on the Ohio/Indiana line that represented the high water mark for Indian power in America. Another chapter upends the way the story of the Pacific air war has always been told. Douglas Smock focuses on the role of the aircraft engineers and the amazing, rapid conversion of a General Motors assembly plant in Newark, New Jersey, to a factory that produced twenty-four redesigned Wildcat naval fighters a day. Another narrative flips the typical Civil War storytelling on its head by looking at the experiences of one battery of one hundred Maine farm boys and laborers. A fifth chapter reexamines the myth of Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War. Each story represents a turning point in American history.

Civil War Field Artillery
Civil War Field Artillery

Author: Earl J. Hess

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2022-10-05

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0807178667

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The American Civil War saw the creation of the largest, most potent artillery force ever deployed in a conflict fought in the Western Hemisphere. It was as sizable and powerful as any raised in prior European wars. Moreover, Union and Confederate artillery included the largest number of rifled pieces fielded in any conflagration in the world up to that point. Earl J. Hess’s Civil War Field Artillery is the first comprehensive general history of the artillery arm that supported infantry and cavalry in the conflict. Based on deep and expansive research, it serves as an exhaustive examination with abundant new interpretations that reenvision the Civil War’s military. Hess explores the major factors that affected artillerists and their work, including the hardware, the organization of artillery power, relationships between artillery officers and other commanders, and the influence of environmental factors on battlefield effectiveness. He also examines the lives of artillerymen, the use of artillery horses, manpower replacement practices, effects of the widespread construction of field fortifications on artillery performance, and the problems of resupplying batteries in the field. In one of his numerous reevalutions, Hess suggests that the early war practice of dispersing guns and assigning them to infantry brigades or divisions did not inhibit the massing of artillery power on the battlefield, and that the concentration system employed during the latter half of the conflict failed to produce a greater concentration of guns. In another break with previous scholarship, he shows that the efficacy of fuzes to explode long-range ordnance proved a problem that neither side was able to resolve during the war. Indeed, cumulative data on the types of projectiles fired in battle show that commanders lessened their use of the new long-range exploding ordnance due to bad fuzes and instead increased their use of solid shot, the oldest artillery projectile in history.

The Boys of Adams' Battery G
The Boys of Adams' Battery G

Author: Robert Grandchamp

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2009-10-21

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0786454571

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Raised from Rhode Island farmers and millworkers in the autumn of 1861, the Union soldiers of Battery G fought in such bloody conflicts as Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, and Cedar Creek. At the storming of Petersburg on April 2, 1865, seven cannoneers were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in the face of the enemy. This history captures the battlefield exploits of the "Boys of Hope" but also depicts camp life, emerging cannon technology, and the social events of the Civil War.

Civil War Logistics
Civil War Logistics

Author: Earl J. Hess

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2017-09-18

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 0807167525

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Winner of the Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies by the New York Military Affairs Symposium During the Civil War, neither the Union nor the Confederate army could have operated without effective transportation systems. Moving men, supplies, and equipment required coordination on a massive scale, and Earl J. Hess’s Civil War Logistics offers the first comprehensive analysis of this vital process. Utilizing an enormous array of reports, dispatches, and personal accounts by quartermasters involved in transporting war materials, Hess reveals how each conveyance system operated as well as the degree to which both armies accomplished their logistical goals. In a society just realizing the benefits of modern travel technology, both sides of the conflict faced challenges in maintaining national and regional lines of transportation. Union and Confederate quartermasters used riverboats, steamers, coastal shipping, railroads, wagon trains, pack trains, cattle herds, and their soldiers in the long and complicated chain that supported the military operations of their forces. Soldiers in blue and gray alike tried to destroy the transportation facilities of their enemy, firing on river boats and dismantling rails to disrupt opposing supply lines while defending their own means of transport. According to Hess, Union logistical efforts proved far more successful than Confederate attempts to move and supply its fighting forces, due mainly to the North’s superior administrative management and willingness to seize transportation resources when needed. As the war went on, the Union’s protean system grew in complexity, size, and efficiency, while that of the Confederates steadily declined in size and effectiveness until it hardly met the needs of its army. Indeed, Hess concludes that in its use of all types of military transportation, the Federal government far surpassed its opponent and thus laid the foundation for Union victory in the Civil War.