Homegrown Yankees

Homegrown Yankees

Author: James Alex Baggett

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 970

ISBN-13: 0807142522

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Of all the states in the Confederacy, Tennessee was the most sectionally divided. East Tennesseans opposed secession at the ballot box in 1861, petitioned unsuccessfully for separate statehood, resisted the Confederate government, enlisted in Union militias, elected U.S. congressmen, and fled as refugees into Kentucky. These refugees formed Tennessee's first Union cavalry regiments during early 1862, followed shortly thereafter by others organized in Union-occupied Middle and West Tennessee. In Homegrown Yankees, the first book-length study of Union cavalry from a Confederate state, James Alex Baggett tells the remarkable story of Tennessee's loyal mounted regiments. Fourteen mounted regiments that fought primarily within the boundaries of the state and eight local units made up Tennessee's Union cavalry. Young, nonslaveholding farmers who opposed secession, the Confederacy, and the war -- from isolated villages east of Knoxville, the Cumberland Mountains, or the Tennessee River counties in the west -- filled the ranks. Most Tennesseans denounced these local bluecoats as renegades, turncoats, and Tories; accused them of betraying their people, their section, and their race; and held them in greater contempt than soldiers from the North. Though these homegrown Yankees participated in many battles -- including those in the Stones River, Tullahoma, Chickamauga, East Tennessee, Nashville, and Atlanta campaigns -- their story provides rare insights into what occurred between the battles. For them, military action primarily meant almost endless skirmishing with partisans, guerrillas, and bushwackers, as well as with the Rebel raiders of John Hunt Morgan, Joseph Wheeler, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who frequently recruited and supplied themselves from behind enemy lines. Tennessee's Union cavalry scouted and foraged the countryside, guarded outposts and railroads, acted as couriers, supported the flanks of infantry, and raided the enemy. On occasion, especially during the Nashville campaign, they provided rapid pursuit of Confederate forces. They also helped protect fellow unionists from an aggressive pro-Confederate insurgency after 1862. Baggett vividly describes the deprivation, sickness, and loneliness of cavalrymen living on the war's periphery and traces how circumstances beyond their control -- such as terrain, transport, equipage, weaponry, public sentiment, and military policy -- affected their lives. He also explores their well-earned reputation for plundering -- misdeeds motivated by revenge, resentment, a lack of discipline, and the hard-war policy of the Union army. In the never-before-told story of these cavalrymen, Homegrown Yankees offers new insights into an unexplored facet of southern Unionism and provides an exciting new perspective on the Civil War in Tennessee.


The Costs of War

The Costs of War

Author: John Denson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 1351484443

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The greatest accomplishment of Western civilization is arguably the achievement of individual liberty through limits on the power of the state. In the war-torn twentieth century, we rarely hear that one of the main costs of armed conflict is long-term loss of liberty to winners and losers alike. Beyond the obvious and direct costs of dead and wounded soldiers, there is the lifetime struggle of veterans to live with their nightmares and their injuries; the hidden economic costs of inflation, debts, and taxes; and more generally the damages caused to our culture, our morality, and to civilization at large. The new edition is now available in paperback, with a number of new essays. It represents a large-scale collective effort to pierce the veils of myth and propaganda to reveal the true costs of war, above all, the cost to liberty.Central to this volume are the views of Ludwig von Mises on war and foreign policy. Mises argued that war, along with colonialism and imperialism, is the greatest enemy of freedom and prosperity, and that peace throughout the world cannot be achieved until the central governments of the major nations become limited in scope and power. In the spirit of these theorems by Mises, the contributors to this volume consider the costs of war generally and assess specific corrosive effects of major American wars since the Revolution. The first section includes chapters on the theoretical and institutional dimensions of the relationship between war and society, including conscription, infringements on freedom, the military as an engine of social change, war and literature, and the right of citizens to bear arms. The second group includes reconsiderations of Lincoln and Churchill, an analysis of the anti-interventionist idea in American politics, a discussion of the meaning of the "just war," an assessment of how World War I changed the course of Western civilization, and finally two eyewitness accounts of the true horrors of actual combat by


Fort Pillow

Fort Pillow

Author: Harry Turtledove

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2007-05

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780312354770

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"New York Times" bestselling author Turtledove delivers a harrowing novel of the Civil War's most controversial battle.


A Brotherhood of Valor

A Brotherhood of Valor

Author: Jeffry D. Wert

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1501128302

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This unusual and moving chronicle covers some of the most important battles of the Civil War—Sharpsburg (Antietam), Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville—through the stories of the two brigades who confronted each other on the bloody fields of battle. Drawing on original source material, Jeffry Wert reconstructs the drama and terrors of war through the eyes of the ordinary men who became members of two of the most respected fighting units of their respective armies, the Stonewall Brigade of the Confederacy and the Iron Brigade of the Union. There are tales of grueling marches and almost unbearable deprivations; eyewitness accounts of ferocious fighting and devastating losses on both sides; and portraits of acts of courage and valor performed by soldiers and officers who, despite the difficulties they faced, remained dedicated to the cause for which they were fighting.


The Bears of Moro

The Bears of Moro

Author: Larry Webb

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2023-04-13

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1669873889

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In the author’s first book, From Moro to Bluff Creek—Part 1, published in 2014, the author shares an assemblage of unique Moro stories, all garnered while living at Moro, Texas, all the while observing how one decision or lack of decision seemed to have set a new experience into motion. In the author’s second book, Toyah Medicine Woman of Bluff Creek—Part 2, published in 2017, the author returns to Moro again—this time through the life of a Toyah Native American medicine woman who also lived at Moro, albeit some eight hundred years prior to the author, in prehistory. In his current book, The Bears of Moro—Part 3, the author focuses again on Moro while exploring the recent and prehistoric past while sharing more of the author’s unpublished experiences and bringing more depth to the story of the Toyah Native Americans, which brings us to the subject of bears. You the reader will learn that in the time of the Toyah, one thousand years ago, Moro had a thriving population of grizzly bears; and the Toyahs came to Moro to take these bears, in a rite of passage for aspiring want-to-be warriors. This book introduces new Moro stories, not previously published, yet experienced by the author and stories taken from small ledger books handwritten in the late 1800s about the Civil War by a neighborhood veteran of the Civil War, John Joseph Vernon. Vernon’s ledger books tell stories in his unique vernacular of his growing up in the 1850s and 1860s experiencing the horrors of a civil war and facing an even worse reconstruction. The author simply transcribes the stories from Vernon’s handwritten notes, making small grammatical changes only when absolutely necessary, yet keeping the writing style of Vernon intact and to the period. The Comanche Native Americans also lived in Moro, simultaneously with the arrival of the author’s great-grandparents in 1879. The author, having read dozens of books regarding the Comanche Native Americans, became fascinated with Comanche life on the Southern Plains. He read stories of captured Comanche slaves such as Cynthia Ann Parker who became so enamored with her Comanche life such that when returned to her original white family, she still pined away to return to her Comanche family, refusing to eat and dying a slow, painful death. The author also learned that Comanche males only have one career path—take care of the horses as a youth, become a skillful raider capturing more horses as a young adult, and finally return to the Comanche homelife on the Comanche horse ranches as an older adult, somewhat used up following Comanche life as a raider. The author takes his knowledge of Comanche lore and pens his original story connected to historical places and events—presenting how life may have been for a Comanche family living at Moro and adjusting to the arrival of the European settlers in the 1850s. Spending even more time in an archaeological excavation of an actual Toyah encampment at Moro, the author’s findings reveal further insights into the Toyah culture and how their lives were often justified while engaging the ferocious bears at Moro. Taken together, these findings generate more information on many issues regarding the Toyahs while at Moro; yet at the same time, these findings also pose unanswered questions that perhaps could be explored with less direct means or psychic channeling. Consequently, the author obtains the services of four psychic mediums to assist in his evaluation. These psychic channelings reveal more unique information regarding these Toyahs and their lives at Moro. So come take this journey with the author, a thousand years in the making, and witness how various lives were impacted, shaped, and molded, all within this unique community of Moro. This journey and these events are all based upon the archaeological records, psychic readings, historical records, and events that occurred to the author while living at Moro.


Conversations with Robert Morgan

Conversations with Robert Morgan

Author: Randall Wilhelm

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2019-10-04

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 149682573X

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Robert Morgan (b. 1944) is one of the most distinguished writers in southern and Appalachian literature, celebrated for his novels, poetry, short fiction, and historical and biographical writing, totaling more than thirty volumes. Morgan’s work gives voice to the traditionally underrepresented people of southern Appalachia, and his appearances in such popular venues as The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, and the New York Times Bestseller List have contributed to his wide readership and successful dismantling of Hollywood stereotypes that still dog the region in the nation’s larger consciousness. His writing makes a case for the dignity of work, the beauty and terror of the landscape, and the essential value of creating a community and learning to live in the world. The interviews in Conversations with Robert Morgan provide readers and scholars the first stand-alone book on Morgan’s long and fascinating career as a master of multiple genres, and make a significant contribution to the understanding of American, southern, and Appalachian literature and culture. Collected here are five decades of interviews that cover such topics as literary influence, the impact of war on family and community, poetic and narrative craft, the role of environmentalism in American literature, and the journey from impoverished North Carolina mountain boy to award-winning Ivy League professor. Morgan is Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1971. Readers will learn about writing across multiple genres, craft that can be learned and practiced by a writer, and studying the past for those present truths that create what Morgan values most in literature, “a community across time.”


Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Author: Jack Hurst

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-06-08

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0307789144

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Amid the aristocratic ranks of the Confederate cavalry, Nathan Bedford Forrest was untutored, all but unlettered, and regarded as no more than a guerrilla. His tactic was the headlong charge, mounted with such swiftness and ferocity that General Sherman called him a "devil" who should "be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the treasury." And in a war in which officers prided themselves on their decorum, Forrest habitually issued surrender-or-die ultimatums to the enemy and often intimidated his own superiors. After being in command at the notorious Fort Pillow Massacre, he went on to haunt the South as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Now this epic figure is restored to human dimensions in an exemplary biography that puts both Forrest's genius and his savagery into the context of his time, chronicling his rise from frontiersman to slave trader, private to lieutenant general, Klansman to—eventually—New South businessman and racial moderate. Unflinching in its analysis and with extensive new research, Nathan Bedford Forrest is an invaluable and immensely readable addition to the literature of the Civil War.


Dark Energy

Dark Energy

Author: Robert Morgan

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 86

ISBN-13: 069819506X

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A new collection from the awardwinning poet and author of the bestselling novel Gap Creek In the words of Poetry magazine, Robert Morgan’s poems “shine with beauty that transcends locale.” The work in his newest collection, rooted in his native Blue Ridge Mountains, explores the mysteries and tensions of family and childhood, the splendors and hidden dramas of the natural world, and the agriculture that supports all culture. Morgan’s voice is vigorous and exact, opening doors for the reader, finding unexpected images and connections. The poems reach beyond surfaces, to the strange forces inside atoms, our genes, our heritage, and outward to the farthest movements of galaxies, the dark energy we cannot explain but recognize in our bones and blood, in our deepest memories and imagination.