The Extraordinary Life of Charles Pomeroy Stone
The Extraordinary Life of Charles Pomeroy Stone

Author: Blaine Lamb

Publisher: Westholme Publishing

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781594162329

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Charles Pomeroy Stone (1824-1887) is best known for the 1861 Civil War battle at Ball's Bluff, Virginia, where a close associate of Lincoln's was killed while under Stone's command. Stone was blamed for his death and imprisoned without charges or trial. His story, however, goes far beyond that episode. Ranging from the Halls of Montezuma to Gold Rush California, and from the pyramids of Egypt to the foot of the Statue of Liberty, The Extraordinary Life of Charles Pomeroy Stone: Soldier, Surveyor, Pasha, Engineer by historian Blaine Lamb brings to light the many facets of Stone's remarkable life and career. After graduating from West Point, Stone served with General Winfield Scott in the Mexican-American War; he then commanded a military depot in San Francisco until joining a bank managed by William Tecumseh Sherman during the heady days of the Gold Rush. Stone was then recruited to survey Sonora, Mexico, for American interests. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Stone was in Washington, and his leadership was critical to protecting Lincoln and the city from Confederate attack. Given a field command, he was then made scapegoat for the Ball's Bluff debacle. After being released from prison, he served with distinction, leading a charge during the battle of Pleasant Hill. Following the war he was recommended by Sherman to the khedive of Egypt to modernize the Egyptian army. Serving nine years as "Stone Pasha," he entertained Ulysses S. Grant while the ex-president visited the country in 1878. Grant then recommended the only man he felt could carry out the complex job of constructing France's great gift to the United States: the Statue of Liberty. Stone rose to the challenge, quietly providing his expertise to erect this enduring national symbol. As the author weaves together these and other stories and characters, including Alexander von Humboldt, Thaddeus Lowe, Chinese Gordon, Khedive Ismail, and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the center of this tale of nineteenth-century adventure, war, and intrigue remains Stone himself, a man of honor, steadfast loyalty, and perseverance. -- Inside jacket flaps.

From the Mountains to the Bay
From the Mountains to the Bay

Author: Ethan S. Rafuse

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 0700633537

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From January to July of 1862, the armies and navies of the Union and Confederacy conducted an incredibly complex and remarkably diverse range of operations in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Under the direction of leaders like Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, George McClellan, Joseph E. Johnston, John Rodgers, Robert E. Lee, Franklin Buchanan, Irvin McDowell, and Louis M. Goldsborough, men of the Union and Confederate armed forces marched over mountains and through shallow valleys, maneuvered on and along great tidal rivers, bridged and waded their tributaries, battled malarial swamps, dug trenches and constructed fortifications, and advanced and retreated in search of operational and tactical advantage. In the course of these operations, the North demonstrated it had learned quite a bit from its setbacks of 1861 and was able to achieve significant operational and tactical success on both land and sea. This enabled Union arms to bring a considerable portion of Virginia under Federal control—in some cases temporarily and in others permanently. Indeed, at points during the spring and early summer of 1862, it appeared the North just might succeed in bringing about the defeat of the rebellion before the year was out. A sweeping study of the operations on land and sea, From the Mountains to the Bay is the only modern scholarly work that looks at the operations that took place in Virginia in early 1862, from the Romney Campaign that opened the year to the naval engagement between the Monitor and Merrimac to the movements and engagements fought by Union and Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley, on the York-James Peninsula, and in northern Virginia, as a single, comprehensive campaign. Rafuse draws from extensive research in primary sources to provide a fast-paced, complete account of operations throughout Virginia, while also incorporating findings of recent scholarship on the factors that shaped these campaigns. The work provides invaluable insights into the factors and individuals who shaped these operations, how they influenced the course of the war, the relationships between political leaders and men in uniform, and how all these factors affected the development and execution of strategy, operations, and tactics.

The Battle of Ball's Bluff
The Battle of Ball's Bluff

Author: Bill Howard

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1439665575

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What began as a simple scouting mission evolved into a full-scale battle when a regiment of Union soldiers unexpectedly encountered a detachment of Confederate cavalry. Three months after the Civil War's first important battle at Manassas in 1861, Union and Confederate armies met again near the sleepy town of Leesburg. The Confederates pushed forward and scattered the Union line. Soldiers drowned trying to escape back to Union lines on the other side of the Potomac River. A congressional investigation of the battle had long-lasting effects on the war's political and military administration. Bill Howard narrates the history of the battle as well as its thorny aftermath.

Washington Roebling's Civil War
Washington Roebling's Civil War

Author: Diane Monroe Smith

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 0811767825

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Washington Roebling is well known as the man who supervised construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. His path to overseeing that monumental task began during the Civil War. In addition to his brave, dramatic actions at Gettysburg, his Civil War service was remarkable: artilleryman, bridge builder, scout, balloonist, mapmaker, engineer, and staff officer. His story reveals much about Gettysburg but also about Civil War intelligence and engineering and the politics and infighting within the Army of the Potomac’s high command. Roebling’s service—leadership, engineering, decision-making, and managing personalities and politics—prepared him well for overseeing the Brooklyn Bridge.

Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares
Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares

Author: John H. Matsui

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2021-05-19

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0807175315

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In Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares, John H. Matsui argues that the political ideology and racial views of American Protestants during the Civil War mirrored their religious optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, perfectibility, and the millennium. While previous historians have commented on the role of antebellum eschatology in political alignment, none have delved deeply into how religious views complicate the standard narrative of the North versus the South. Moving beyond the traditional optimism/pessimism dichotomy, Matsui divides American Protestants of the Civil War era into “premillenarian” and “postmillenarian” camps. Both postmillenarian and premillenarian Christians held that the return of Christ would inaugurate the arrival of heaven on earth, but they disagreed over its timing. This disagreement was key to their disparate political stances. Postmillenarians argued that God expected good Christians to actively perfect the world via moral reform—of self and society—and free-labor ideology, whereas premillenarians defended hierarchy or racial mastery (or both). Northern Democrats were generally comfortable with antebellum racial norms and were cynical regarding human nature; they therefore opposed Republicans’ utopian plans to reform the South. Southern Democrats, who held premillenarian views like their northern counterparts, pressed for or at least acquiesced in the secession of slaveholding states to preserve white supremacy. Most crucially, enslaved African American Protestants sought freedom, a postmillenarian societal change requiring nothing less than a major revolution and the reconstruction of southern society. Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Civil War as it reveals the wartime marriage of political and racial ideology to religious speculation. As Matsui argues, the postmillenarian ideology came to dominate the northern states during the war years and the nation as a whole following the Union victory in 1865.

Lincoln on the Verge
Lincoln on the Verge

Author: Ted Widmer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 1476739455

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WINNER OF THE LINCOLN FORUM BOOK PRIZE “A Lincoln classic...superb.” ­—The Washington Post “A book for our time.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Lincoln on the Verge tells the dramatic story of America’s greatest president discovering his own strength to save the Republic. As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration—an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge charts these pivotal thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks directly to the public, and sees his country up close. Drawing on new research, this riveting account reveals the president-elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, as he foils an assassination attempt, forges an unbreakable bond with the American people, and overcomes formidable obstacles in order to take his oath of office.

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo

Author: Rose Marie Beebe

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2023-01-26

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 0806192615

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Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–90) grew up in Spanish California, became a leading military and political figure in Mexican California, and participated in some of the founding events of U.S. California. In 1874–75, Vallejo, working with historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft, composed a five-volume history of Alta California—a monumental work that would be the most complete eyewitness account of California before the gold rush. But Bancroft shelved the work, and it has lain in the archives until its recent publication as Recuerdos: Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769–1849, translated and edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. In Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California, Beebe and Senkewicz not only illuminate Vallejo’s life and history but also examine the broader experience of the nineteenth-century Californio community. In eight essays, the authors consider Spanish and Mexican rule in California, mission secularization, the rise of rancho culture, and the conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Californians, especially in the post-mission era. Vallejo was uniquely positioned to provide insight into early California’s foundation, and as a defender of culture and education among Mexican Californians, he also offered a rare perspective on the cultural life of the Mexican American community. In their final chapter, Beebe and Senkewicz include a significant portion of the correspondence between Vallejo and his wife, Francisca Benicia, for what it reveals about the effects of the American conquest on family and gender roles. A long-overdue in-depth look at one of the preeminent Mexican Americans in nineteenth-century California, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo also provides an unprecedented view of the Mexican American experience during that transformative era.

Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America from the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond
Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America from the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond

Author: Chris Bray

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-05-17

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0393243419

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A timely, provocative account of how military justice has shaped American society since the nation’s beginnings. Historian and former soldier Chris Bray tells the sweeping story of military justice from the earliest days of the republic to contemporary arguments over using military courts to try foreign terrorists or soldiers accused of sexual assault. Stretching from the American Revolution to 9/11, Court-Martial recounts the stories of famous American court-martials, including those involving President Andrew Jackson, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Lieutenant Jackie Robinson, and Private Eddie Slovik. Bray explores how encounters of freed slaves with the military justice system during the Civil War anticipated the civil rights movement, and he explains how the Uniform Code of Military Justice came about after World War II. With a great eye for narrative, Bray hones in on the human elements of these stories, from Revolutionary-era militiamen demanding the right to participate in political speech as citizens, to black soldiers risking their lives during the Civil War to demand fair pay, to the struggles over the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley and the events of My Lai during the Vietnam War. Throughout, Bray presents readers with these unvarnished voices and his own perceptive commentary. Military justice may be separate from civilian justice, but it is thoroughly entwined with American society. As Bray reminds us, the history of American military justice is inextricably the history of America, and Court-Martial powerfully documents the many ways that the separate justice system of the armed forces has served as a proxy for America’s ongoing arguments over equality, privacy, discrimination, security, and liberty.

Americans in Egypt, 1770-1915
Americans in Egypt, 1770-1915

Author: Cassandra Vivian

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2012-08-29

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 078646304X

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The voices of Americans have long been absent from studies of modern Egypt. Most scholars assume that Americans were either not in Egypt in significant numbers during the nineteenth century or had little of importance to say. This volume shows that neither was the case by introducing and relating the experiences and attitudes of 15 American personalities who worked, lived, or traveled in Egypt from the 1770s to the commencement of World War I. Often in their own words, explorers, consuls, tourists, soldiers, missionaries, artists, scientists, and scholars offer a rare American perspective on everyday Egyptian life and provide a new perspective on many historically significant events. The stories of these individuals and their sojourns not only recount the culture and history of Egypt but also convey the domination of the country by European powers and the support for Egypt by a young American nation.