A Gallant Little Army

A Gallant Little Army

Author: Timothy D. Johnson

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13:

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The first book-length study of one of America's greatest military campaigns and triumphs, led by Winfield Scott--one of America's greatest generals. Shines a spotlight on the campaign that became a significant proving ground for West Point-educated officers and a formative combat "school" for many of the Civil War's most prominent generals.


Manifest Destinies

Manifest Destinies

Author: Steven E. Woodworth

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-11-02

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0307594645

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A sweeping history of the 1840s, Manifest Destinies captures the enormous sense of possibility that inspired America’s growth and shows how the acquisition of western territories forced the nation to come to grips with the deep fault line that would bring war in the near future. Steven E. Woodworth gives us a portrait of America at its most vibrant and expansive. It was a decade in which the nation significantly enlarged its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, California, and the Pacific Northwest; William Henry Harrison ran the first modern populist campaign, focusing on entertaining voters rather than on discussing issues; prospectors headed west to search for gold; Joseph Smith founded a new religion; railroads and telegraph lines connected the country’s disparate populations as never before. When the 1840s dawned, Americans were feeling optimistic about the future: the population was growing, economic conditions were improving, and peace had reigned for nearly thirty years. A hopeful nation looked to the West, where vast areas of unsettled land seemed to promise prosperity to anyone resourceful enough to take advantage. And yet political tensions roiled below the surface; as the country took on new lands, slavery emerged as an irreconcilable source of disagreement between North and South, and secession reared its head for the first time. Rich in detail and full of dramatic events and fascinating characters, Manifest Destinies is an absorbing and highly entertaining account of a crucial decade that forged a young nation’s character and destiny.


Wars Within War

Wars Within War

Author: Irving W. Levinson

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0875655726

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Traditional characterizations of the 1846–1848 war between the United States and Mexico emphasize the conventional battles waged between two sovereign nations. However, two little-known guerrilla wars taking place at the same time proved critical to the outcome of the conflict. Using information from twenty-four archives, including the normally closed files of Mexico’s National Defense Archives, Wars Within War breaks new ground by arguing that these other conflicts proved crucial to the course of events. In the first struggle, a force organized by the Mexican army launched a prolonged campaign against the supply lines connecting the port of Veracruz to US forces advancing upon Mexico City. In spite of US efforts to destroy the partisans’ base of support, these armed Mexicans remained a significant threat as late as January 1848. Concurrently, rebellions of class and race erupted among Mexicans, an offshoot of the older struggle between a predominantly criollo elite that claimed European parentage and the indigenous population excluded from participation in the nation’s political and economic life. Many of Mexico’s powerful, propertied citizens were more afraid of their fellow Mexicans than of the invaders from the north. By challenging their rulers, guerrillas forced Mexico’s government to abandon further resistance to the United States, changing the course of the war and Mexican history.


Trailing Clouds of Glory

Trailing Clouds of Glory

Author: Felice Flanery Lewis

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2010-03-16

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0817316787

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This work is a narrative of Zachary Taylor’s Mexican War campaign, from the formation of his army in 1844 to his last battle at Buena Vista in 1847, with emphasis on the 163 men in his “Army of Occupation” who became Confederate or Union generals in the Civil War. It clarifies what being a Mexican War veteran meant in their cases, how they interacted with one another, how they performed their various duties, and how they reacted under fire. Referring to developments in Washington, D.C., and other theaters of the war, this book provides a comprehensive picture of the early years of the conflict based on army records and the letters and diaries of the participants. Trailing Clouds of Glory is the first examination of the roles played in the Mexican War by the large number of men who served with Taylor and who would be prominent in the next war, both as volunteer and regular army officers, and it provides fresh information, even on such subjects as Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Particularly interesting for the student of the Civil War are largely unknown aspects of the Mexican War service of Daniel Harvey Hill, Braxton Bragg, and Thomas W. Sherman.


No More Gallant a Deed

No More Gallant a Deed

Author: James A. Wright

Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 9780873514071

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It went on to take part in every significant battle in the war in the East from 1861 to 1864. In remarkable detail, Wright describes the fighting at Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the New York draft riots, and Bristoe Station. The most grueling battle for the First was Gettysburg. Detached from the main body of its regiment, Company F missed the bloody fighting on July 2 when the First lost 82 percent of its men in a suicidal attack. But the next day, Company F and the remnant of the First helped stop Pickett's Charge. The First's sacrifice inspired Gen.


A Fighter from Way Back

A Fighter from Way Back

Author: Daniel Harvey Hill

Publisher: Kent State University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780873387392

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Born in July 1821, Daniel Harvey Hill grew up in genteel poverty on a large plantation in York District, South Carolina. He entered West Point and graduated in the middle of the renowned Class of 1842. Following garrison duty as a junior lieutenant with the First and Third Artilleries, Hill joined the Fourth Artillery at Fortress Monroe in January 1846. Six months later he was en route to Mexico. Published here for the first time, Hill's diary vividly recounts the Mexican War experiences of this proud young officer. He was observant and opinionated, recording details about soldiers, officers, logistics, units, the health of the army, and the progress of the campaign. Hill, who later took up the Confederate cause and earned the sobriquet Lee's Maverick General, emerged from the Mexican conflict an authentic hero, winning brevet promotions to captain and major for gallant conduct at Contreras (Padierna) and Chapultepec. Young lieutenant Hill came of age in Mexico, and there he encountered firsthand a different culture and witnessed in horror helpless civilians and their treasures washed away in the boiling stream of violence that was war. Hill's fascinating diary recounts these a


Crisis in the Southwest

Crisis in the Southwest

Author: Richard Bruce Winders

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9780842028011

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The war between the United States and Mexico was decades in the making. Although Texas was an independent republic from 1836 to 1845, Texans retained an affiliation with the United States that virtually assured annexation at some point. Mexico's reluctance to give up Texas put it on a collision course with the United States. The Mexican War receives scant treatment in books. Most historians approach the conflict as if it were a mere prelude to the Civil War. The Mexican cession of 1848, however, rivaled the Louisiana Purchase in importance for the sheer amount of territory acquired by the United States. The dispute over slavery-which had been rendered largely academic by the Missouri Compromise-burst forth anew as Americans now faced the realization that they must make a decision over the institution's future. The political battle over the status of slavery in these new territories was the direct cause of the Crisis of 1850 and ignited sectional differences in the decade that followed. In Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas, Richard Bruce Winders provides a concise, accessible overview of the Mexican War and argues that the Mexican War led directly to the Civil War by creating a political and societal crisis that drove a wedge between the North and the South. While on the surface the enemy was Mexico, in reality Americans were at odds with one another over the future of the nation, as the issue of annexation threatened to upset the balance between free and slave states. Winders also explains the military connections between the Mexican War and Civil War, since virtually every important commander in the Civil War-including Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Grant, McClellan, and Longstreet-gained his introduction to combat in Mexico. These connections are enormously significant to the way in which these generals waged war, since it was in the Mexican War that they learned their trade. Crisis in the Southwest provides readers with a clear understandin


The Hundred Day Winter War

The Hundred Day Winter War

Author: Gordon F. Sander

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2013-06-26

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0700619100

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When the Red Army invaded Finland in November 1939 most observers expected a walkover. Instead, in a gallant stand that captured the world's imagination, the tiny Finnish army was able to hold off Stalin's mechanized echelons for 105 days. Gordon F. Sander peels away the layers of myth surrounding this Nordic Thermopylae to reveal the conflict in its full military, political, and cultural contexts. A bestseller in Finland, the English-language version of Sander's book draws on interviews with both Finnish and Russian veterans of the war, in addition to a bountiful archive of articles from both the Western and Finnish press, to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date single-volume history of the war. Written in "real time" to give the reader a you-are-there feeling, the book describes the Finns' stunning defeat of the Soviets' initial massive offensive, including the destruction of several Red divisions by Finnish ski troops; the deceptively calm January interregnum, when the two sides engaged in a complicated diplomatic minuet; and the final, titanic Red assault itself, which finally drove the Finns to the peace table-though not before they had forged one of the great legends of modern military history. Using his intimate knowledge of Finland and Finnish history, the author explains how the Finns' winter skills, their innate sisu, or toughness, and their devotion to both their young republic and their brilliant and inspiring commander-in-chief, Gustaf Mannerheim, together enabled them to make their historic stand. Sander explores such oft-ignored aspects of the conflict as Finnish press censorship; the abortive Allied "rescue mission" across Scandinavia that was a factor in Stalin's surprising decision to bring the war to a halt; the Kremlin's novel use of paratroopers in the war; and the pivotal role played by the Lotta Svard, the Finnish all-purpose women's auxiliary. Illustrating Sander's fast-paced text are nearly 50 photographs, including numerous never-seen-before images of both the battlefront and the home front. Hailed by Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's leading daily, as "a bittersweet morality play" that "opens up this quintessentially Finnish tale to a much wider and admiring readership" and by STT, Finland's leading news agency, as "an outstanding book that combines brilliant writing with a rock-solid factual foundation," Sander's compelling book fills a key gap in the record of the Second World War.


War with Mexico!

War with Mexico!

Author: Tom Reilly

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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The first book to tell the history of the Mexican war through the eyes of the American reporters--the nation's first war correspondents--who covered it on the ground. Provides an up-close, richly detailed, comprehensive account of the war, as well as insights into the rise of modern commercial journalism, its impact on public perceptions, and its entanglement with national politics.


Varieties of Exile

Varieties of Exile

Author: Mavis Gallant

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2003-11-30

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9781590170601

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Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their own. The irreducible complexity of the very idea of home is especially at issue in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal, where she was born, although she has lived in Paris for more than half a century. Varieties of Exile, Russell Banks's extensive new selection from Gallant's work, demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer's singular art. Among its contents are three previously uncollected stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir—stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.