Conversations with Samuel Wilson
Conversations with Samuel Wilson

Author: Abbye A. Gorin

Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.

Published: 2012-01-04

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9781589809864

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A complement to Learning from Samuel Wilson, Jr. Samuel Wilson, Jr., was the founding president of the Louisiana Landmarks Society. This collection of interviews takes place during the early 1960s.

P. G. T. Beauregard
P. G. T. Beauregard

Author: T. Harry Williams

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 1995-02-01

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780807119747

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First published in 1955 to wide acclaim, T. Harry Williams’ P. G. T. Beauregard is universally regarded as “the first authoritative portrait of the Confederacy’s always dramatic, often perplexing” general (Chicago Tribune). Chivalric, arrogant, and of exotic Creole Louisiana origin, Beauregard participated in every phase of the Civil War from its beginning to its end. He rigidly adhered to the principles of war derived from his studies of Jomini and Napoleon, and yet many of his battle plans were rejected by his superiors, who regarded him as excitable, unreliable, and contentious. After the war, Beauregard was almost the only prominent Confederate general who adapted successfully to the New South, running railroads and later supervising the notorious Louisiana Lottery. This paradox of a man who fought gallantly to defend the Old South and then helped industrialize it is the fascinating subject of Williams’ superb biography.

The Majestic Nature of the North
The Majestic Nature of the North

Author: Steven A. Walton

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2019-02-14

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1438473273

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The illustrated nineteenth-century travel diaries of artist, educator, and architect Thomas Kelah Wharton, documenting his trips in the lower Hudson River Valley and New Orleans to Boston and back. Thomas Kelah Wharton’s travel diaries provide an intimate glimpse into the society of early nineteenth-century America. As a young immigrant from England, the eldest son of a wealthy merchant who fell on hard times, Wharton (1814–1862) navigated the complex world of New York and the Hudson River Valley in the early 1830s and his diaries reveal a vibrant cultural and social scene. Wharton’s details of encounters with the Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole; the author Washington Irving; Sylvanus Thayer, superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point; the Greek Revival architect Martin E. Thompson, and many others enliven his story. Skipping two decades to 1853, Wharton—now an established professional living in New Orleans—brought his young family from New Orleans to Boston. The trip to and from Boston illuminates the joys and hazards of traveling aboard steamboats and trains, and touches on the tensions growing between North and South. The diary entries show an inquisitive, observant mind at work. A gifted pen-and-ink artist, the inclusion of Wharton’s faithful drawings provide rare and wonderful views of an America from a very unique and personal perspective. “This book is unique. Wharton is not a major figure in art, architecture, or education, although he did all three. However, Wharton does give us a view from a potential ‘social-riser’ during a period when the United States was full of opportunities. His interactions in the nineteenth-century New York art world and, twenty years later, life in New Orleans on the eve of the Civil War, unveil the role of social networks in both regions.” — Thomas S. Wermuth, author of Rip Van Winkle’s Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley, 1720–1850