A Companion to the U.S. Civil War, 2 Volume Set

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War, 2 Volume Set

Author: Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 1223

ISBN-13: 1119716144

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A Companion to the U.S. Civil War presents a comprehensive historiographical collection of essays covering all major military, political, social, and economic aspects of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Represents the most comprehensive coverage available relating to all aspects of the U.S. Civil War Features contributions from dozens of experts in Civil War scholarship Covers major campaigns and battles, and military and political figures, as well as non-military aspects of the conflict such as gender, emancipation, literature, ethnicity, slavery, and memory


A Companion to the U.S. Civil War

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War

Author: Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-02-05

Total Pages: 1223

ISBN-13: 1118802950

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A Companion to the U.S. Civil War presents a comprehensive historiographical collection of essays covering all major military, political, social, and economic aspects of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Represents the most comprehensive coverage available relating to all aspects of the U.S. Civil War Features contributions from dozens of experts in Civil War scholarship Covers major campaigns and battles, and military and political figures, as well as non-military aspects of the conflict such as gender, emancipation, literature, ethnicity, slavery, and memory


The Civil War Diary of a Common Soldier

The Civil War Diary of a Common Soldier

Author: Terrence J. Winschel

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2001-05-01

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780807125939

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William Wiley was typical of most soldiers who served in the armies of the North and South during the Civil War. A poorly educated farmer from Peoria, he enlisted in the summer of 1862 in the 77th Illinois Infantry, a unit that participated in most of the major campaigns waged in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. Recognizing that the great conflict would be a defining experience in his life, Wiley attempted to maintain a diary during his years of service. Frequent illnesses kept him from the ranks for extended periods of time, and he filled the many gaps in his diary after the war. When viewed as a postwar memoir rather than a period diary, Wiley's narrative assumes great importance as it weaves a fascinating account of the army life of Billy Yank. Rather than focus on the noble and heroic aspects of war, Wiley reveals how basic the lives of most soldiers actually were. He describes at length his experiences with sickness, both on land and at sea, and the monotony of daily military life. He seldom mentions army leaders, evidence of how little private soldiers knew of them or the larger drama in which they played a part. Instead, he writes fondly of his small circle of regimental friends, fills his pages with refreshing anecdotes, records troop movements, details contact with civilians, and describes the appearance of the countryside through which he passed. In the epilogue, Terrence J. Winschel recounts Wiley's complex and often frustrating struggle to obtain his military pension after the war. Wiley was an ingenious misspeller, and his words are transcribed just as he wrote them more than 130 years ago. Through his simple language, we come to know and care for this common man who made a common soldier. His story transcends the barriers of time and distance, and places the reader in the midst of men who experienced both the horror and the tedium of war. Winschel's rich annotation fleshes out Wiley's narrative and provides an enlightening historical perspective. Scholars and buffs alike, especially those fascinated by operations in the lower Mississippi Valley and along the Gulf Coast, will relish Wiley's honest portrait of the ordinary serviceman's Civil War.


Homelands

Homelands

Author: Richard L. Nostrand

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2003-05-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0801876605

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What does it mean to be from somewhere? If most people in the United States are "from some place else" what is an American homeland? In answering these questions, the contributors to Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place across America offer a geographical vision of territory and the formation of discrete communities in the U.S. today. Homelands discusses groups such as the Yankees in New England, Old Order Amish in Ohio, African Americans in the plantation South, Navajos in the Southwest, Russians in California, and several other peoples and places. Homelands explores the connection of people and place by showing how aspects of several different North American groups found their niche and created a homeland. A collection of fifteen essays, Homelands is an innovative look at geographical concepts in community settings. It is also an exploration of the academic work taking place about homelands and their people, of how factors such as culture, settlement, and cartographic concepts come together in American sociology. There is much not only to study but also to celebrate about American homelands. As the editors state, "Underlying today's pluralistic society are homelands—large and small, strong and weak—that endure in some way. The mosaic of homelands to which people bonded in greater or lesser degrees, affirms in a holistic way America's diversity, its pluralistic society." The authors depict the cultural effects of immigrant settlement. The conviction that people need to participate in the life of the homeland to achieve their own self realization, within the traditions and comforts of that community. Homelands gives us a new map of the United States, a map drawn with people's lives and the land that is their home.


The Effects Of Southern Railroads On Interior Lines During The Civil War

The Effects Of Southern Railroads On Interior Lines During The Civil War

Author: Thomas George Ziek Jr.

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 1782899480

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The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of the Southern railroad system on interior lines during the Civil War and determine whether or not the South enjoyed the advantage of interior lines. The use of railroads during this conflict placed an enormous physical strain upon the limited industrial resources of the Confederacy, and a great strain upon the intellectual agility of the Confederate High Command. Based upon the evidence studied, and the time-space comparisons of both Northern and Southern railway operations, several conclusions can be drawn: the South entered the war with a rail system that was unable to meet the demands of modern war; the Confederate leadership understood the importance of the railroad and its importance to strategic operations early in the war, but were unwilling to adopt a course of action that best utilized their scarce assets; Southern railroad speeds decreased dramatically by 1863 due to the inability of Southern railroads owners to perform needed maintenance on their railroad equipment; tactical reverses on the field of battle, especially the losses of both Corinth in May of 1862 and Knoxville in September of 1863 increased the distances that re-enforcements would have to travel to fight a mobile intra-theater war; Union control, maintenance, and organization of its railway assets ensured that it would be able to move large numbers of troops at the strategic level efficiently from early 1863 to the end of the war. Based on these conclusions, the Confederacy lost the ability to shift troops on the strategic level more rapidly than the Union by 1863. This was a result of its physically weakened railroad system and military setbacks which caused Southern railroads to move forces over longer distances.


The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston

The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston

Author: Richard M. McMurry

Publisher: Savas Beatie

Published: 2023-01-16

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1954547110

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Joseph Eggleston Johnston was one of the original five full Confederate generals. He graduated West Point in the same 1829 class as Robert E. Lee and served in the War with Mexico, the Seminole Wars in Florida, and in Texas and Kansas. By 1860 Johnston was widely looked upon as one of America’s finest military officers. During the Civil War he commanded armies in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas and served as commander of the entire Western Theater during a critical period of the war. Johnston’s contributions to the war effort, however, remain a lightning rod of controversy. In The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston, Richard M. McMurry argues persuasively that the Confederacy’s most lethal enemy was the toxic dissension within the top echelons of its high command. The discord between General Johnston and President Jefferson Davis (and others), which began early in the conflict and only worsened as the months passed, routinely prevented the cooperation and coordination the South needed on the battlefield if it was going to achieve its independence. The result was one failed campaign after another, all of which cumulatively doomed the Southern Confederacy. McMurry’s study is not a traditional military biography but a lively and opinionated conversation about major campaigns and battles, strategic goals and accomplishments, and how these men and their decision-making and leadership abilities directly impacted the war effort. Personalities, argues McMurry, win and lose wars, and the military and political leaders who form the focal point of this study could not have been more different (and in the case of Davis and Johnston, more at odds) when it came to making the important and timely decisions necessary to wage the war effectively. The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston represents a lifetime of study and contemplation that captures Johnston in a way that has never been accomplished. It sheds fresh light on old controversies and compels readers to think about major wartime events in unique and compelling ways. This first installment begins just before the Civil War and ends on the eve of Johnston taking command of the Army of Tennessee in North Georgia. Here, finally, is the definitive study of how qualities of character played an oversized role in determining the outcome of the Civil War.


The Fate of Texas

The Fate of Texas

Author: Charles D. Grear

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2008-10

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9781610751476

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In its examination of a state too often neglected by Civil War historians, The Fate of Texas presents Texas as a decidedly Southern, yet in many ways unusual, state seriously committed to and deeply affected by the Confederate war effort in a multitude of ways. When the state joined the Confederacy and fought in the war, its fate was uncertain. The war touched every portion of the population and all aspects of life in Texas. Never before has a group of historians examined the impact of the war on so many facets of the state.


One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End

One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End

Author: Gary Dillard Joiner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1461639751

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In the spring of 1864, as the armies of Grant and Lee waged a highly scrutinized and celebrated battle for the state of Virginia, a no- less important, but historically obscured engagement was being conducted in the pine barrens of northern Louisiana. In a year of stellar triumphs by Union armies across the South, the Red River Campaign stands out as a colossal failure. General William Tecumseh Sherman's scathing summation describes it best, "One damn blunder from beginning to end." Taking its title from Sherman's blunt description, One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 is a fresh inspection of what was the Civil War's largest operation between the Union Army and Navy west of the Mississippi River. In a bold, but poorly managed effort to wrest Louisiana and Texas from Confederate control, a combined force of 40,000 Union troops and 60 naval vessels traveled up the twisting Red River in an attempt to capture the capital city of Shreveport. Gary D. Joiner provides not a recycled telling of the campaign, but a strategic and tactical overview based on a stunning new array of facts gleaned from recently discovered documents. This never-before-published information reveals that the Confederate army had laid a clever trap by engineering a drop in the water level of the Red River to try to maroon the Union naval flotilla. Only the equally amazing ingenuity of the Union troops saved the fleet from certain destruction, despite a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Mansfield. The Red River campaign had lasting implications. One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End magnifies just how devastating the diversion of so many men and so much material to this failed campaign was to the Union effort in the pivotal year of 1864. Because of the Union Army's failures, Northern plans to capture Mobile were scrapped. Military careers were made and lost. And at time when the Confederacy was teetering on the brink of oblivion, Southern morale was bolstered. Joiner puts together


Through the Howling Wilderness

Through the Howling Wilderness

Author: Gary D. Joiner

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9781572335448

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Through the Howling Wilderness is replete with in-depth coverage on the geography of the region, the Congressional hearings after the Campaign, and the Confederate defenses in the Red River Valley.