This Terrible Sound
This Terrible Sound

Author: Peter Cozzens

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1992-09-01

Total Pages: 689

ISBN-13: 025209848X

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When North and South met among the desolate mountains of northwestern Georgia in 1863, they began one of the bloodiest and most decisive campaigns of the Civil War. The climactic Battle of Chickamauga lasted just two days, yet it was nearly as costly as Gettysburg, with casualties among the highest in the war. In this study of the campaign, the first to appear in over thirty years and the most comprehensive account ever written on Chickamauga, Peter Cozzens presents a vivid narrative about an engagement that was crucial to the outcome of the war in the West. Drawing upon a wealth of previously untapped sources, Cozzens offers startling new interpretations that challenge the conventional wisdom on key moments of the battle, such as Rosecrans's fateful order to General Wood and Thomas's historic defense of Horseshoe Ridge. Chickamauga was a battle of missed opportunities, stupendous tactical blunders, and savage fighting by the men in ranks. Cozzens writes movingly of both the heroism and suffering of the common soldiers and of the strengths and tragic flaws of their commanders. Enhanced by the detailed battle maps and original sketches by the noted artist Keith Rocco, this book will appeal to all Civil War enthusiasts and students of military history.

James F. Jaquess
James F. Jaquess

Author: Patricia B. Burnette

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2013-04-08

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0786473584

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Tall, handsome and charismatic, James Jaquess impressed men and charmed ladies who knew him as a preacher, a college president or colonel of an Illinois regiment. In 1864 he and James Gilmore talked to Jefferson Davis about terms of peace. Lincoln recognized his many abilities and invited Jaquess to serve as one of his personal agents. But after the Civil War ended, this biography reveals, Jaquess' life changed for the worse. He was tried in Kentucky for the death of a woman and failed as a carpetbagger in Arkansas and Mississippi. Then he convinced his family and friends in Indiana and numerous residents of New York to invest in Lawrence-Townley bonds and share in a fortune waiting in England. This venture ended in poverty for him and a sentence in a British prison. When he returned to America for his final years, Jaquess still held the respect of the men of the 73rd Infantry and the affection of the women who knew him as president of their college in Jacksonville. His misadventures having turned his black hair to white, he still possessed the charisma that had led to his national fame.

The Loyal West
The Loyal West

Author: Matthew E. Stanley

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2016-01-10

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0252099176

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A free region deeply influenced by southern mores, the Lower Middle West represented a true cultural and political median in Civil War–era America. Here grew a Unionism steeped in the mythology of the Loyal West--a myth rooted in regional and racial animosities and the belief that westerners had won the war. Matthew E. Stanley's intimate study explores the Civil War, Reconstruction, and sectional reunion in this bellwether region. Using the lives of area soldiers and officers as a lens, Stanley reveals a place and a strain of collective memory that was anti-rebel, anti-eastern, and anti-black in its attitudes--one that came to be at the forefront of the northern retreat from Reconstruction and toward white reunion. The Lower Middle West's embrace of black exclusion laws, origination of the Copperhead movement, backlash against liberalizing war measures, and rejection of Reconstruction were all pivotal to broader American politics. And the region's legacies of white supremacy--from racialized labor violence to sundown towns to lynching--found malignant expression nationwide, intersecting with how Loyal Westerners remembered the war. A daring challenge to traditional narratives of section and commemoration, The Loyal West taps into a powerful and fascinating wellspring of Civil War identity and memory.