Peddlers and Post Traders
Author: David M. Delo
Publisher: Kingfisher Books
Published: 1998-12
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9780966221817
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Frontier Crossroads
Author: Robert Wooster
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 160344548X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe idea of the West conjures exciting images of tenacious men and women, huge expanses of unclaimed territory, and feelings of both adventure and lonesome isolation. Located astride communication lines linking San Antonio, El Paso, Presidio, and Chihuahua City, the United States Army?s post at Fort Davis commanded a strategic position at a military, cultural, and economic crossroads of nineteenth-century Texas. Using extensive research and careful scrutiny of long forgotten records, Robert Wooster brings his readers into the world of Fort Davis, a place of encounter, conquest, and community. The fort here spawned a thriving civilian settlement and served as the economic nexus for regional development Frontier Crossroads schools its readers in the daily lives of soldiers, their dependents, and civilians at the fort and in the surrounding area. The resulting history of the intriguing blend of Hispanic, African American, Anglo, and European immigrants who came to Fort Davis is a benchmark volume that will serve as the standard to which other post histories will be compared. The military garrisons of Fort Davis represented a rich mosaic of nineteenth-century American life. Each of the army?s four black regiments served there following the Civil War, and its garrisons engaged in many of the army?s grueling campaigns against Apache and Comanche Indians. Characters such as artist and officer Arthur T. Lee, William "Pecos Bill" Shafter, and Benjamin Grierson and his family come alive under Wooster?s pen. Frontier Crossroads will enrich its readers with its careful analysis of life on the frontier. This book will appeal to military and social historians, Texas history buffs, and those seeking a record of adventure.
Privilege vs. Equality
Author: Robert P. Wettemann Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2009-09-23
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBetween 1815-1860, the tiny American army took on many new and often daunting tasks. In the face of civil opposition to the very existence of a professional military, the first battle officers and supporters had to win after 1815 was that of simply preserving some small professional force. As American interests expanded further west and conflict with Native Americans increased, the army was charged with the dual responsibility of peacekeeper and conqueror. Its most dramatic successes, however, came during the Mexican War and the conquest of the American Southwest. Against this back drop, Wetteman crafts a narrative overview of the rivalries, personalities, and events that defined civil-military relations during this era. Beginning in 1815, the U.S. Army struggled for existence within a society that was not convinced that a standing army was worth the expense. At the same time, many questioned the viability of a professional officer corps, citing the innate ability of the American fighting man as demonstrated in earlier conflicts. Although efforts were undertaken early on to define the role and status of a peacetime army, issues of national defense, domestic security, Indian policy, and internal improvements shaped civil military relations over the next 4 12 decades. While the true position of the citizen-soldier in relation to a standing army had not been clearly defined by 1860, the nation had made giant strides towards full acceptance of the idea that the U.S. Army, a standing force commanded by military professionals, was a national necessity.
Mrs. Dred Scott
Author: Lea VanderVelde
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 497
ISBN-13: 019975408X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. --from publisher description.
The Early Imperial Republic
Author: Michael A. Blaakman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2023-05-16
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 081229775X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCreated in a world of empires, the United States was to be something new: an expansive republic proclaiming commitments to liberty and equality but eager to extend its territory and influence. Yet from the beginning, Native powers, free and enslaved Black people, and foreign subjects perceived, interacted with, and resisted the young republic as if it was merely another empire under the sun. Such perspectives have driven scholars to reevaluate the early United States, as the parameters of early American history have expanded in Atlantic, continental, and global directions. If the nation's acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands in 1898 traditionally marked its turn toward imperialism, new scholarship suggests the United States was an empire from the moment of its creation. The essays gathered in The Early Imperial Republic move beyond the question of whether the new republic was an empire, investigating instead where, how, and why it was one. They use the category of empire to situate the early United States in the global context its contemporaries understood, drawing important connections between territorial conquests on the continent and American incursions around the globe. They reveal an early U.S. empire with many different faces, from merchants who sought to profit from the republic's imperial expansion to Native Americans who opposed or leveraged it, from free Black colonizationists and globe-trotting missionaries to illegal slave traders and anti-imperial social reformers. In tracing these stories, the volume's contributors bring the study of early U.S. imperialism down to earth, encouraging us to see the exertion of U.S. power on the ground as a process that both drew upon the example of its imperial predecessors and was forced to grapple with their legacies. Taken together, they argue that American empire was never confined to one era but is instead a thread throughout U.S. history. Contributors:Brooke Bauer, Michael A. Blaakman, Eric Burin, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Kathleen DuVal, Susan Gaunt Stearns, Nicholas Guyatt, Amy S. Greenberg, M. Scott Heerman, Robert Lee, Julia Lewandoski, Margot Minardi, Ousmane Power-Greene, Nakia D. Parker, Tom Smith
Fort Randall on the Missouri, 1856-1892
Author: Jerome A. Greene
Publisher: SDSHS Press
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0977795500
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStrategically located along the Missouri River near the present South Dakota-Nebraska border, Fort Randall served as an important outpost on the western frontier. It played a key role in maintaining peace between American Indians and new settlers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and its most famous residents included African American "Buffalo Soldiers" and the imprisoned Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull. In Fort Randall on the Missouri, 1856-1892, Jerome A. Greene immerses the reader in the day-to-day life of a frontier garrison, using original maps, soldiers' drawings, and excerpts from their letters. Stories of soldiers' families, food, education, entertainment, and worship depict a self-sufficient community, weathering local conflicts as well as the Civil War. The appendixes name the commanding officers and regiments stationed there as well as the imprisoned members of Sitting Bull's b∧ twenty-four Bailey, Dix and Mead photographs of Sitting Bull's people taken in 1882 are also featured. Greene concludes by chronicling the demise of the post as thriving communities grew up around it.
The World of the American West
Author: Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-10-04
Total Pages: 982
ISBN-13: 1136931597
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe World of the American West is an innovative collection of original essays that brings the world of the American West to life, and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing region. Twenty scholars incorporate the freshest research in the field to take the history of the American West out of its timeworn "Cowboys and Indians" stereotype right up into the major issues being discussed today, from water rights to the presence of the defense industry. Other topics covered in this heavily illustrated, highly accessible volume include the effects of leisure and tourism, western women, politics and politicians, Native Americans in the twentieth century, and of course, oil. With insight both informative and unexpected, The World of the American West offers perspectives on the latest developments affecting the modern American West, providing essential reading for all scholars and students of the field so that they may better understand the vibrant history of this globally significant, ever-evolving region of North America.
Empire of Commerce
Author: Susan Gaunt Stearns
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2024-05-28
Total Pages: 269
ISBN-13: 0813951259
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA groundbreaking study situating the Mississippi River valley at the heart of the early American republic’s political economy Shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, twenty-two-year-old Andrew Jackson pledged his allegiance to the king of Spain. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase, imperial control of the North American continent remained an open question. Spain controlled the Mississippi River, closing it to American trade in 1784, and western men on the make like Jackson had to navigate the overlapping economic and political forces at work with ruthless pragmatism. In Empire of Commerce, Susan Gaunt Stearns takes readers back to a time when there was nothing inevitable about the United States’ untrammeled westward expansion. Her work demonstrates the centrality of trade on and along the Mississippi River to the complex development of the political and economic structures that shaped the nascent American republic. Stearns’s perspective-shifting book reconfigures our understanding of key postrevolutionary moments—the writing of the Constitution, the outbreak of the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Louisiana Purchase—and demonstrates how the transatlantic cotton trade finally set the stage for transforming an imagined west into something real.
Captain W. W. Withenbury's 1838-1842 "Red River Reminiscences"
Author: Jacques D. Bagur
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Published: 2014-03-15
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 1574415476
DOWNLOAD EBOOKW. W. Withenbury was a famous river boat captain during the mid-1800s. In retirement, he wrote a series of letters for the Cincinnati Commercial, under the title "Red River Reminiscences." Jacques Bagur has selected and annotated 39 letters describing three steamboat voyages on the upper Red River from 1838 to 1842. Withenbury was a master of character and incident, and his profiles of persons, including three signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, reflect years of acquaintance. The beauty of his writing ranks this among the best of the reminiscences that were written as the steamboat era was declining. “Bagur is an expert on the Red River in the nineteenth century, and it shows in this work. Informative and entertaining.” —Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell, author of Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State “This will rank as a great assistance to researchers if anyone wants to attack history of the Red River again. Some of his in-depth research was fabulous.”—Skipper Steely, author of Red River Pioneers
The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied
Author: Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2014-04-09
Total Pages: 541
ISBN-13: 0806147008
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFew historical chronicles are as informative and eloquent as the journals written by Prince Maximilian of Wied as a record of his journey into the North American interior in 1833–34, following the route Lewis and Clark had taken almost thirty years earlier. In this third, and final, volume, Maximilian vividly narrates his extended stay at Fort Clark (near today’s Bismarck, North Dakota) and his return journey eastward across America and on to his home in Germany. This handsome, oversize volume not only reproduces the prince’s historic document but also features every one of his illustrations—nearly 100 in all, including several in color—from the original journal, along with other watercolors, now housed at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. This book is published with the assistance of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
