Robidoux Chronicles
Robidoux Chronicles

Author: Hugh M. Lewis

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 1412025702

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Présentation de l'éditeur : "Robidoux Chronicles treats with comprehensive documentary detail the factual history of the Robidoux lineage in North America from the first progenitor who arrived in Quebec in about 1665- through the famous six brothers who distinguished themselves as Mountain Men- up until even recent times on reservations in the US. Many members of the Robidoux family were intimately connected to the entire history of the North American fur trade. The six brothers- born in St. Louis before the coming of Lewis & Clark- were important fur-traders during the classical Rendezvous era of the North American fur trade. They became key players in the organization & articulation of the Overland Trail- only to die soon afterward in relative obscurity upon the plains of Kansas & Nebraska. By the 1950's- the story of the Robidoux had been almost entirely forgotten. Subsequent historians had lost all but a scant & fragmentary knowledge of the true role & exploits of the Robidoux & their French-Indian compatriots upon the frontiers of the old west. Antoine Robidoux was the first to establish permanent trading settlements west of the Rockies in the Inter-Montane corridor & his brother Michel was one of the first expeditions to traverse the length of the Grand Canyon. The eldest brother Joseph became one of the earliest established traders on the upper Missouri & founded St. Joseph, Missouri, which was later to be the primary starting point of the Overland Trail. His younger brother Louis became one of the earliest ranch owners in California, becoming Don of the Jurupa- that encompassed the areas known today as Riverside, San Bernardino, San Jacinto & San Timoteo. An entire inter-tribal French-Indian ethnocultural orientation had developed upon the plains- prairies & mountains of the Trans-Mississippi west a good fifty years before the coming of the Iron Horse & the Pony Express- & has been carried on today in proximity to the reservations of Kansas & Oklahoma- South Dakota & Wyoming."

The Civil War and the West
The Civil War and the West

Author: Carol L. Higham

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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Between 1800 and the Civil War, the American West evolved from a region to territories to states. This book depicts the development of the antebellum West from the perspective of a resident of the Western frontier. What happened in the West in the lead-up to and during the American Civil War? The Civil War and the West: The Frontier Transformed provides a clear and complete answer to this question. The work succinctly overviews the West during the antebellum period from 1800 to 1862, supplying thematic chapters that explain how key elements and characteristics of the West created conflict and division that differed from those in the East during the Civil War. It looks at how these issues influenced the military, settlement, and internal territorial conflicts about statehood in each region, and treats the Cherokee and other Indian nations as important actors in the development of a national narrative.

Soldiers in the Army of Freedom
Soldiers in the Army of Freedom

Author: Ian Michael Spurgeon

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-10-22

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0806147229

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It was 1862, the second year of the Civil War, though Kansans and Missourians had been fighting over slavery for almost a decade. For the 250 Union soldiers facing down rebel irregulars on Enoch Toothman’s farm near Butler, Missouri, this was no battle over abstract principles. These were men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry, and they were fighting for their own freedom and that of their families. They belonged to the first black regiment raised in a northern state, and the first black unit to see combat during the Civil War. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom is the first published account of this largely forgotten regiment and, in particular, its contribution to Union victory in the trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War. As such, it restores the First Kansas Colored Infantry to its rightful place in American history. Composed primarily of former slaves, the First Kansas Colored saw major combat in Missouri, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. Ian Michael Spurgeon draws upon a wealth of little-known sources—including soldiers’ pension applications—to chart the intersection of race and military service, and to reveal the regiment’s role in countering white prejudices by defying stereotypes. Despite naysayers’ bigoted predictions—and a merciless slaughter at the Battle of Poison Spring—these black soldiers proved themselves as capable as their white counterparts, and so helped shape the evolving attitudes of leading politicians, such as Kansas senator James Henry Lane and President Abraham Lincoln. A long-overdue reconstruction of the regiment’s remarkable combat record, Spurgeon’s book brings to life the men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry in their doubly desperate battle against the Confederate forces and skepticism within Union ranks.

Age of Betrayal
Age of Betrayal

Author: Jack Beatty

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2008-04-08

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1400032423

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Age of Betrayal is a brilliant reconsideration of America's first Gilded Age, when war-born dreams of freedom and democracy died of their impossibility. Focusing on the alliance between government and railroads forged by bribes and campaign contributions, Jack Beatty details the corruption of American political culture that, in the words of Rutherford B. Hayes, transformed “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” into “a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.” A passionate, gripping, scandalous and sorrowing history of the triumph of wealth over commonwealth.

A River in the City of Fountains
A River in the City of Fountains

Author: Amahia K. Mallea

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0700627111

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Founded as a port at the confluence of two great rivers, Kansas City has the waters of the Missouri running through its bloodstream—threading expressways, delivering drinking water, carrying traffic and sewage, and emerging most visibly in the city’s celebrated fountains. Despite, or perhaps because of, the river’s ubiquity, the complex and critical nature of its presence can be hard to understand, which is precisely why Amahia Mallea’s enlightening book is so essential. Moving from the city’s center to the outer limits of the metropolitan area, A River in the City of Fountains offers a clear view of the reach and intricacies of the Missouri River’s connection to life in Kansas City. The history of this connection is one of science and industry working, sometimes at cross-purposes, to bend the river to the needs of commerce and public health. It is a story populated with heroes and villains, visionaries and robber barons, scientists and civil engineers, politicians and activists—all with schemes and plans and far-reaching ideas about what, and whose, demands the power of the Missouri should serve. And so, inevitably, it is a story of disparities: a story of, from one flood to the next, the haves staking out higher ground, leaving the have-nots to the perils of low-lying land. But what the book also shows us is a slow awakening to the ways in which all those vying for the river’s favor are inextricably connected by its course; here we see, finally, a growing awareness of the river’s essential role in the health and welfare of the whole urban environment. In the end, all citizens of Kansas City are both upstream and downstream; all are equally dependent on the health of the river. What this book helps us see is, at last, as much the city in the river as the river in the city.

Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier
Bucking the Railroads on the Kansas Frontier

Author: John N. Mack

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2013-01-07

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0786470291

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As the Civil War ended, thousands of Union veterans imagined Kansas as a place to make a new beginning. Many veterans settled in the southeastern part of the state. In their struggle to establish lawful, ordered communities the settlers came into conflict with railroads intent on building through southeast Kansas to reach warm-water ports in Texas. To the settlers the railroads represented both a promise and a threat. By linking farmers and businessmen with eastern markets, the railroads guaranteed the prospects of economic gain. However, when they claimed rights to the land that settlers had already claimed, railroad monopolies were identified as a new manifestation of the same threat to republican values they had fought against in the recently concluded War. This book tells the story of the settlers' opposition to and victory over railroads and the impact on the evolution of political thought in Kansas and the American west.

Red Book
Red Book

Author: Alice Eichholz

Publisher: Ancestry Publishing

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 812

ISBN-13: 9781593311667

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" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.