Before his spectacular career as General of the Union forces, William Tecumseh Sherman experienced decades of failure and depression. Drifting between the Old South and new West, Sherman witnessed firsthand many of the critical events of early nineteenth-century America: the Mexican War, the gold rush, the banking panics, and the battles with the Plains Indians. It wasn't until his victory at Shiloh, in 1862, that Sherman assumed his legendary place in American history. After Shiloh, Sherman sacked Atlanta and proceeded to burn a trail of destruction that split the Confederacy and ended the...
Before his spectacular career as General of the Union forces, William Tecumseh Sherman experienced decades of failure and depression. Drifting between...
During the Civil War, the state of Missouri witnessed the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history. With its horrific combination of robbery, arson, torture, murder, and swift and bloody raids on farms and settlements, the conflict approached total war, engulfing the whole populace and challenging any notion of civility. Michael Fellman's Inside War captures the conflict from "inside," drawing on a wealth of first-hand evidence, including letters, diaries, military reports, court-martial transcripts, depositions, and newspaper accounts. He gives us a...
During the Civil War, the state of Missouri witnessed the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history. With its...
Some men panic in the face of war, others embrace its horrific challenges. But none embraced war as ferociously or with as much cold calculation as William Tecumseh Sherman. It was Sherman who both articulated and practiced the relentless scorched-earth policy that broke the heart of the Confederacy. Sherman succeeded in large measure because, better than any other Union general, he fully grasped the essence of psychological warfare and could enact his own deep-rooted rage with ruthless clarity. This biography is much broader than an analysis of Sherman's wartime genius, however. Michael...
Some men panic in the face of war, others embrace its horrific challenges. But none embraced war as ferociously or with as much cold calculation as Wi...
How does a democratic government conscript citizens, turn them into soldiers who can fight effectively against a highly trained enemy, and then somehow reward these troops for their service? In Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America, Jennifer D. Keene argues that the doughboy experience in 1917-18 forged the U.S. Army of the twentieth century and ultimately led to the most sweeping piece of social-welfare legislation in the nation's history--the G.I. Bill.
Keene shows how citizen-soldiers established standards of discipline that the army in a sense had to...
How does a democratic government conscript citizens, turn them into soldiers who can fight effectively against a highly trained enemy, and then som...
Jesse and Frank James were household names long before images of America's most wanted were televised. For several decades after the Civil War, they were hunted by hundreds who supposed them to be involved in every bank and train robbery in the Midwest. Trained as guerrilla fighters in the border conflict between Kansas and Missouri, they joined with the Younger brothers in February 1866 to rob a bank in Liberty, Missouri. That was the beginning of a criminal confederation that seemed beyond the reach of the law until the Northfield, Minnesota, raid killed three of them and sent the James...
Jesse and Frank James were household names long before images of America's most wanted were televised. For several decades after the Civil War, they w...
Historical observations of abolition have ranged from perspectives of contempt to acclamation, and now show signs of a major change in interpretation. The literature often has been dominated by hostile appraisals of William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionist leaders until the 1960s, when historians equated abolitionism may have fluctuated from one period to the next, most of this scholarship shared certain assumptions--that abolitionists provided pivotal factors toward the onset of the Civil War, that their internal disputes were intensely interesting, and that somehow they were...
Historical observations of abolition have ranged from perspectives of contempt to acclamation, and now show signs of a major change in interpretati...
Stephen W. Sears Mark E., JR. Neely Michael Fellman
In Lincoln's Generals, Gabor S. Boritt and a team of distinguished historians examine the interaction between Abraham Lincoln and his five key Civil War generals: McClellan, Hooker, Meade, Sherman, and Grant, providing fresh insight into this mixed bag of officers and the president's tireless efforts to work with them. The president's relationship with his generals was never easy. Stephen W. Sears underscores McClellan's perverse obstinacy as Lincoln tried to drive him ahead. Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark E. Neely Jr. sheds new light on the president's relationship with Hooker, arguing that he...
In Lincoln's Generals, Gabor S. Boritt and a team of distinguished historians examine the interaction between Abraham Lincoln and his five key Civil W...
In 1861, Francis Moore appeared to be a perfectly ordinary, twenty-three year old man: a carriage
maker in the bustling Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois. And there he might well have lived out his life in unadventurous comfort. But then the Civil War burst out, and Moore, along with most of his friends, like young men North and South, rushed to enlist in the army. His cavalry regiment soon set off for what proved to be four years of warfare, plunging him into harrowing experiences of battle that would have been unimaginable back in his small hometown and that uprooted him, body...
In 1861, Francis Moore appeared to be a perfectly ordinary, twenty-three year old man: a carriage
maker in the bustling Mississippi River town of...
