Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Historical

A white Kentuckian, itinerant Methodist preacher, and antislavery spokesman, James T. Ayers moved to Illinois before the Civil War and, though nearly fifty-seven years old, enlisted in an Illinois regiment in 1862. In February 1864, he was dispatched as a recruiter for the U.S. Colored Troops in the Tennessee Valley and began this diary recounting his experiences, including his recruiting tactics, the difficulties he en-countered in enemy territory, and the lack of interest on the part of many slaves and freedmen in joining the U.S. Colored Troops.

Edited by John Hope Franklin, who...

Lauded as a hero in his native land for his sensational but ultimately unsuccessful exploits during the 1848 German Revolution, Franz Sigel -- who immigrated to the United States in 1852 -- is among the most misunderstood figures of the American Civil War. He was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as a political general in the Union army, a move that successfully galvanized northern support and provided a huge influx of German recruits who were eager to "fight mit Sigel." But Sigel proved an inept and ineffectual leader and, unfortunately, is most often remembered for his disappointing failure...

Troy H. Middleton attained a remarkable record as the youngest colonel in the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I, and as commander of the Army's Forty-fifth Division and later the VIII Corps. He spent more time in combat than any other general officer in World War II. General Middleton made key tactical decisions in the largest and most complex military action in which the U.S. Army has ever been involved---the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he bacame one of Louisiana State University's most distinguished presidents.

In this thoroughly researched biography,...

As Jefferson Davis paraded through the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, to take the oath of office as the first president of the Confederate States of America, two men accompanied him in his open coach: Alexander Stephens -- the vice-president-elect -- and Basil Manly. A noted southern Baptist preacher, educator, and the most ardent secessionist of them all, Manly had been selected to serve as chaplain to the provisional Confederate Congress and opened the inaugural ceremonies with a prayer. For nearly thirty years, Manly had worked devotedly for the establishment of a southern nation, and...

In this exhaustive biography, Keith Krawczynski details the political and social career of William Henry Drayton (1742--1779), an ambitious, wealthy lowcountry planter and zealous patriot leader who was at the center of Revolutionary activity in South Carolina from 1774 until his death five years later. Considered the most effective Whig polemicist in the lower South, Drayton served on all his state's important Revolutionary governing bodies, commanded a frigate of war, was elected chief justice in 1776, coauthored South Carolina's 1778 constitution, and represented the state in the...

Born the eighth child in a wealthy Mississippi plantation family in 1843, David Eldred Holt joined Company K of the 16th Mississippi Regiment in 1861 and served in the Eastern theater throughout the Civil War. Late in his life, at a time when many former soldiers, both Union and Confederate, were reliving their memories of that event, Holt penned this memoir, recounting the idyllic life of an affluent southern boy before the war and the exhilarating, sometimes humorous, often terrifying experiences of a common soldier in camp and in battle. This new edition has been expanded to include...

William Howard Russell wrote My Diary North and South while traveling through the Union and the Confederacy from March 1861 to April 1862 as a war correspondent for the Times of London. Along the way he met and interviewed an impressive number of Union and Confederate leaders -- including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William H. Seward, and General George B. McClellan -- but he also canvassed average citizens on both sides, recounting their manners, appearance, values, and habits in remarkable detail. This memoir of his journey provides a vivid snapshot of American life and culture at...

Laussat pens very personal observations on...

An esteemed planter, politician, and military leader influential in the affairs of both South Carolina and Texas, James Hamilton (1786--1857) so declined in reputation during the last twenty years of his life that his home state refused to acknowledge him when he died. Robert Tinkler's superb, first-published biography of Hamilton conveys the enormous drama, dignity, and pathos that marked Hamilton's pursuit of the greatness achieved by his prominent Revolutionary-era forebears and his subsequent profound reversal brought on by debt.

While a member of Congress during the 1820s, Hamilton...

Born into wealth in New Orleans in 1795 and married into misery fifteen years later, the Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba led a life ripe for novelization. Intimate Enemies, however, is the spellbinding true account of this resilient woman's life -- and the three men who most affected its course.

Immediately upon marrying Celestin de Pontalba, Micaela was removed to his family's estate in France. For twenty years her father-in-law attempted to drive her to abandon Celestin; by law he could then seize control of her fortune. He tried dozens of strategies, including at one point...

Residents of antebellum northwest Louisiana held strong pro-Union sentiments, and the Pierson family of Bienville Parish, Louisiana, were no exception, opposing secession in 1861. Yet once war began, the region contributed its full share of support to the southern army, and four of William H. Pierson's eight sons enlisted. Ranging from the early battles of the Trans-Mississippi to the epic battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, and from the brutal trenches of Vicksburg to provost guard duty in north Louisiana, this extensive collection of Civil War letters, written by three of the...

This gripping autobiography is at once a heart-pounding adventure story, a moving recollection of a larger-than-life father, and an important account of the Czech resistance. Radomir Luza's father was a revered army general when the Nazis stormed into Czechoslovakia. After his father went underground to avoid arrest and torture, the nineteen-year-old Radomir spent weeks in a Gestapo prison. Upon his release, he joined his father in hiding. General Luza became the military commander of the Czech resistance, while Radomir secretly helped organize the country's largest resistance network....

Extraordinarily wealthy and influential, Stephen Duncan (1787-1867) was a landowner, slaveholder, and financier with a remarkable array of social, economic, and political contacts in pre-Civil War America. In this, the first biography of Duncan, Martha Jane Brazy offers a compelling new portrait of antebellum life through exploration of Duncan's multifaceted personal networks in both the South and the North.

Duncan grew up in an elite Pennsylvania family with strong business ties in Philadelphia. There was little indication, though, that he would become a cosmopolitan entrepreneur who...

"They say I'm a Yankee -- but if wanting peace is Yankee -- then "I am one." I am tired of "Disunion" of husband & wife."

In 1858, nineteen-year-old Priscilla "Mittie" Munnikhuysen began a new diary that saw her marry, leave her family in the genteel Protestant seaboard culture of Chesapeake Bay, and take up residence with her wealthy husband, Howard Bond, in the frontier plantation society of Catholicsouth Louisiana. By 1865, Priscilla Bond had witnessed trials and disillusionments enough to fill a two-volume journal: her father-in-law's brutality toward his slaves; her husband's...

As provisional governor of Missouri during the Civil War, Hamilton Gamble (1798--1864) worked closely with the Lincoln administration to keep the state from seceding from the Union. Without Gamble and other loyal Unionist governors, the war in the West might have been lost. Dennis Boman's full-scale account of Gamble's life tells the little-known story of a prominent frontier lawyer who became chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court and boldly dissented in the infamous Dred Scott decision. Revealing how Gamble, one of the wealthiest and most renowned citizens of pre--Civil War...