Showing titles in American Civil War

First published in 1961, John Hope Franklin’s revelatory study of the Reconstruction Era is a landmark work of history, exploring the role of former slaves and dispelling longstanding popular myths about corruption and Radical rule. Looking past dubious scholarship that had previously dominated the narrative, Franklin combines astute insight and careful research to provide an accurate, comprehensive portrait of the era.

In 1840, millions of Black Americans groaned in the chains of slavery. By 1920, millions of American men and women of every race had won the vote. In Born Equal, the prizewinning constitutional historian Akhil Reed Amar recounts the dramatic constitutional debates that unfolded across these eight decades, when four glorious amendments abolished slavery, secured Black and female citizenship, and extended suffrage regardless of race or gender. At the heart of this era was the epic and ever-evolving idea that all Americans are created equal.

When the war broke out, Union soldiers assumed Confederate women would be innocent noncombatants. Experience soon challenged this simplistic belief. Stephanie McCurry reveals the vital and sometimes confounding roles women played on and off the battlefield. In this groundbreaking reconsideration of the Civil War, the award-winning author of Confederate Reckoning invites us to see America's bloodiest conflict not just as pitting brother against brother but as a woman's war.

The story of the American Civil War is not complete without examining the extraordinary and influential lives of Jessie Frémont, Nelly McClellan, Ellen Sherman, and Julia Grant, the wives of Abraham Lincoln's top generals. They were their husbands' closest confidantes and had a profound impact on the generals' ambitions and actions. Most important, the women's own attitudes toward and relationships with Lincoln had major historical significance.

By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans. After a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington’s Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war’s unimaginable horrors - every drop of blood spilled - might well have been God’s just verdict on the national sin of slavery.

The Bohemians begins in 1860s San Francisco. The Gold Rush has ended; the Civil War threatens to tear apart the country. The bards of the moment are the Bohemians: a young Mark Twain, fleeing the draft and seeking adventure; literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protectorate of the group.

Groundbreaking, compelling, and poignant, The Slaves' War delivers an unprecedented vision of the nation's bloodiest conflict. An acclaimed historian of 19th-century and African American history, Andrew Ward gives us the first narrative of the Civil War told from the perspective of those whose destiny it decided.

The battle of Fredericksburg is usually remembered as the most lopsided Union defeat of the Civil War. It is sometimes called “Burnside’s folly”, after Union Commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside who led the Army of the Potomac to ruin along the banks of the Rappahannock River. But the battle remains one of the most misunderstood and misremembered engagements of the war. Burnside started with a well-conceived plan and had every reason to expect victory. How did it go so terribly wrong?

Connor Towne O’Neill’s journey onto the battlefield of white supremacy began with a visit to Selma, Alabama, in 2015. There he had a chance encounter with a group of people preparing to erect a statue to celebrate the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most notorious Confederate generals, a man whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as “that devil.” After that day in Selma, O’Neill, a white Northerner transplanted to the South, decided to dig deeply into the history of Forrest and other monuments to him throughout the South.

For much of the 20th century, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's life and career remained mostly obscure outside of dedicated scholars of the Battle of Gettysburg and alumni and students of Bowdoin College. Colonel Chamberlain had led the 20th Maine regiment at Gettysburg, holding the extreme left of the Union line on Little Round Top, and he continued to rise up the ranks toward the end of the war until he was commanding a brigade and present at the surrender ceremony of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.

With its emphasis on traditional values, family, faith, military service, good manners, small government, and independent-minded people, the South should certainly rise again. Far from being the backwater of prejudice and ignorance that the liberal media would have you believe, the South has always been the center of American culture.

Drawing from his vast real-world background as the senior legal advisor for the US Army Special Forces, Professor Addicott not only pulls back the curtain on the Union’s command approved use of terror tactics against Southern civilians during the American Civil War, he also persuasively rebuts all the fallacious justifications proffered to excuse the widespread war-crimes committed by the chief purveyor, William T. Sherman.

In Thunder at the Gates, Douglas R. Egerton chronicles the formation and battlefield triumphs of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry - regiments led by whites, but composed of black men born free or into slavery. He argues that the most important battles of all were won on the field of public opinion, for in fighting with distinction, the regiments realized the long-derided idea of full and equal citizenship for blacks.

The compelling story of the effect of Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species on a diverse group of American writers, abolitionists, and social reformers, including Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, in 1860.

"Facts the Historians Leave Out" is a book that delves into lesser-known aspects and perspectives of American history, particularly focusing on the Confederate side of the Civil War. This work seeks to shed light on events, figures, and narratives that the author argues have been overlooked or underrepresented in mainstream historical accounts.

The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was to acquire a cutting-edge clandestine fleet intended to break President Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports, sink Northern merchant vessels, and drown the U.S. Navy’s mightiest ships at sea. The profits from gunrunning and smuggling cotton—Dixie’s notorious “white gold”—would finance the scheme. Opposing him was Thomas Dudley, a resolute Quaker lawyer and abolitionist. He was determined to stop Bulloch by any means necessary in a spy-versus-spy game of move and countermove, gambit and sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal.

For those who are interested in learning about America, this is a great introductory book. It should whet your appetite to learn more. This detailed guide is an easy-to-follow, concise listen providing a comprehensive understanding of America’s roots and how it came to be the superpower it is today. Embark on a riveting journey through the tumultuous era that birthed a nation. The American Revolution. is more than just a history; it's an exploration into the heart and soul of early America, through battlefields, diplomatic strife, and the forging of a new identity.

Even 150 years later, we are haunted by the Civil War---by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary W. Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

Timothy Sandefur's insightful book provides a dramatic new challenge to the status quo of constitutional law and argues a vital truth: our Constitution was written not to empower democracy, but to secure liberty. Yet the overemphasis on democracy by today's legal community - rather than the primacy of liberty, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence - has helped expand the scope of government power at the expense of individual rights.

Abraham Lincoln called "Billy" Herndon, “My man always above all other men on the globe". They were business partners for 16 years. After Lincoln's assassination Herndon did interviews with Lincoln's family and friends for this biography. Co-author Jesse Weik also conducted many original interviews. The result - although not without flaws - has been recognized as one of the most important biographies of the Great Emancipator ever published.