Donald L. CanneyOCOs study is the first book-length history of the U.S. NavyOCOs Africa Squadron. Established in 1842 to enforce the ban on importing slaves to the United States, in twenty yearsOCO time the squadron proved ineffective. To officers and enlisted men alike, duty in the squadron was unpopular. The equatorial climate, departmental neglect, and judicial indifference, which allowed slavers back at sea, all contributed to the sailorsOCO frustration. Later, the most damaging allegation was that the squadron had failed at its mission. Canney investigates how this unit earned a poor reputation and whether it is deserved. Though U.S. warships seized slave vessels as early as 1800, four decades passed before the Navy established a permanent squadron off the western coast of Africa to interdict U.S.-flag vessels participating in this trade. Canney traces the NavyOCOs role in interdicting the slave trade, Great BritainOCOs pressure on the U.S. government to curb slave traffic, the creation of the squadron, and how individual politicians, department secretaries, captains, and squadron commanders interpreted the laws and orders from higher authorities, changing squadron operations. While famous ships and captains served on this station, none won distinction in the Africa Squadron. In the final analysis, the squadron was unsuccessful, even though it was the NavyOCOs only permanent squadron with a specific, congressionally mandated mission: to maintain a quasi-blockade on a foreign shore. While Canney exonerates southern-born naval captains, who approached their work as diligently as their counterparts from the north, he demonstrates how the secretaries of the NavyOCopro-slavery southern politiciansOConeglected the squadron.
Of all the Homeland Security agencies operating in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, no agency performed its duties with the same level of diligence and heroism as did the U.S. Coast Guard. Tirelessly, Coasties in helicopters and small boats pulled survivors from rooftops, floating debris, and high ground and ferried them to safety as the rest of us watched live on CNN. Only a few days later, disaster struck again in the form of Hurricane Rita, which left even more people in desperate need of rescue and assistance. In the aftermath of the storms, some 5,000 Coast Guard personnel rescued 33,735 individuals--six times more than the annual average number rescued by the service nationwide. Then, unobserved by the media, the Coast Guard successfully restored the vital navigation aids in the region, preventing further death and destruction. In Katrina’s Wake presents a riveting account of the astounding operations undertaken by the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike America. While other government agencies struggled to mobilize and failed to provide real solutions, one small, decentralized agency stepped forward and performed above and beyond the call of duty.
Donald L. CanneyOCOs study is the first book-length history of the U.S. NavyOCOs Africa Squadron. Established in 1842 to enforce the ban on importing slaves to the United States, in twenty yearsOCO time the squadron proved ineffective. To officers and enlisted men alike, duty in the squadron was unpopular. The equatorial climate, departmental neglect, and judicial indifference, which allowed slavers back at sea, all contributed to the sailorsOCO frustration. Later, the most damaging allegation was that the squadron had failed at its mission. Canney investigates how this unit earned a poor reputation and whether it is deserved. Though U.S. warships seized slave vessels as early as 1800, four decades passed before the Navy established a permanent squadron off the western coast of Africa to interdict U.S.-flag vessels participating in this trade. Canney traces the NavyOCOs role in interdicting the slave trade, Great BritainOCOs pressure on the U.S. government to curb slave traffic, the creation of the squadron, and how individual politicians, department secretaries, captains, and squadron commanders interpreted the laws and orders from higher authorities, changing squadron operations. While famous ships and captains served on this station, none won distinction in the Africa Squadron. In the final analysis, the squadron was unsuccessful, even though it was the NavyOCOs only permanent squadron with a specific, congressionally mandated mission: to maintain a quasi-blockade on a foreign shore. While Canney exonerates southern-born naval captains, who approached their work as diligently as their counterparts from the north, he demonstrates how the secretaries of the NavyOCopro-slavery southern politiciansOConeglected the squadron.
Of all the Homeland Security agencies operating in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, no agency performed its duties with the same level of diligence and heroism as did the U.S. Coast Guard. Tirelessly, Coasties in helicopters and small boats pulled survivors from rooftops, floating debris, and high ground and ferried them to safety as the rest of us watched live on CNN. Only a few days later, disaster struck again in the form of Hurricane Rita, which left even more people in desperate need of rescue and assistance. In the aftermath of the storms, some 5,000 Coast Guard personnel rescued 33,735 individuals--six times more than the annual average number rescued by the service nationwide. Then, unobserved by the media, the Coast Guard successfully restored the vital navigation aids in the region, preventing further death and destruction. In Katrina’s Wake presents a riveting account of the astounding operations undertaken by the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike America. While other government agencies struggled to mobilize and failed to provide real solutions, one small, decentralized agency stepped forward and performed above and beyond the call of duty.
Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize Winner of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. It took Grant’s army and Admiral David Porter’s navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender. In this “elegant…enlightening…well-researched and well-told” (Publishers Weekly) work, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city “with probing intelligence and irresistible passion” (Booklist). He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. With Vicksburg “Miller has produced a model work that ties together military and social history” (Civil War Times). Vicksburg solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but ultimately he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war—the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.
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