Winner of the Seaborg Civil War Prize: “Impressively researched . . . will please many readers, especially those who enjoy exciting battle histories.” ―Journal of Military History On October 8, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed near Perryville in what would be the largest battle ever fought on Kentucky soil. The climax of a campaign that began two months before in northern Mississippi, Perryville came to be recognized as the high-water mark of the western Confederacy. Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle is the definitive account of this important conflict. While providing all the parry and thrust one might expect from an excellent battle narrative, the book also reflects the new trends in Civil War history in its concern for ordinary soldiers and civilians caught in the slaughterhouse. The last chapter, unique among Civil War battle narratives, even discusses the battle’s veterans, their families, efforts to preserve the battlefield, and the many ways Americans have remembered and commemorated Perryville. “This superb book unravels the complexities of Perryville, but discloses these military details within their social and political contexts. These considerations greatly enrich our understanding of war, history, and human endeavor.” —Virginia Quarterly Review “It should remain the definitive work of the Perryville campaign for many years.” —Bowling Green Daily News
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.
From two esteemed Civil War historians comes an unparalleled portrait of the war that altered the foundation of America. Pithy text is accented by black and white photography and illustrations that bring key characters and settings to life.
Of the 174 delegates to the Texas convention on secession in 1861, only 8 voted against the motion to secede. James Webb Throckmorton of McKinney was one of them. Yet upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate Army and fought in a number of campaigns. At war’s end, his centrist position as a conservative Unionist ultimately won him election as governor. Still, his refusal to support the Fourteenth Amendment or to protect aggressively the rights and physical welfare of the freed slaves led to clashes with military officials and his removal from office in 1867. Throckmorton’s experiences reveal much about southern society and highlight the complexities of politics in Texas during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Because his life spans one of the most turbulent periods in Texas politics, Texas Confederate, Reconstruction Governor, the first book on Throckmorton in nearly seventy years, will provide new insights for anyone interested in the Antebellum era, the Civil War, and the troubled years of Reconstruction.
A sadistic killer stalks the summer beaches of Oregon, striking at random locations and then the small coastal city of Cutter Point. As newly hired Cutter Point police chief Kevin Kearnes battles for control of his dysfunctional agency, fighting corrupt city officials and members within his own department, an accidental meeting with a beautiful and secretive woman leads to a second chance at love. That is, until an old horror from his past resurfaces, manifesting itself in the same murder cases he's investigating, and Kearnes is about to learn that the most dangerous secrets to keep are the ones you don't know you have.
From a New York Times bestselling author, a captivating and unique overview of the first 44 presidents of the United States, from George Washington to Barack Obama. Using his entertaining question-and-answer style to chart the history of the presidency itself as well as debunk the myths of America's. Here's the young Lincoln building his mother's coffin and dragging a tragic burden through the snow to the burial; Theodore Roosevelt, America's youngest president, shockingly pushed into the presidency–with greatness thrust upon him; FDR, the only man elected four times, concealing his crippling disability from the American public as he led the nation through depression and world war; and Lyndon Johnson, reelected in a landslide, then crushed by the weight of the Vietnam War. For history buffs and history-phobes alike, this book is packed with memorable facts that will change your understanding of the highest office in the land and the men who have occupied it.
This book tells the story of the huge addiction treatment industry which flourished in the United States between 1890 and the advent of Prohibition in 1920. The story begins in Russia in 1886, where a number of doctors discovered a relatively effective pharmacological treatment for alcoholism. Although this Russian discovery was published in countless major English language medical journals, it was entirely ignored by the US addiction experts of the day, who eschewed pharmacological treatments, and instead preferred to lock people up in inebriate asylums where they could be subjected to religious coercion. However, an obscure railroad physician and patent medicine salesman named Leslie E. Keeley, who lived in the dusty prairie town of Dwight, Illinois, read about the Russian treatment in a medical journal and decided to give it a try. Much to his surprise, the Russian treatment proved highly effective, and, by 1891, Dr. Keeley was treating upwards of a thousand patents a day at the Keeley Institute in Dwight. Keeley was a salesman and a bit of a Barnum; he always claimed that he had invented the cure himself after decades of painstaking research and he called it the Gold Cure, claiming that his secret ingredient was gold. Of course, there was no gold in the gold cure other than the gold which lined Keeley's pockets. However, the treatment was relatively effective, and by 1893 there were over 100 Keeley Institutes operating in the United States and abroad, and hundreds of copycats were operating imitation gold cure institutes. The Keeley Gold Cure was even adopted by the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and the US Army. The Keeley treatment took 28 days and required hypodermic injections four times a day for the entire period. On the other hand, the Gatlin Institutes which opened in 1902 and the Neal Institutes which opened in 1909 used a form of aversion treatment and advertised themselves as three-day liquor cures. Competition between the gold cures and the three-day liquor cures in the first two decades of the 20th century was fierce and intense. Then, as the United States entered World War One in 1917, the demand for addiction treatment suddenly dried up for a variety of reasons, and the majority of these proprietary cure institutes had shut down before the enactment of Prohibition in 1920, although the parent Keeley Institute in Dwight remained in operation until 1966. This book contains the never-before-told tale of how these proprietary treatment institutes grew into a huge industry, flourished, then finally faded away as the United States entered World War One. Part One of this book covers the Keeley Institutes, Dipsocura, the Bedal Institutes, the McKanna liquor cure, the Wherrell gold cure, and the Hagey Cure. Part Two of this book covers the Morrell Cure, the National Bichloride of Gold Institutes, the Oppenheimer Institutes, the Tyson Vegetable Cure, the Willow Bark Institutes, the Telfair Sanitarium, the Connelley Cure, the Murray Institutes, the Gatlin Institutes, the Neal Institutes, the S. B. Collins Cure, and the D'Unger Cure. Part Two also contains appendices discussing strychnine, belladonna alkaloids, "jag cure" laws, and more.
In this brilliantly conceived and written biography, Pulitzer Prize–winning Kenneth Silverman gives us the long and amazing life of the man eulogized by the New York Herald in 1872 as “perhaps the most illustrious American of his age.” Silverman presents Samuel Morse in all his complexity. There is the gifted and prolific painter (more than three hundred portraits and larger historical canvases) and pioneer photographer, who gave the first lectures on art in America, became the first Professor of Fine Arts at an American college (New York University), and founded the National Academy of Design. There is the republican idealist, prominent in antebellum politics, who ran for Congress and for mayor of New York. But most important, there is the inventor of the American electromagnetic telegraph, which earned Morse the name Lightning Man and brought him the fame he sought. In these pages, we witness the evolution of the great invention from its inception as an idea to its introduction to the world—an event that astonished Morse’s contemporaries and was considered the supreme expression of the country’s inventive genius. We see how it transformed commerce, journalism, transportation, military affairs, diplomacy, and the very shape of daily life, ushering in the modern era of communication. But we discover as well that Morse viewed his existence as accursed rather than illustrious, his every achievement seeming to end in loss and defeat: his most ambitious canvases went unsold; his beloved republic imploded into civil war, making it unlivable for him; and the commercial success of the telegraph engulfed him in lawsuits challenging the originality and ownership of his invention. Lightning Man is the first biography of Samuel F. B. Morse in sixty years. It is a revelation of the life of a fascinating and profoundly troubled American genius.
This book covers the history of for-profit institutions for the treatment of drug and alcohol habits which were established prior to the Repeal of Prohibition, as well as a number of miscellaneous entities such as mail-order opium cures. These include the famous Charles B. Towns Hospital and its notorious belladonna cure. Although many people know that Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson was treated with the belladonna cure at the Charles B. Towns Hospital, few are aware that Towns was an insurance salesman with an eighth grade education and no medical training who lied about inventing an addiction cure that he got from someone else, that Towns had also been a stockbroker who was convicted of grand larceny after embezzling money for his clients, and that Towns only decided to make a buck in the addiction cure business after being banned from stock trading. Furthermore, in the 1910s, Towns proposed that state government should force drug addicts to take his cure against their wills, and that death camps should be built to exterminate anyone who relapsed after taking his cure. This book also tells the story of Harry Hubbell Kane, who founded the De Quincey Home for the cure of drug addicts in 1881. After the De Quincey Home failed in 1883, Kane invented and marketed a notorious patent medicine named Scotch Oats Essence. Scotch Oats Essence was comprised of one third alcohol and each ounce contained about a half a grain of morphine. It seems that Kane had decided that if he couldn't make money by curing drug addicts, he could make a lot of money by creating them. These are only two of hundreds of addiction treatment facilities which existed prior to the founding of AA: some good, some bad, and some indifferent. These stories and many more can be found in this book.
In From Iuka to Vicksburg, 1862–1863, Grant leads the Union army to victory. The story of western operations testifies to Grant’s effectiveness. He and his soldiers move through Kentucky, and Tennessee and down the Mississippi Valley during a difficult winter. Ahead is Vicksburg and a turning point in the Civil War. One critic called this volume “probably the most thoroughly documented study of Grant in the West.”
For decades Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s marriage has been characterized as discordant and tumultuous. In Abraham and Mary Lincoln, author Kenneth J. Winkle goes beyond the common image of the couple, illustrating that although the waters of the Lincoln household were far from calm, the Lincolns were above all a house united. Calling upon their own words and the reminiscences of family members and acquaintances, Winkle traces the Lincolns from their starkly contrasting childhoods, through their courtship and rise to power, to their years in the White House during the Civil War, ultimately revealing a dynamic love story set against the backdrop of the greatest peril the nation has ever seen. When the awkward but ambitious Lincoln landed Mary Todd, people were surprised by their seeming incompatibility. Lincoln, lacking in formal education and social graces, came from the world of hardscrabble farmers on the American frontier. Mary, by contrast, received years of schooling and came from an established, wealthy, slave-owning family. Yet despite the social gulf between them, these two formidable personalities forged a bond that proved unshakable during the years to come. Mary provided Lincoln with the perfect partner in ambition—one with connections, political instincts, and polish. For Mary, Lincoln was her “diamond in the rough,” a man whose ungainly appearance and background belied a political acumen to match her own. While each played their role in the marriage perfectly— Lincoln doggedly pursuing success and Mary hosting lavish political soirées—their partnership was not without contention. Mary—once described as “the wildcat of her age”—frequently expressed frustration with the limitations placed on her by Victorian social strictures, exhibiting behavior that sometimes led to public friction between the couple. Abraham’s work would at times keep him away from home for weeks, leaving Mary alone in Springfield. The true test of the Lincolns’ dedication to each other began in the White House, as personal tragedy struck their family and civil war erupted on American soil. The couple faced controversy and heartbreak as the death of their young son left Mary grief-stricken and dependent upon séances and spiritualists; as charges of disloyalty hounded the couple regarding Mary’s young sister, a Confederate widow; and as public demands grew strenuous that their son Robert join the war. The loss of all privacy and the constant threat of kidnapping and assassination took its toll on the entire family. Yet until a fateful night in the Ford Theatre in 1865, Abraham and Mary Lincoln stood firmly together—he as commander-in-chief during America’s gravest military crisis, and she as First Lady of a divided country that needed the White House to emerge as a respected symbol of national unity and power. Despite the challenges they faced, the Lincolns’ life together fully embodied the maxim engraved on their wedding bands: love is eternal. Abraham and Mary Lincoln is a testament to the power of a stormy union that held steady through the roughest of seas.
History comes alive! Presented in a high-impact, graphic novel format, The Complete Idiot's Guide® to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated is a visually exciting and easy–to–understand alternative to boring textbooks. Innovative design and lively illustrations transport readers back in time to witness these events and more: • The changing lives of the Native Americans • The abolishment of slavery • The achievement of suffrage • The scandals, wars, and assassinations of the twentieth century • America's famous and infamous historical figures
“The United States does not do nation building,” claimed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld three years ago. Yet what are we to make of the American military bases in Korea? Why do American warships patrol the Somali coastline? And perhaps most significantly, why are fourteen “enduring bases” being built in Iraq? In every major foreign war fought by United States in the last century, the repercussions of the American presence have been felt long after the last Marine has left. Kenneth J. Hagan and Ian J. Bickerton argue here that, despite adamant protests from the military and government alike, nation building and occupation are indeed hallmarks—and unintended consequences—of American warmaking. In this timely, groundbreaking study, the authors examine ten major wars fought by the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the ongoing Iraq War, and analyze the conflicts’ unintended consequences. These unexpected outcomes, Unintended Consequences persuasively demonstrates, stemmed from ill-informed decisions made at critical junctures and the surprisingly similar crises that emerged at the end of formal fighting. As a result, war did not end with treaties or withdrawn troops. Instead, time after time, the United States became inextricably involved in the issues of the defeated country, committing itself to the chaotic aftermath that often completely subverted the intended purposes of war. Stunningly, Unintended Consequences contends that the vast majority of wars launched by the United States were unnecessary, avoidable, and catastrophically unpredictable. In a stark challenge to accepted scholarship, the authors show that the wars’ unintended consequences far outweighed the initial calculated goals, and thus forced cataclysmic shifts in American domestic and foreign policy. A must-read for anyone concerned with the past, present, or future of American defense, Unintended Consequences offers a provocative perspective on the current predicament in Iraq and the conflicts sure to loom ahead of us.
Finalist for the Lincoln Prize! Traditional histories of the Civil War describe the conflict as a war between North and South. Kenneth W. Noe suggests it should instead be understood as a war between the North, the South, and the weather. In The Howling Storm, Noe retells the history of the conflagration with a focus on the ways in which weather and climate shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns. He further contends that events such as floods and droughts affecting the Confederate home front constricted soldiers’ food supply, lowered morale, and undercut the government’s efforts to boost nationalist sentiment. By contrast, the superior equipment and open supply lines enjoyed by Union soldiers enabled them to cope successfully with the South’s extreme conditions and, ultimately, secure victory in 1865. Climate conditions during the war proved unusual, as irregular phenomena such as El Niño, La Niña, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean disrupted weather patterns across southern states. Taking into account these meteorological events, Noe rethinks conventional explanations of battlefield victories and losses, compelling historians to reconsider long-held conclusions about the war. Unlike past studies that fault inflation, taxation, and logistical problems for the Confederate defeat, his work considers how soldiers and civilians dealt with floods and droughts that beset areas of the South in 1862, 1863, and 1864. In doing so, he addresses the foundational causes that forced Richmond to make difficult and sometimes disastrous decisions when prioritizing the feeding of the home front or the front lines. The Howling Storm stands as the first comprehensive examination of weather and climate during the Civil War. Its approach, coverage, and conclusions are certain to reshape the field of Civil War studies.
The stirring history of a president and a capital city on the front lines of war and freedom. In the late 1840s, Representative Abraham Lincoln resided at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse on Capitol Hill. Known as Abolition House, Mrs. Sprigg’s hosted lively dinner-table debates of antislavery politics by the congressional boarders. The unusually rapid turnover in the enslaved staff suggested that there were frequent escapes north to freedom from Abolition House, likely a cog in the underground railroad. These early years in Washington proved formative for Lincoln. In 1861, now in the White House, Lincoln could gaze out his office window and see the Confederate flag flying across the Potomac. Washington, DC, sat on the front lines of the Civil War. Vulnerable and insecure, the capital was rife with Confederate sympathizers. On the crossroads of slavery and freedom, the city was a refuge for thousands of contraband and fugitive slaves. The Lincoln administration took strict measures to tighten security and established camps to provide food, shelter, and medical care for contrabands. In 1863, a Freedman’s Village rose on the grounds of the Lee estate, where the Confederate flag once flew. The president and Mrs. Lincoln personally comforted the wounded troops who flooded wartime Washington. In 1862, Lincoln spent July 4 riding in a train of ambulances carrying casualties from the Peninsula Campaign to Washington hospitals. He saluted the “One-Legged Brigade” assembled outside the White House as “orators,” their wounds eloquent expressions of sacrifice and dedication. The administration built more than one hundred military hospitals to care for Union casualties. These are among the unforgettable scenes in Lincoln’s Citadel, a fresh, absorbing narrative history of Lincoln’s leadership in Civil War Washington. Here is the vivid story of how the Lincoln administration met the immense challenges the war posed to the city, transforming a vulnerable capital into a bastion for the Union.
In The Root of All Evil Kenneth Moore Startup looks to the sermons and writings of Protestant clergy to better understand the driving forces behind the antebellum southern economy. During this period of unprecedented American expansion, he finds, clerics of all denominations on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line displayed a remarkable unanimity in their condemnation of mammonism--the open pursuit of wealth, conspicuous consumption, lack of charity, and contempt of honest labor. This trend, the clergy argued, was diverting both North and South from their best interests and would ultimately destroy the nation. The Root of All Evil represents a challenge to any notion of an economically disinterested southern mind and culture by revealing an Old South in line ideologically with the mainstream of nineteenth-century capitalism, and also provides useful insights into southern religious life.
The relationship between war and religion is nothing new. For millennia, humankind has waged war over religion and derived religion from war. It is not surprising, then, that military leadership and religious conviction frequently coincide. This study documents the long tradition of the religious warrior in Western history and literature, with a special focus on Civil War general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. It also provides a general survey of the religious antecedents of Jackson and other more modern American military heroes. The book begins with an introduction to the Confederate general, largely from the perspective of those who lived with and served under him, whose testimonies attest to his courage, initiative, innate tactical talent, deep religious faith, and eccentric personal habits. The author analyzes the extent to which Jackson's national zeal has elevated him to the status of a religious martyr, remembered today within an epic frame of sainthood and heroism. Concise comparisons are drawn between Jackson and his Old World predecessors, including Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox and Oliver Cromwell. Similar associations are made between Jackson and such Civil War contemporaries as William Dorsey Pender and Oliver Otis Howard. A chapter addressing the representation of "Stonewall" in modern Civil War literature and film, particularly in the novel and subsequent motion picture Gods and Generals, provides an insightful juxtaposition of Jackson's status among the "gods" of the Civil War and his own reverence for the God of his Presbyterian faith.
Reviews research on the origins of handedness in the context of Darwin's theory of evolution and considers the development of functional asymmetry of the brain for hand usage and speech as a result of plasticity of the nervous system.
The evolution of the United States from a late-18th century coalition of rebel British colonies to a 21st century global superpower was shaped by several forces. As the nation expanded its boundaries after the Treaty of Paris confirmed independence from Great Britain in 1783, it acquired a rich variety of resources – coal, fertile soils, forests, iron ore, oil, precious metals, space, and varied climates as well as extensive tracts of territory. Technological innovations, such as the cotton gin and steam power, enabled entrepreneurs to exploit those resources and create wealth. Federal and state legislators provided environments in which the economy could flourish, and military strategists kept the country safe from external attack. Diplomats negotiated commercial agreements with foreign governments and cultivated multinational alliances that strengthened freedoms. Through its focus on the people and places that shaped the country’s economic and political development and its detailed accounts of the processes that enabled the U.S. to expand across the continent Historical Dictionary of the United States contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 400 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the United States.
Insiders' Guide to North Carolina's Mountains is the essential source for in-depth travel and relocation information to the region that includes Asheville, Biltmore Estate, Cherokee, Blue Ridge Parkway, and other nearby environs. Written by a local (and true insider), this guide offers a personal and practical perspective of the area and its surrounding environs.
We hold these truths to be self evident_' An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Roots of Racism and Slavery in America delves into the philosophical, historical, socio/cultural and political evolution of racism and slavery in America. The premise of this work is that racism and slavery in America are the result of an unintentional historical intertwining of various Western philosophical, religious, cultural, social, economic, and political strands of thought that date back to the Classical Era. These strands have become tangled in a Gordian knot, which can only be unraveled through the bold application of a variety of multidisciplinary tools. By doing so, this book is intended help the reader understand how the United States, a nation that claims 'all men are created equal,' could be responsible for slavery and the intractable threads of racism and inequality that have become woven into its cultural the fabric.
This study aims to provide an overview and a close-up of the Chinese academic community that specialises in American Studies. The first section of the study describes the structure of the community; the second part discusses its scholarship. The objectives of this study are to identify where and who the Americanists are, and to examine the images of the United States they present. This data comes from both American and Chinese sources. In the early 80s, the USIA commissioned a number of American scholars to travel to China and make reports on the state of American Studies in the disciplines of economics, history, law and government, and literature.
Combines narrative history and firsthand Mormon accounts that cast light on the presence of Latter-day Saints in California during the Gold Rush in the middle 1840s. Reprint.
Kenneth J. Hagan pulls the curtain back for American civilians as he shares a sweeping account of the country’s naval experience. Including the wooden Continental Navy to contemporary projections of the service’s high-tech mission in the next century, The People’s Navy shares the complete making and growth of America’s sea power. “…provides a clear, interesting, and through-provoking introduction to the history of the American sea power and should be read by all historians of the United States… This book will provide standard interpretation for a long time to come.” – Reviews in American History
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