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In the Shenandoah Valley and Peninsula Campaigns of 1862, Union and Confederate soldiers faced unfamiliar and harsh environmental conditions--strange terrain, tainted water, swarms of flies and mosquitoes, interminable rain and snow storms, and oppressive
Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia
To many antebellum Americans, Appalachia was a frightening wilderness of lawlessness, peril, robbers, and hidden dangers. The extensive media coverage of horse stealing and scalping raids profiled the regionÕs residents as intrinsically violent. After the Civil War, this characterization continued to permeate perceptions of the area and news of the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys, as well as the bloodshed associated with the coal labor strikes, cemented AppalachiaÕs violent reputation. Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia provides an in-depth historical analysis of hostility in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Editor Bruce...
An unusual collection of Civil War essays as seen through the lens of noted environmental scholars, this book's provocative historical commentary explores how nature--disease, climate, flora and fauna, etc.--affected the war and how the war shaped Americans' perceptions, understanding, and use of nature.
“[A] stirring narrative of the common soldier’s experiences on the southern end of the battlefield on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg.” —Civil War News “Stand to It and Give Them Hell” chronicles the Gettysburg fighting from Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, through the letters, memoirs, diaries, and postwar recollections of the men from both armies who struggled to control that “hallowed ground.” John Michael Priest, dubbed the “Ernie Pyle” of the Civil War soldier by legendary historian Edwin C. Bearss, wrote this book to help readers understand and experience, as closely as possible through the written word, the stress and terror of that fate...
Between the end of May and the beginning of August 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee oversaw the transition between the Overland campaign—a remarkable saga of maneuvering and brutal combat—and what became a grueling siege of Petersburg that many months later compelled Confederates to abandon Richmond. Although many historians have marked Grant's crossing of the James River on June 12–15 as the close of the Overland campaign, this volume interprets the fighting from Cold Harbor on June 1–3 through the battle of the Crater on July 30 as the last phase of an operation that could have ended without a prolonged siege. The contributors assess the campaign from a variet...
In this first book-length environmental history of the American Civil War, Lisa M. Brady argues that ideas about nature and the environment were central to the development and success of Union military strategy. From the start of the war, both sides had to contend with forces of nature, even as they battled one another. Northern soldiers encountered unfamiliar landscapes in the South that suggested, to them, an uncivilized society's failure to control nature. Under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan, the Union army increasingly targeted southern environments as the war dragged on. Whether digging canals, shooting livestock, or dramatically attem...
This set of essays by twenty-seven historians of the Civil War describes a wide array of the war's photographs, examining them in unfamiliar ways.
This Civil War history provides an in-depth look at the impact and experiences of African American men fighting in the Union Army. After President Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, many enslaved people in the Confederate south made the perilous journey north—then put their lives at risk again by joining the Union army. These U.S. Colored Troops, as the War Department designated most black units, performed a variety of duties, fought in significant battles, and played a vital part in winning the Civil War. And yet white civilian and military authorities often regarded the African American soldiers with contempt. In Soldiering for Freedom, historians John...
Highlighting recent and new directions in contemporary research in the field, So Conceived and So Dedicated offers a complete and updated picture of intellectual life in the Civil War–era Union. Compiling essays from both established and young historians, this volume addresses the role intellectuals played in framing the conflict and implementing their vision of a victorious Union. Broadly defining “intellectuals” to encompass doctors, lawyers, sketch artists, college professors, health reformers, and religious leaders, the essays address how these thinkers disseminated their ideas, sometimes using commercial or popular venues and organizations to implement what they believed. Offering...