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Having banished eastern Native peoples to lands west of the Mississippi, President Andrew Jackson’s government by 1833 needed a new type of soldier to keep displaced Indians from returning home. And so the 1st Dragoons came into being. Will and John Gorenfeld tell their story—an epic of exploration, conquest, and diplomacy from the outposts of western history—in this book-length treatment of the force that became the U.S. Cavalry. The 1st Dragoons represented a new regiment of horsemen that drew on the combined skills and clashing visions of two types of leaders: old Indian killers and backwoodsmen such as loudmouth miner Henry Dodge; and straight-arrow battlefield veterans such as Ste...
The family and descendants of Col. James Martin (1742-1834) of Stokes County, North Carolina and his sister Martha [Martin] Rogers (1744-1825) of Rockingham County, North Carolina and Williamson & Montgomery Counties, Tennessee and the allied families of Henderson, Searcy, Hunter, Bradley, Alexander, Hughes, Dearing and Scales.
Rising from a Missouri boyhood and meager prospecting success to owning the most productive copper, silver, and gold mines in the world and being elected a United States senator, George Hearst (1820–91) spent decades veering between the heights of prosperity and the depths of financial ruin. In George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age, Matthew Bernstein captures Hearst’s ascent, casting light on his actions during the Civil War, his tempestuous marriage to his cousin Phoebe, his role as disciplinarian and doting father to future media magnate William Randolph Hearst, and his devious methods of building the greatest mining empire in the West. Whether driving a pack of mules laden with silver from the Comstock Lode to San Francisco, bribing jurors in Pioche and Deadwood, or unearthing bonanzas in Utah and Montana Territories, Hearst’s cunning, energy, and industry were always evident, along with occasional glimmers of the villainy ascribed to him in the television series Deadwood. In this first full-length biography, George Hearst emerges in all his human dimensions and historical significance—an ambitious, complex, flawed, and quintessentially American character.
The United States Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775–1903 is the story of how the American military—and more particularly the regular army—has played a vital role in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States that extended beyond the battlefield. Repeatedly, Americans used the army not only to secure their expanding empire and fight their enemies, but to shape their nation and their vision of who they were, often in ways not directly associated with shooting wars or combat. That the regular army served as nation-builders is ironic, given the officer corps’ obsession with a warrior ethic and the deep-seated disdain for a standing army tha...
The Trade and Intercourse Acts passed by Congress between 1796 and 1834 set up a system for individuals to receive monetary compensation from the federal government for property stolen or destroyed by American Indians. By the end of the Mexican-American War, both Anglo-Americans and Nuevomexicanos became experts in exploiting this system—and in using the army to collect on their often-fraudulent claims. As Gregory F. Michno reveals in Depredation and Deceit, their combined efforts created a precarious mix of false accusations, public greed, and fabricated fear that directly led to new wars in the American Southwest between 1849 and 1855. Tasked with responding to white settlers’ depredat...
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Confederate brigadier general John Adams refused to leave his men despite his own critical injuries and died at the Battle of Franklin. Until recently, his service was rarely acknowledged. During his remarkable military career, he traversed the country from Tennessee to New York, Mexico to Maryland and then to California. Adams trained and rode alongside some of the most celebrated commanders of the Confederate army, but his greatest feat remains his unwavering devotion to his men and the Confederate cause in his home state of Tennessee. Bryan W. Lane follows Adams's rise in the military ranks until his inevitable fall at one of the most important battles of the Civil War.
Battles and massacres are intimate affairs for combatants and others involved, their physical and emotional violence often stemming from fervor and fear. Although mass killing characterizes both battles and massacres, the two are profoundly different. Battles take place between armed forces; massacres are one-sided events in which the dead are mostly innocent victims. Yet the fog of war shrouds both massacres and battles in a functional amnesia. Participants remember what exactly happened during such a violent encounter only imperfectly, and later clarity cannot always rectify accounts thus rendered. Even naming the events as battles or massacres already imposes an interpretive framework upo...
Drawing on author-editor William P. MacKinnon's half-century of research and a wealth of carefully selected new material, At Sword's Point presents the first full history of the conflict through the voices of participants-leaders, soldiers, and civilians from both sides. MacKinnon's lively narrative, continued in this second volume, links and explains these firsthand accounts to produce the most detailed, in-depth, and balanced view of the war to date.
Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" has been designated as the official state song and performed at the Kentucky Derby for decades. In light of the ongoing social justice movement to end racial inequality, many have questioned whether the song should be played at public events, given its inaccurate depiction of slavery in the state. In Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State, editor Gerald L. Smith presents a collection of powerful essays that uncover the long-forgotten stories of pain, protest, and perseverance of African Americans in Kentucky. Using the song and the museum site of My Old Kentucky Home as a central motif, the chapters move beyond historical myths to bring into sharpe...