Updated 12 August 2010
For an explanation of the various terms and abbreviations used below, visit the Rare Book Section.
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(18th Missouri) Anders, Leslie. THE EIGHTEENTH MISSOURI. Indianapolis: (1968). 1st edition, 404p., frontispiece, illustrations.
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The 18th defended the Hornets Nest at Shiloh, served at Corinth, and went with Sherman from Atlanta to the sea. A well-constructed study, written at a time when regimentals by trained historians were uncommon.
Very good; dust jacket. |
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(120th Illinois) Blackman, W. S. THE BOY OF BATTLE FORD AND THE MAN. Marion, IL: 1906. 1st edition, 192p., illustrations (ports.), faux ¾ leather using cloth, marbled boards, [D339].
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This remarkable memoir chronicles the life of a southern Illinois minister who served during the Civil War in the 120th Illinois regiment. As such Blackman writes revealing material about garrison life in Memphis, including much of sin as well as salvation. In June of 1864 the 120th Illinois participated in the expedition against General Forrest that ended in the disastrous defeat at Brice’s Crossroads. Blackman’s detailed account is a crucial primary source in understanding that campaign.
Printed on pulp paper with usual toning, but with no loss to text; gilt spine lettering rubbed off; light sun; light fox; light wear at extremities; else very good. |
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Cilella, Jr., Salvatore. Upton ’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the Civil War. Lawrence, KS: 2009. 1st edition, 592p., illustrations.
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From Cooperstown and its surrounding region, upstate New Yorkers responded to President Lincoln’s call to service by volunteering in droves to defend an imperiled Union. Drawn from the farms and towns of Otsego and Herkimer counties, the 121st New York State Volunteer Infantry Regiment served with the VI Corps in the Army of the Potomac throughout the Civil War. In the first comprehensive history of the regiment in nearly ninety years, Salvatore Cilella chronicles the epic story of this heroic “band of brothers.”
Led for much of the war by the legendary Emory Upton, the 121st deployed nearly 1,900 men into battle, participated in 25 major engagements, from Antietam to Sailor’s Creek, won six Medals of Honor, took several battle flags, and led the charge at Spotsylvania. Cilella now tells their story, viewing the war through upstate New Yorkers’ eyes not only to depict three grueling years of fighting but also to reveal their distinctive attitudes regarding slavery, war goals, politics, and the families they left behind. Cilella mines primary sources from more than 120 soldiers to weave a compelling narrative that traces the 121st from enlistment through the horrors of battle and back to civilian life. Their words vividly recount the experience of combat, but also rail against Washington bureaucrats and commanding generals. Many were upset with those who suggested that Emancipation was the war’s primary cause, declaring their fight to be for the Union rather than freed slaves, but they also scorned any Northerners who sympathized with the South.
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Jones, Paul. THE IRISH BRIGADE. Washington: 1969. 1st edition, 255p., illustrations, maps. |
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Excellent modern account of the famed Irish Brigade of the Army of the Potomac. Jones provides good biographical material on General Thomas F. Meagher.
Very good; dust jacket. |
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(2nd Arkansas Mounted Rifles) Leeper, Wesley T. REBELS VALIANT: SECOND ARKANSAS MOUNTED RIFLES (DISMOUNTED). Little Rock: (1964). 1st edition, 328p., portrait, [D106A]. |
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This regiment was raised early in the war and participated, as part of Evander McNair’s Brigade, in many major Western battles. Battle honors include Wilson’s Creek, Pea Ridge, Bragg’s Kentucky Campaign, Chickamauga, etc. A well-researched history, containing rosters and casualty lists.
Very good; dust jacket. |
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Lowe, Richard, ed. A TEXAS CAVALRY OFFICER’S CIVIL WAR: THE DIARY AND LETTERS OF JAMES C. BATES. Baton Rogue: 1999. 1st edition, 366p., maps, illustrations. |
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This revealing diary is edited by one of the authorities on Texas troops in the trans-Mississippi. Bates, however, belonged to the 9th Texas Cavalry, so he spent most of the war participating in the major campaigns of the Confederacy’s western armies. Bates was at Pea Ridge, Corinth, Holly Springs, and Vicksburg.
“More than a mere collection of letters, this is a veritable history of the colorful career of the 9th Texas Cavalry.” -- Steven Woodworth.
As new; dust jacket. |
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(5th New Hampshire) Pride, Mike, and Travis, Mike. MY BRAVE BOYS: TO WAR WITH COLONEL CROSS AND THE FIGHTING FIFTH. Hanover: (2001). 1st edition, 323p., illustrations, maps.
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Over a thousand infantry regiments fought in Union armies during the Civil War. None suffered more deaths in battle than the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers. At the center of this regiment's searing experience is Colonel Edward Cross, a journalist and adventurer who infused the Fifth with his formidable personality. The two authors spent eight years digging for the story of Cross and his men in letters, diaries, memoirs, official records, and newspaper accounts. The result is a military history unfolded in human terms, as the men themselves experienced it.
"No Union regiment is more deserving of a freshly researched history than the Fifth New Hampshire. In My Brave Boys the 'Fighting Fifth' and its remarkable colonel, Edward E. Cross, finally get their due." - Stephen W. Sears.
As new; dust jacket. |
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(9th New Jersey) REPORT OF THE STATE COMMISSION FOR ERECTION OF MONUMENT TO NINTH NEW JERSEY VOLUNTEERS AT NEW BERNE, NORTH CAROLINA. (Philadelphia): 1905. 1st edition, 112p., illustrations, [D41]. |
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The 9th New Jersey served in North Carolina before moving to Virginia to fight in the campaigns for Petersburg and Richmond. The handsome monument in New Berne was dedicated in 1905, and this report includes patriotic speeches, banquet proceedings, and lists of the regiment’s dead buried in New Berne. A handsome memento of some Jersey men’s memory of the war.
Front hinge starting; light stain on boards; scratches on rear boards; light chipping of extremities; else very good. |
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Swan, James B. Chicago’s Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War. Carbondale, IL: 2009. 1st edition, 320p., illustrations.
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Extensively documented and richly detailed, Chicago’s Irish Legion tells the compelling story of Chicago’s 90th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, the only Irish regiment in General Sherman’s XV Corps.
Swan’s sweeping history of this singular regiment and its pivotal role in the Western Theater of the Civil War draws heavily from primary documents and first-person observations, giving readers an intimate glimpse into the trials and triumphs of ethnic soldiers during the most deadly war in American history. Composed mainly of foreign-born recruits, the volunteers proved to be instrumental in various battles and sieges, including the marches to the sea and through the Carolinas, suffering great casualties and providing indispensable support for the Union.
With a meticulous eye for accuracy, Swan traces the remarkable journey of these unique soldiers from their regiment’s inception and first military engagement in 1862 to their disbandment and participation in the Grand Review of General William T. Sherman’s army in 1865.
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(8th Michigan Cavalry) Wells, James M. “WITH TOUCH OF ELBOW;” OR, DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR, A THRILLING NARRATIVE OF ADVENTURE ON LAND AND SEA… Philadelphia: 1909. 1st edition, 362p., illustrations [D-42A].
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Usual toning; light wear of extremities; else very good. Owner’s inscription by William Russell, apparently a veteran of Company L.
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(57th Massachusetts) Wilkinson, Warren. MOTHER, MAY YOU NEVER SEE THE SIGHTS I HAVE SEEN. New York: (1990). 1st edition, 665p., frontispiece, illustrations, maps, maps on end pages. |
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A wonderful modern regimental. Wilkinson managed to capture the tragic service of the 57th Massachusetts not only in gripping narrative, but also in meticulous research including service records of every member of the regiment and company-level casualty abstracts of each battle. Though still readily available in paperback, first editions are not on many bookshelves.
Very good; dust jacket. |
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(15th Pennsylvania Cavalry) Wilson, Suzanne Colten. COLUMN SOUTH WITH THE FIFTEENTH PENNSYLVANIA CAVALRY: FROM ANTIETAM TO THE CAPTURE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. Flagstaff: 1960. 1st edition, 389(25)p., frontispiece, illustrations, folding maps.
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Based on the diaries of Matthias Baldwin Colten and William Francis Colten, this fine compilation presents a history of a well-traveled cavalry regiment of the Army of the Cumberland. The Fifteenth saw action at Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and the Atlanta and Nashville campaigns. The Coltens kept detailed diaries; many more subjects than the weather are addressed.
Four folding maps detail the travels of the brothers and their regiment. Very good; dust jacket. |
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Spotts, David L. CAMPAIGNING WITH CUSTER AND THE NINETEENTH KANSAS VOLUNTEER CAVALRY ON THE WASHITA CAMPAIGN, 1868-'69. Edited and Arranged by E.A. Brininstool. Los Angeles: 1928. 1st edition, 215p., frontispiece, plates, map. |
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A personalized account, which includes the roster of the title regiment. "Of 800 copies printed all but about 300 burned." - Howes S-843. Luther High Spot #20.
Light water damage and 1 tape-repaired page; else very good, bright, tight; with scarce dust jacket (tape-repaired) |
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(Texas) Polley, J.B. HOOD’S TEXAS BRIGADE: ITS MARCHES, ITS BATTLES, ITS ACHIEVEMENTS. New York and Washington: Neale, 1910. 1st edition, 347p., frontispiece, plates. |
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Extremely scarce Neale title, written by a sergeant of the title brigade, with many recollections by other veterans. Consisting of the 1st, 4th and 5th Texas Infantry (along with the 3rd Arkansas), the Texas Brigade was one of the most famous units of the Army of Northern Virginia, distinguishing itself on the Peninsula and at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and the Wilderness. Includes muster rolls of the Texas regiments, photographs and biographical sketches of some of the men, and the roll of brigade of survivors who surrendered at Appomattox. Polley produced a lively and complete history of this storied brigade. One of the most notable Confederate unit histories in its scarce and collectable first edition.
[Howes P-465, Krick #401, Eicher #1047] E Lightly soiled boards and spine; shaken hinges; light foxing; front end pages & title page; else very good with top edge gilt. |
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(93rd Illinois) Trimble, H.M., ed. HISTORY OF THE NINETY-THIRD REGIMENT, ILLINOIS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY....Chicago: 1898. 1st edition, frontispiece, illustrations (ports.), folding map, all edges gilt, [D305]. |
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Many statistics and much drama. A detailed story of a regiment from northern Illinois that suffered heavily at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and at Allatoona. Also served throughout the Atlanta campaign and the marches to Savannah and in the Carolinas. Includes roster.
Beautifully rebound in ½ leather with faux raised spines and gilt lettering; marbled boards and end pages; newspaper clipping tipped-in regarding veteran Henry Strong suggests book originally belonged to him; Very nice. |
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The following titles have been featured on Virtual Book Signing.
Please visit the Archive page at Virtual Book Signing to watch the webcasts.
All of These Titles Qualify for our Free Shipping Offer.
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Allardice, Bruce S. CONFEDERATE COLONELS: A BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER. Columbia: 2008. 1st edition, 448p., illustrations.
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While several books have dealt with the Confederacy's generals, this is the first comprehensive study of its colonels.
Bruce S. Allardice has undertaken exhaustive research to uncover a wealth of facts not previously available and to fill in many gaps in previous scholarship on the 1,583 men who achieved the rank of full colonel by the end of their careers. He highlights such notable figures as John S. Mosby, the "Grey Ghost," and George Smith Patton, great-grandfather of WWII general George S. Patton, and also provides statistics on such matters as states of origin, age, and casualties. This single-volume compendium sheds new light on these interesting and important military figures and features more information than can be found in similar references. Confederate Colonels belongs at the side of every Civil War historian or buff, whether as a research tool or as a touchstone for other readings. Confederate Colonels belongs at the side of every Civil War historian or buff, whether as a research tool or as a touchstone for other readings.
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Arnold, Peri. REMAKING THE PRESIDENCY: ROOSEVELT, TAFT AND WILSON 1901-1916. Lawrence. 270p., 1st ed.
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This is the first comparative study of the three Progressive Era presidents, examining the context in which they served, the evolving institutional role of the presidency, and the personal characteristics of each man. Arnold explains why Roosevelt and Wilson pursued activist roles, how they gained the means for effective leadership in a role that had not previously supported it, and how each of the three negotiated the choppy crosscurrents of changing institutions and politics with entirely different outcomes.
Arnold delineates the American political scene at the turn of the twentieth century, one characterized by a weakening of party organizations, the rise of interest groups and print media, and increasing demands for reform. He shows how the Progressive Era presidents marked a transition from the nineteenth century’s checks and balances to the twentieth’s expansive presidential role, even though demands for executive leadership were at odds with the presidency’s means to take independent action.
Each of these presidents was uniquely challenged to experiment with the office’s new potential for political independence from party and Congress, and Arnold explains how each had to justify their authority for such experimentation. He also shows how their actions were reflected in specific policy case studies: the Northern Trust and naval modernization under Roosevelt, tariff reform and the Pinchot/Ballinger debate over conservation under Taft, and the Federal Reserve and Federal Trade Commission under Wilson.
Ultimately, Arnold shows how the period’s ferment affected both the presidency and its incumbents and how they in turn affected progressive politics. More important, he helps us better understand two presidents who continue to inspire politicians of differing stripes and relates their leadership styles to the modern development of the presidency.
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Bearss, Edwin C. RECEDING TIDE: VICKSBURG AND GETTYSBURG THE BATTLES THAT CHANGED THE CIVIL WAR. New York, (2010). 1st ed., 40p., dj, illus, maps.
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It is a poignant coincidence in American history that on Independence Day, 1863, not one but two pivotal battles ended in Union victory, marked the high tide of Confederate military fortune, and ultimately doomed the South's effort at secession. But on July 4, 1863, after months of siege, Ulysses Grant's Union army finally took Vicksburg and opened the Mississippi River.
On the very same day, Robert E. Lee was in Pennsylvania, parrying the threat to Vicksburg with a daring push north to Gettysburg. For two days the battle had raged; on the next, July 3, 1863, Pickett's Charge was thrown back, a magnificently brave but fruitless assault, and the fate of the Confederacy was sealed, though nearly two more years of bitter fighting remained until the war came to an end.
In Receding Tide, Edwin Cole Bearss draws from his popular tours to chronicle these two widely separated but simultaneous clashes and their dramatic conclusion. As the recognized expert on both Vicksburg and Gettysburg, Bearss tells the fascinating story of this single momentous day in our country's history, offering his readers narratives, maps, illustrations, characteristic wit, dramatic new insights and unerringly intimate knowledge of terrain, tactics, and the colorful personalities of America's citizen soldiers, Northern and Southern alike. |
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Berry, Dr. Stephen. HOUSE OF ABRAHAM: LINCOLN AND THE TODDS, A FAMILY DIVIDED BY WAR. New York (2007) 1st ed., 272 pages, illus, d.j.
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This important book examines the divided fortunes of the family that was closer to Abraham Lincoln than any other, his in-laws, the Todds of Kentucky.
Of the fourteen children born to Robert Smith Todd, six sided with the Union and eight sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Four of the extended family died because of the war, including Mary Todd Lincoln's husband. With brio and rigor, Berry fills a gap in Civil War history, showing how the war changed one family and how that family changed the course of the war. As they debate each other about the issues of the day and comfort each other in the wake of shared tragedy, the Todds become a singular microcosm and metaphor for the country as a whole. Rescuing the Southern Todds from their obscurity, the result is a fast-paced, sobering story, never better told, of the pains of a clan and their significance for American history.
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Boas, Norman. ABRAHAM LINCOLN ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY FAMILY AND ASSOCIATES 1809-1861. Mystic, CT 2009, 1st ed., 518p. dj, , index, photos. With a foreword by Frank J. Williams.
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The author has been a collector of letters, documents, and manuscripts of hundreds of acquaintances, friends, and associates that Abraham Lincoln had during his pre-presidential years, as well as some of Lincoln’s ancestors and distant relatives. To appreciate the full significance of these papers, he consulted diverse sources to create biographical data on this group. His primary interest was not only in collecting papers of historical interest, but to also acquire examples of the handwriting of these individuals. Thus, for those interested in a biographical reference volume that encompasses the lives of the famous and many lesser know associates and acquaintances of Abraham Lincoln, Norman Boas has created this biographical dictionary.
Each entry is illustrated with a signature, a letter or a document signed by each biographee. Included are many scarce examples, some with important historical content. There are many volumes dedicated to the autographs of famous and distinguished Americans, but none that focus on this Lincoln group. If considered in its entirety, this volume is essentially a peripheral biography of Abraham Lincoln. It includes approximately 625 brief biographies and cites hundreds of other individuals.
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Branch, Taylor. THE CLINTON TAPES: WRESTING HISTORY WITH THE PRESIDENT. New YOrk (2009), 1st ed., 707 pages, index, d.j.
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The Clinton Tapes invites readers into private dialogue with a gifted, tormented, resilient President of the United States. Here is what President Clinton thought and felt but could not say in public.
This book rests upon a secret project, initiated by Clinton, to preserve for future historians an unfiltered record of presidential experience. During his eight years in office, between 1993 and 2001, Clinton answered questions and told stories in the White House, usually late at night. His friend Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch recorded seventy-nine of these dialogues to compile a trove of raw information about a presidency as it happened. Clinton drew upon the diary transcripts for his memoir in 2004.
Branch recorded his own detailed recollections immediately after each session, covering not only the subjects discussed but also the look and feel of each evening with the president. The text engages Clinton from many angles. Readers hear candid stories, feel buffeting pressures, and weigh vivid descriptions of the White House settings.
The Clinton Tapes highlights major events of Clinton's two terms, including wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, the failure of health care reform, peace initiatives on three continents, the anti-deficit crusade, and titanic political struggles from Whitewater to American history's second presidential impeachment trial. Along the way, Clinton delivers colorful portraits of countless political figures and world leaders from Nelson Mandela to Pope John Paul II.
These unprecedented White House dialogues will become a staple of presidential scholarship. Branch's masterly account opens a new window on a controversial era and Bill Clinton's eventual place among our chief executives.
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Burlingame, Michael. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE. Baltimore: 2008. 1st ed., 2 vols., 1952p., illus; slipcase. Signed on bookplate.
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In the first multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America’s greatest presidents. Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers, along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce current understanding of America’s sixteenth president.
Volume 1 covers Lincoln’s early childhood, his experiences as a farm boy in Indiana and Illinois, his legal training, and the political ambition that led to a term in Congress in the 1840s.
In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln’s life during his presidency and the Civil War, narrating in fascinating detail the crisis over Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s own battles with relentless office seekers, hostile newspaper editors, and incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also offers new interpretations of Lincoln’s private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd and the untimely deaths of two sons to disease. But through it all—his difficult childhood, his contentious political career, a fratricidal war, and tragic personal losses—Lincoln preserved a keen sense of humor and acquired a psychological maturity that proved to be the North’s most valuable asset in winning the Civil War.
Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, this landmark publication establishes Burlingame as the most assiduous Lincoln biographer of recent memory and brings Lincoln alive to modern readers as never before. (Not included in FREE SHIPPING OFFER.)
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Burton, Orville Vernon. THE AGE OF LINCOLN. New York: 2007. 1st ed., 420p., illus, d.j.
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As the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial simmers, there will be dozens of books with ‘Lincoln’ in the title competing for a place on the front tables at bookstores. We can be grateful if any are half as learned, lively and enriching as Orviille Vernon Burton’s The Age of Lincoln. Within Burton’s creative reframing, the age of Lincoln stretches from the earliest days on America’s expanding borderlands until the final decades of the 19th Century --- the “closing of the frontier”, in the words of historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Naturally, Lincoln earns a leading role in the drama, showcasing his star power during America’s embrace of Manifest Destiny.
A winner of the Chicago Tribune “Literary Prize,” this does for Lincoln what Arthur Schlesinger did in his classic AGE OF JACKSON.
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Campbell, Thomas. FIGHTING SLAVERY IN CHICAGO. Chicago: 2009. 1st ed., 206p., illus. appendix, notes, biblio, index, dj.
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Charles Volney Dyer came to Chicago in 1835 as physician to the garrison at Fort Dearborn. Outraged at the assassination of abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy, in Alton, Illinois, he rallied Chicogoans to form the Chicago chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society. With them, he operated the Illinois station of the Underground Railroad, freeing over 1000 slaves.
Tracing Dyer's activities from 1835 to 1865, Campbell sweeps in the many players and steps in the fight against slavery. Dyer established newspapers, including National Era, which first published Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Western Citizen, which became the FreeWest and later the Chicago Tribune. He founded anti-slavery political parties--the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party and the Illinois Republican Party, which hosted the first Republican Convention in Chicago at which Dyer helped secure the nomination for Lincoln in 1860. Lincoln is rightfully immortalized as the Great Emancipator and this book clearly demonstrates that Chicago abolitionists played a significant role in pushing slavery down the road to its ultimate extinction.
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Carnahan, Burrus. ACT OF JUSTICE: LINCOLN'S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AND THE LAW OF WAR. ( Lexington: 2007). 1 st edition, 202p. |
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When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln pointed to the international laws and usages of war as the legal basis for his proclamation, asserting that the Constitution invested the president “with the law of war in time of war.”
It was unclear whether state and federal courts would agree. Through careful analysis Burrus M. Carnahan concludes that if the courts had decided that the proclamation was not justified, the result would have been the personal legal liability of thousands of Union officers to aggrieved slave owners. This argument offers further support to the notion that Lincoln’s delay in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was an exercise of political prudence, not a personal reluctance to free the slaves; he wrote a truly radical document that treated them as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property.
“No other great presidential document has been so ignorantly maligned as Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The more we learn, through Carnahan, of the nineteenth century’s ‘laws of war’ and Lincoln’s radical prudence in interpreting them, the greater Lincoln stands as a presidential commander-in-chief and an emancipator.” --- Allen C. Guelzo.
As new; dust jacket. Signed. |
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(--) LINCOLN ON TRIAL: SOUTHERN CIVILIANS AND THE LAW OF WAR. Louisville, (2010). 1st ed.., 168p.
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Burrus M. Carnahan conducts an extensive analysis of Lincoln's leadership throughout the Civil War as he struggled to balance his own humanity against the demands of his generals. Carnahan specifically scrutinizes Lincoln's conduct toward Southerners in light of the international legal standards of his time as the president wrestled with issues that included bombardment of cities, collateral damage to civilians, seizure and destruction of property, forced relocation, and the slaughter of hostages.
Carnahan investigates a wide range of historical materials from accounts of the Dahlgren raid to the voices of Southern civilians who bore the brunt of extensive wartime destruction. Through analysis of both historic and modern standards of behavior in times of war, a sobering yet sympathetic portrait of one of America's most revered presidents emerges.
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Cilella, Jr., Salvatore. Upton ’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the Civil War. Lawrence, KS: 2009. 1st edition, 592p., illustrations.
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From Cooperstown and its surrounding region, upstate New Yorkers responded to President Lincoln’s call to service by volunteering in droves to defend an imperiled Union. Drawn from the farms and towns of Otsego and Herkimer counties, the 121st New York State Volunteer Infantry Regiment served with the VI Corps in the Army of the Potomac throughout the Civil War. In the first comprehensive history of the regiment in nearly ninety years, Salvatore Cilella chronicles the epic story of this heroic “band of brothers.”
Led for much of the war by the legendary Emory Upton, the 121st deployed nearly 1,900 men into battle, participated in 25 major engagements, from Antietam to Sailor’s Creek, won six Medals of Honor, took several battle flags, and led the charge at Spotsylvania. Cilella now tells their story, viewing the war through upstate New Yorkers’ eyes not only to depict three grueling years of fighting but also to reveal their distinctive attitudes regarding slavery, war goals, politics, and the families they left behind. Cilella mines primary sources from more than 120 soldiers to weave a compelling narrative that traces the 121st from enlistment through the horrors of battle and back to civilian life. Their words vividly recount the experience of combat, but also rail against Washington bureaucrats and commanding generals. Many were upset with those who suggested that Emancipation was the war’s primary cause, declaring their fight to be for the Union rather than freed slaves, but they also scorned any Northerners who sympathized with the South.
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Clark, Wesley K., with Carhart, Tom. A TIME TO LEAD: FOR DUTY, HONOR AND COUNTRY. ( New York : 2007). 262p. |
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Four-star General Wesley K. Clark became a major figure on the political scene when he ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2003. But this was just one of many exceptional accomplishments of a long and extraordinary career. Here, for the first time, General Clark uses his unique life experience—from his difficult youth in segregated Arkansas where he was raised by his poor, widowed mother; through the horror of Vietnam where he was wounded; the post-war rebuilding of national security and the struggles surrounding the new world order after the Cold War—as a springboard to reveal his vision for America, at home and in the world. General Clark will address issues such as foreign policy, the economy, the environment, education and health care, family, faith, and the American dream. Rich with breathtaking battle scenes, poignant personal anecdote and eye-opening recommendations on the best way forward, General Clark's new book is a tour de force of gripping storytelling and inspiring vision.
Signed bookplate. |
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Clinton, Catherine. MRS. LINCOLN: A LIFE. New York: 2009. later ed., 415p., illus; photos, notes, biblio, index.
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Abraham Lincoln is the most revered president in American history, but the woman at the center of his life, his wife, Mary, has remained a historical enigma. In this definitive, magisterial biography, Catherine Clinton draws on important new research to illuminate the remarkable life of Mary Lincoln, and at a time when the nation was being tested as never before.
Mary Lincoln's story is inextricably tied with the story of America and with her husband's presidency, yet her life is an extraordinary chronicle on its own. Born into an aristocratic Kentucky family, she was an educated, well-connected Southern daughter, and when she married a Springfield lawyer she became a Northern wife—an experience mirrored by thousands of her countrywomen. The Lincolns endured many personal setbacks—including the death of a child and defeats in two U.S. Senate races—along the road to the White House. Mrs. Lincoln herself suffered scorching press attacks, but remained faithful to the Union and her wartime husband. She was also the first presidential wife known as the "First Lady," and it was in this role that she gained her lasting fame. The assassination of her husband haunted her for the rest of her life. Her disintegrating downward spiral resulted in a brief but traumatizing involuntary incarceration in an asylum and exile in Europe during her later years. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America.
Authoritative and utterly engrossing, Mrs. Lincoln is the long-awaited portrait of the woman who so richly contributed to Lincoln's life and legacy.
We have one first edition available with a signed bookplate. $50.00. |
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Cozzens, Peter. SHENANDOAH 1862: STONEWALL JACKSON'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN. Chapel Hill, later ed., 623p., illus, maps, photographs, appendix, notes, biblio, index.
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In the spring of 1862, Federal troops under the command of General George B. McClellan launched what was to be a coordinated, two-pronged attack on Richmond in the hope of taking the Confederate capital and bringing a quick end to the Civil War. The Confederate high command tasked Stonewall Jackson with diverting critical Union resources from this drive, a mission Jackson fulfilled by repeatedly defeating much larger enemy forces. His victories elevated him to near iconic status in both the North and the South and signaled a long war ahead. One of the most intriguing and storied episodes of the Civil War, the Valley Campaign has heretofore only been related from the Confederate point of view. With Shenandoah 1862, Peter Cozzens dramatically and conclusively corrects this shortcoming, giving equal attention to both Union and Confederate perspectives.
Based on a multitude of primary sources, Cozzens's groundbreaking work offers new interpretations of the campaign and the reasons for Jackson's success. Cozzens also demonstrates instances in which the mythology that has come to shroud the campaign has masked errors on Jackson's part. In addition, Shenandoah 1862 provides the first detailed appraisal of Union leadership in the Valley Campaign, with some surprising conclusions.
Moving seamlessly between tactical details and analysis of strategic significance, Cozzens presents the first balanced, comprehensive account of a campaign that has long been romanticized but never fully understood.
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DePastino, Todd , BILL MAUDLIN: A LIFE UP FRONT. New York (2008), later edition., 370p., illus., notes, index. |
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The real war," said Walt Whitman, "will never get in the books." During World War II, the truest glimpse most Americans got of the "real war" came through the flashing black lines of twenty-two-year-old infantry sergeant Bill Mauldin. Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery, and Patton's pledge to "throw his ass in jail" to deliver his wildly popular cartoon, "Up Front," to the pages of Stars and Stripes. "Up Front" featured the wise-cracking Willie and Joe, whose stooped shoulders, mud-soaked uniforms, and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect bore eloquent witness to the world of combat and the men who lived—and died—in it.
This taut, lushly illustrated biography—the first of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin—is illustrated with more than ninety classic Mauldin cartoons and rare photographs. It traces the improbable career and tumultuous private life of a charismatic genius who rose to fame on his motto: "If it's big, hit it."
Contains 92 illustrations. Signed.
For more Bill Mauldin, visit our Prints Paintings and Sculpture Section and Presidential Section.
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Ecelbarger, Gary. THE GREAT COMEBACK: HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN BEAT THE ODDS TO WIN THE 1860 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION. New York: (2008), 1st ed., 304p, dj.
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In the fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln looked to be anything but destined for greatness. Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, Lincoln was wallowing in the depths of despair following his loss to Stephen Douglas in the 1858 senatorial campaign and was taking stock in his life.
The author takes us on a journey with Abraham Lincoln from the last weeks of 1858 until the end of May in 1860, on the road to his unlikely Republication presidential nomination. In tracing Lincoln's steps from city to city, from one public appearance to the next along the campaign trail, we see the future president shape and polish his public persona.
Although he had accounted himself well in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, the man from Springfield, Illinois, he was nevertheless seen as the darkest of dark horses for the highest office in the land. Upon hearing Lincoln speak, one contemporary said, I will not say he reminded me of Satan, but he certainly was the ungodliest figure I had ever seen." The reader sees how this "ungodliest" of figures shrewdly spun his platform to crowds far and wide and, in doing so, became a public celebrity on par with any throughout the land.
This is a story teeming with drama and intrigue about an event that no one could fathom occurring today...yet it absolutely happened in with America seven score and eight years ago, when Lincoln, the man, took his first steps on the way toward becomingAbraham Lincoln, the legendary leader and most respected president of American history.
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Ecelbarger, Gary. THREE DAYS IN THE SHENANDOAH: STONEWALL JACKSON AT FRONT ROYAL AND WINCHESTER . Norman : (2008). 1st edition, 273p., illustrations, maps. |
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Gary Ecelbarger focuses on a very narrow, but crucial aspect of the Valley campaign. Like Peter Cozzens, Ecelbarger approaches his subject from the point of view of a modern military historian, writing with balance, analysis, and criticism that previous generations of Jackson writers were unwilling to provide. This work, rather than competing with Cozzens, provides an indispensible companion to Shenandoah 1862.
As new; dust jacket. Signed. |
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Egnal, Marc. CLASH OF EXTREMES: THE ECONOMIC ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL WAR. New York : (2009). 1st edition, 416p., maps, tables.
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Marc Egnal takes on the reigning orthodoxy that the American Civil War was waged over high moral principles, and contends that economics, more than any other factor, moved the country to war in 1861.
Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Egnal shows that between 1820 and 1850, patterns of trade and production drew the North and South together and allowed sectional leaders to broker a series of compromises. After midcentury, however, all that changed as the rise of the Great Lakes economy reoriented Northern trade along east-west lines. Meanwhile, in the South, soil exhaustion, concerns about the country’s westward expansion, and growing ties between the Upper South and the free states led many cotton planters to contemplate secession. The war that ensued was truly a “clash of extremes.”
Sweeping from the 1820s through Reconstruction and filled with colorful portraits of leading individuals, Clash of Extremes emphasizes economics while giving careful consideration to social conflicts, ideology, and the rise of the antislavery movement. The result is a bold reinterpretation that will challenge the way we think about the Civil War.
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Elliott, Ronald. THROUGH THE EYES OF LINCOLN: A Modern Photographic Journey. Morley, MO. 160p, 1st ed., photos.
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Historian Ron Elliott and award-winning photographer John Snell take the reader on a breathtaking, cross-country journey of the sites and scenery from Abraham Lincoln's rustic birthplace and early homes in Kentucky and Indiana to his military, professional, and political careers in Illinois to Washington, DC and back to his final resting place in Springfield.
Elliott's wit and astute observations on each site's role and significance make the perfect, concise companion to Snell's extraordinary ability to capture on film what we all wish we could see. Scores of historic photos displayed in contrast to today's views coupled with maps, travel directions and recommendations will compel many a reader to load their book, hit the road and experience it for themselves as they are literally "Retracing the Steps of Lincoln ".
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Emerson, Jason. THE MADNESS OF MARY LINCOLN. Carbondale : (2007). 1 st ed., 255p., illus. |
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In 2005, historian Jason Emerson discovered a steamer trunk formerly owned by Robert Todd Lincoln's lawyer and stowed in an attic for forty years. The trunk contained a rare find: twenty-five letters pertaining to Mary Todd Lincoln's life and insanity case, letters assumed long destroyed by the Lincoln family. The Madness of Mary Lincoln is the first examination of Mary Lincoln's mental illness based on the lost letters, and the first new interpretation of the insanity case in twenty years. It details how Robert Todd Lincoln dealt with his mother's increasing irrationality and why it embarrassed his Victorian sensibilities; it explains the reasons he had his mother committed, his response to her suicide attempt, and her plot to murder him. It also shows why and how he ultimately agreed to her release from the asylum eight months early, and what their relationship was like until Mary's death.
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Epstein, Daniel Mark. THE LINCOLNS: PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE. (2008) New York. 1st ed., 559p., acknowledgements, notes, index. |
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The first full-length portrait of the marriage of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in more than fifty years, The Lincolns is a fascinating new work of American history.
The Lincolns eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information that makes husband and wife, president and first lady, come alive in all their proud accomplishments and earthy humanity.
The Lincolns’ ascent to the White House brought both dazzling power and the slow, secret unraveling of the couple’s unique bond. The Lincolns dramatizes certain well-known events with stunning new immediacy.
Written with enormous sweep and striking imagery, The Lincolns is an unforgettable epic set at the center of a crucial American administration. It is also a heartbreaking story of how time and adversity can change people, and of how power corrupts not only morals but affections. Daniel Mark Epstein’s The Lincolns makes two immortal American figures seem as real and human as the rest of us.
We have two misinscribed copies available. These are hard to find in first edition. The book retails for $28.00. These misinscribed copies are $22.00. |
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Fenster, Julie. THE CASE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A STORY OF ADULTERY, MURDER, AND THE MAKING OF A GREAT PRESIDENT. (NY) : (2007). Later Edition., 255p., illus. |
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Julie Fenster offers the first-ever account of the suspenseful Anderson murder case, and Lincoln 's role in it. Bestselling historian Julie M. Fenster not only examines a legal case that changed Lincoln 's fate, but portrays his day-to-day life as a circuit lawyer and how it shaped him as a politician. In a book that draws a picture of Lincoln in court and at home during that memorable season of 1856, Fenster also offers a close-up look at Lincoln 's political work, much of it masterful, some of it adventurous, in building the party that would change his fate – and that of the nation.
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Gallagher, Gary. CAUSES WON, LOST & FORGOTTEN: HOW HOLLYWOOD AND POPULAR ART SHAPED WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR, Chapel Hill (2008) 1 st ed., 256p., illus., notes, index.
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More than 60,000 books have been published on the Civil War. Most Americans, though, get their ideas about the war—why it was fought, what was won, what was lost—not from books but from movies, television, and other popular media. In an engaging and accessible survey, renowned Civil War historian Gary Gallagher guides readers through the stories told in recent film and art, showing how they have both reflected and influenced the political, social, and racial currents of their times.
Too often these popular portrayals overlook many of the very ideas that motivated the generation that fought the war. The most influential perspective for the Civil War generation, says Gallagher, is almost entirely absent from the Civil War stories being told today. Gallagher argues that popular understandings of the war have been shaped by four traditions that arose in the nineteenth century and continue to the present: the Lost Cause, the Union Cause, the Emancipation Cause, and the Reconciliation Cause. But, Neither film nor art provides sympathetic representations of the Union Cause, which, Gallagher argues, carried the most weight in the Civil War era.
This lively investigation into what popular entertainment teaches us and what it reflects about us will prompt readers to consider how we form opinions on current matters of debate, such as the use of the military, the freedom of dissent, and the flying of the Confederate flag.
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Girardi, Robert I. CAMPAIGNING WITH UNCLE BILLY: THE CIVIL WAR MEMOIRS OF SGT. LYMAN S. WIDNEY 34TH ILLINOIS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY. Forward by Peter Cozzens. (Victoria, B.C.): (Trafford Publishing, 2008). 1st edition, 420p., illustrations, paperback.
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This is the memoir of the service of Sgt. Lyman S. Widney of Illinois who served throughout the Civil War with the 34th Illinois Infantry.
Widney's account of his wartime service is based on the diary he kept during the conflict. As a regimental clerk, he was in a position to meet many prominent people and to know the plans and thinking of the command staff. Widney's narrative is personal, highly detailed, vividly descriptive and accurate. He writes with emotion and humor. He details the life of the volunteer soldiers as they enlist, adapt to military life and learn the trade of soldiering. His descriptions of the horrors of the battlefield, its grisly aftermath and the toll that sickness exacted on the rank and file is highly personal.
Through Widney's eyes we explore the countryside, tour Mammoth Cave, learn firsthand about combat and sickness and endure life in the trenches in the relentless fighting of the Atlanta Campaign and the grueling March to the Sea and through the Carolinas. Widney's memoir is a worthy addition to the literature of the Civil War from the point of view of the common soldier.
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Goodwin, Doris Kearns. TEAM OF RIVALS: THE POLITICAL GENIUS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. New York: (2005). 1st edition. 916p., illus., maps, illustrated end pages. SIGNED DIRECTLY. |
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Winner of the Lincoln Prize and writtern by a Pulitzer Prize-winner.
Minor wear, fading to spine, bump.
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Gottfried, Bradley M. THE MAPS OF GETTYSBURG: AN ATLAS OF THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN, JUNE 3 – JULY 13, 1863 . NY: (2007). 1 st edition, 363p., maps. |
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Gettysburg was one of the most complex battles of the war. The Maps Gettysburg, by Bradley Gottfried offers a unique approach to the study of this multifaceted engagement. The book plows new ground in the study of the campaign by breaking down the entire campaign in 146 detailed full page original maps. These cartographic creations bore down to the regimental level, offering students of the campaign a unique and fascinating approach to studying what may have been the climactic battle of the war. There are also thirty-one “action-sections” comprising the entire campaign. These include the march to and from the battlefield and virtually every significant event in between. Keyed to each piece of cartography is detailed text about the units, personnel, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) that make the Gettysburg story come alive. This presentation allows readers to easily and quickly find a map and text on virtually any portion of the campaign. Serious students of the battle will appreciate the extensive endnotes and will want to take this book with them on their trips to the battlefield. Perfect for the easy chair or for stomping the hallowed ground of Gettysburg, The Maps of Gettysburg promises to be a seminal work that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious and casual student of the battle.
Signed bookplate. |
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Grahame-Smith Seth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER. New York, (2010). 1st ed., 352p., dj, illus.
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While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving the Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.
Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time--all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.
Following the success of his bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with another mélange of history and horror, Grahame-Smith inserts a grandiose and gratuitous struggle with vampires into Abraham Lincoln's life. Lincoln learns at an early age that his mother was killed by a supernatural predator. This provokes his bloody but curiously undocumented lifelong vendetta against vampires and their slave-owning allies.
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Herdegen, Lance. THOSE DAMNED BLACK HATS. THE IRON BRIGADE IN THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN. New York. 2009. 1st ed., 323p., Photos, maps. appendices, notes, biblio., index.
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Drawing upon a wealth of sources, including dozens of previously unpublished or unused accounts, Herdegen details for the first time the exploits of the 2nd, 6th, 7th Wisconsin, 19th Indiana, and 24th Michigan regiments during the entire campaign. On July 1, the Western troops stood line-to-line and often face-to-face with their Confederate adversaries, who later referred to them as "those damned Black Hats." With the help of other stalwart comrades, the Hoosiers, Badgers, and Wolverines shed copious amounts of blood to save the Army of the Potomac's defensive position west of town. Their heroics above Willoughby Run, along the Chambersburg Pike, and at the Railroad Cut helped define the opposing lines for the rest of the battle and, perhaps, won the battle that helped preserve the Union.
Herdegen's account is much more than a battle study. The story of the fighting at the "Bloody Railroad Cut" is well known, but the attack and defense of McPherson's Ridge, the final stand at Seminary Ridge, the occupation of Culp's Hill, and the final pursuit of the Confederate Army has never been explored in sufficient depth or with such story telling ability. Herdegen completes the journey of the Black Hats with an account of the reconciliation at the 50th Anniversary Reunion and the Iron Brigade's place in Civil War history.
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Hess, Earl J. TRENCH WARFARE UNDER GRANT AND LEE: FIELD FORTIFICATIONS IN THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN. Chapel Hill: 2007. 1 st ed., 313p., illus. maps, diagrams. |
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A continuation of his important study of the importance of field fortifications during the Civil War. Drawing on meticulous research in primary sources and careful examination of trench remnants at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and Bermuda Hundred, Hess describes Union and Confederate earthworks and how Grant and Lee used them in this new era of field entrenchments. According to Hess, the heavy reliance on earthworks by both armies in the Overland campaign was driven by Grant's relentless attacks against Lee, not by the widespread use of rifle muskets, as historians have previously argued. Entrenchments kept the armies within striking distance and compelled soldiers to dig in for protection. Illustrated by rare, historic photographs and new detailed maps of the trench remnants, this book constitutes the second installment of a three-volume study of field fortifications in the eastern campaigns.
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Hewitt, Lawrence L. CONFEDERATE GENERALS IN THE WESTERN THEATRE: ESSAYS ON AMERICA'S CIVIL WAR, Vol 1 & 2. Knoxville: 2010. 1 st ed., 288p (vol 1), 296p (vol 2)., dj, illus. maps, diagrams, footmotes, appendices. |
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As part of a new series, The Western Theater in the Civil War, these volumes reflect the premise that truly understanding the outcome of the war can only be gained through greater knowledge of the western campaigns and the generals who waged them.
This collection, the first of several projected volumes, brings together some of the best previously published essays on Confederate commanders in the Western Theater. Including articles by such distinguished historians as Grady McWhiney, Charles P. Roland, T. Harry Williams, Frank E. Vandiver, Archer Jones, and Edwin C. Bearss, many of these pieces have only appeared in academic journals, and most have long been out of print. In resurrecting them, this set introduces a new generation of readers to some of the mid–twentieth century’s most significant Civil War scholarship.
Confederate Generals in the Western Theater will ultimately comprise several volumes that promise a host of provocative new insights into not only the South’s ill-fated campaigns in the West but also the eventual outcome of the larger conflict.
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Holzer, Harold, ed. ABRAHAM LINCOLN PORTRAYED IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Indianapolis : 2006. 1 st edition, 253p., illus. |
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Holzer provides a fine introduction to this beautiful catalog of the Indiana Historical Society's unparalleled collections of Lincoln imagery. In not other publication are these rare images reproduced so vividly.
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(--) THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, MYTH AND MEMORY. Bronx, (2010), 1st ed., 257p., dj. illus.
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The assassination of president Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most prominent events in U.S. history. It continues to attract enormous and intense interest from scholars, writers, and armchair historians alike, ranging from painstaking new research to wild-eyed speculation. At the end of the Lincoln bicentennial year, and the onset of the Civil War sesquicentennial, the leading scholars of Lincoln and his murder offer in one volume their latest studies and arguments about the assassination, its aftermath, the extraordinary public reaction (which was more complex than has been previously believed), and the iconography that Lincoln’s murder and deification inspired.
The contributors are among the finest scholars who are studying Lincoln’s assassination. All have earned well-deserved reputations for the quality of their research, their thoroughness, their originality, and their writing. In addition to the editors, contributors include Thomas R. Turner, Edward Steers Jr., Michael W. Kauffman, Thomas P. Lowry, Richard E. Sloan, Elizabeth D. Leonard, and Richard Nelson Current. |
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(--) LINCOLN PRESIDENT ELECT: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE GREAT SECESSION WINTER OF 1860-1861. New York, (2008) later ed., 640p.,dj, illus, maps, photographs, appendix, notes, biblio, index.
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One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union, examines the four months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, when the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency -- there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of civil war.
During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent.
Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.
Signed on bookplate.
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Joiner, Gary. THROUGH THE HOWLING WILDERNESS: THE 1864 RED RIVER CAMPAIGN AND UNION FAILURE IN THE WEST. Knoxville : (2006). 1 st edition, 305p., Illustrated, maps. |
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General Nathaniel Banks' Red River Campaign is one of the most fascinating combined operations of the Civil War, yet it remains sadly neglected by historians. In Through the Howling Wilderness Gary Joiner shows how the U.S. Army-Navy expedition up the Red River ended in disaster and recrimination. He also shows how this backwater campaign affected the bigger picture of the Civil War far beyond what historians have heretofore been willing to admit. “This work will appeal across the spectrum of students and will be of equal benefit to the casual reader as well as the scholar.” Terrence J. Winschel, Historian, Vicksburg National Military Park.
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Kunhardt III, Philip B., Kunhardt Peter W. & Kunhardt, Jr. Peter W. LINCOLN LIFE-SIZE. New York, 2009, 1st ed., 187p., photos. With a foreword by Harold Holzer.
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This unique and beautiful book captures an overlooked but vital aspect of Lincoln: his face. While he was known as an ugly man, and he even joked about that reputation, Lincoln’s contemporaries often commented on his striking features—on how animated he became while telling stories, or how at more serious moments his face seemed to reflect his wisdom.
Taken across a span of nearly twenty years, from 1846 to 1865, these images provide us with a visual account of Lincoln’s intertwined political and personal lives as we watch him age and observe the toll taken by the Civil War in the final four years of his life. Here are a wide range of Lincolns—wise, bemused, melancholic, ruggedly handsome, downright homely—his complex character clearly evident in the changes in expression and affect these portraits capture. Each portrait is presented in both a standard size and in life-size, and is accompanied by a contemporaneous quote by or about Lincoln, enriching the story of his life as told through his continuously evolving image.
Offering an unprecedented window into Lincoln’s soul, Lincoln, Life-Size grants us a new appreciation of this extraordinary man and a glimpse of the force of character that made him great. It is a must for all Lincoln enthusiasts—and for anyone fascinated by our finest president.
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Kunhardt, III, Philip, et al. LOOKING FOR LINCOLN: THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN ICON. New York (2008). later ed., 494p., illus., index, biblio.
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In honor of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, an extensively researched, lavishly illustrated consideration of the myths, memories, and questions that gathered around our most beloved—and our most enigmatic—president in the years between his assassination and the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. A sequel to the enormously successful Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography, Looking for Lincoln picks up where the previous book left off, examining how our sixteenth president’s legend came into being.
Availing themselves of a vast collection of both published and never-before-seen materials, the authors—the fourth and fifth generations of a family of Lincoln scholars—bring into focus the posthumous portrait of Lincoln that took hold in the American imagination, becoming synonymous with the nation’s very understanding of itself. Told through the voices of those who knew the man—Northerners and Southerners, blacks and whites, neighbors and family members, adversaries and colleagues—and through stories carefully selected from long-forgotten newspapers, magazines, and family scrapbooks, Looking for Lincoln charts the dramatic epilogue to Lincoln’s extraordinary life when, in a process fraught with jealousy, greed, and the struggle for power, the scope of his historical significance was taking shape.
In vibrant and immediate detail, the authors chart the years when Americans struggled to understand their loss and rebuild their country. Here is a chronicle of the immediate aftermath of the assassination; the private memories of those closest to the slain president; the difficult period between 1876 and 1908, when a tired nation turned its back on the former slaves and betrayed Lincoln’s teachings; and the early years of the twentieth century when Lincoln’s popularity soared as African Americans fought to reclaim the ideals he espoused.
Looking for Lincoln will deeply enhance our understanding of the statesman and his legacy, at a moment when the timeless example of his leadership is more crucial than ever.
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LaFantasie, Glenn W. GETTYSBURG HEROES: PERFECT SOLDIERS, HALLOWED GROUND. Bloomington and Indianapolis, (2008), 1st ed., 279p., notes, index, dj.
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The Civil War generation saw its world in ways startlingly different from our own. In these essays, Glenn W. LaFantasie examines the lives and experiences of several key personalities who gained fame during the war and after. The battle of Gettysburg is the thread that ties these Civil War lives together. Gettysburg was a personal turning point, though each person was affected differently.
Largely biographical in its approach, the book captures the human drama of the war and shows how this group of individuals—including Abraham Lincoln, James Longstreet, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, William C. Oates, and others—endured or succumbed to the war and, willingly or unwillingly, influenced its outcome. At the same time, it shows how the war shaped the lives of these individuals, putting them through ordeals they never dreamed they would face or survive.
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Lause, Mark A. RACE AND RADICALISM IN THE UNION ARMY. Champaign, (2010). 1st ed., 208p., dj, illus.
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In this compelling portrait of interracial activism, Mark Lause documents the efforts of radical followers of John Brown to construct a triracial portion of the Federal Army of the Frontier. Mobilized and inspired by the idea of a Union that would benefit all, black, Indian, and white soldiers fought side by side, achieving remarkable successes in the field. Against a backdrop of idealism, racism, greed, and the agonies and deprivations of combat, Lause examines links between radicalism and reform, on the one hand, and racialized interactions among blacks, Indians, and whites, on the other.
Lause examines how this multiracial vision of American society developed on the Western frontier. Focusing on the men and women who supported Brown in territorial Kansas, Lause examines the impact of abolitionist sentiment on relations with Indians and the crucial role of nonwhites in the conflict. Through this experience, Indians, blacks, and whites began to see their destinies as interdependent, and Lause discusses the radicalizing impact of this triracial Unionism upon the military course of the war in the upper Trans-Mississippi.
The aftermath of the Civil War destroyed much of the memory of the war in the West, particularly in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The opportunity for an interracial society was quashed by the government's willingness to redefine the lucrative field of Indian exploitation for military and civilian officials and contractors.
Assessing the social interrelations, ramifications, and military impact of nonwhites in the Union forces, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army explores the extent of interracial thought and activity among Americans in this period and greatly expands the historical narrative on the Civil War in the West.
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Leroy, David. MR. LINCOLN'S BOOK: PUBLISHING THE LINCOLN DOUGLAS DEBATES, WITH A CENSUS OF KNOWN SIGNED COPIES. (New Castle) 1st ed., 176p. illus., biblio. |
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It is a rare day when something novel is published about Abraham Lincoln’s life and works. Yet 20,000 volumes later, Mr. Lincoln’s Book is an unknown story.
As the Debates moved across Illinois, Lincoln saved the newspaper accounts of the contest, pasting these columns into a scrapbook. This scrapbook (perhaps two—as a New York newspaper hinted at in 1860) eventually became the Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas In the Celebrated Campaign of 1858 … It became a political tract used widely during the 1860 presidential campaign.
Lincoln, a popular politician was deeply thankful for the support of his friends, neighbors, and colleagues. He was pleased to sign or give copies of the book to his most active supporters. These became treasured mementoes to all who received them. The political best seller helped carry the dejected debater of 1858 to the Executive Mansion a mere two years later.
Here for the first time is a detailed narrative account of the book’s publication, focusing on Lincoln ’s personal involvement in the process. Leroy unites the full story line with original correspondence, contemporary newspaper accounts, and photos and illustrations of the day.
This is the first census of all known signed copies of the Debates which, under David Leroy, has grown to a total of 42 copies. The recipient’s role in Lincoln’s life is documented, as is the book’s provenance and present location.
Profusely illustrated with photos of many of the inscriptions, the book details the publishing history of a book Lincoln so ardently wished to see printed—perhaps his only claim to authorship of his own book.
Included is a CD containing other correspondence leading to the publication.
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LIMITED RUN! ORDER NOW.
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McAllister, Ruth Ann Hill Fulton, ed. CO. "AYTCH" FIRST TENNESSEE REGIMENT: OR A SIDE SHOW OF THE BIG SHOW
Franklin, TN (2007) 1 st ed., 352p., illus., notes, index.
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The classic Co. Aytch has reigned as one of the most memorable and honest depictions of the American Civil War since its orginal publication in 1882. Sam R. Watkins’s first-hand account of life as a Confederate soldier eloquently captured the realities of war, the humor and pathos of soldiering, and the tragic, historic events in which he participated.
Although there have been dozens of versions of Co. Aytch published, this is the first with new material and revisions by Sam Watkins himself. Intending to republish after his first edition sold out, Watkins edited and revised Co. Aytch, adding a new perspective that only came with time. He died before accomplishing his goal. Now more than one hundred years later, Watkins’s great granddaughter, Ruth Hill Fulton McAllister is fulfilling Watkins’s dream. Using his yellowed, aged, and pencil-marked copy handed down through different family members, McAllister has crafted a masterpiece that combines the ageless text with Sam Watkins’s intended revisions.
This new edition incorporates actual images of Watkins’s handwritten additions, all his desired editorial changes, and more than forty images. Desiring to be true to both her ancestor’s wishes and the sanctity of his classic memoir, McAllister skillfully included Watkins’s additions and artfully indicated what he would have omitted, leaving the original text intact. The result is a rich, expanded “director’s cut” version of Co. Aytch, sure to fascinate historians, Civil War enthusiasts, and new readers alike.
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McClintock, Russell. LINCOLN AND THE DECISION FOR WAR: THE NORTHERN RESPONSE TO SECESSION. Chapel Hill (2008), 1st ed, 400p.
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When Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 prompted several Southern states to secede, the North was sharply divided over how to respond. In this groundbreaking book, the first major study in over fifty years of how the North handled the secession crisis, Russell McClintock follows the decision-making process from bitter partisan rancor to consensus.
From small towns to big cities and from state capitals to Washington, D.C., McClintock highlights individuals both powerful and obscure to demonstrate the ways ordinary citizens, party activists, state officials, and national leaders interacted to influence the Northern response to what was essentially a political crisis. He argues that although Northerners' reactions to Southern secession were understood and expressed through partisan newspapers and officials, the decision fell into the hands of an ever-smaller handful of people until finally it was Abraham Lincoln alone who would choose whether the future of the American republic was to be determined through peace or a sword.
Lincoln and the Decision for War illuminates the immediate origins of the Civil War, demonstrating that Northern thought evolved quite significantly as the crisis unfolded. It also provides an intimate understanding of the antebellum political system as well as Lincoln's political acuity in his early presidential career.
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McGovern, Senator George S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE 16TH PRESIDENT 1861-1865 New York (2008). 1st ed., 208p., illus., index, biblio.
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America’s greatest president, who rose to power in the country’s greatest hour of need and whose vision saw the United States through the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln towers above the others who have held the office of president—the icon of greatness, the pillar of strength whose words bound up the nation’s wounds. His presidency is the hinge on which American history pivots, the time when the young republic collapsed of its own contradictions and a new birth of freedom, sanctified by blood, created the United States we know today. His story has been told many times, but never by a man who himself sought the office of president and contemplated the awesome responsibilities that come with it.
George S. McGovern—a Midwesterner, former U.S. senator, presidential candidate, veteran, and historian by training—offers his unique insight into our sixteenth president. He shows how Lincoln sometimes went astray, particularly in his restrictions on civil liberties, but also how he adjusted his sights and transformed the Civil War from a political dispute to a moral crusade. McGovern’s account reminds us why we hold Lincoln in such esteem and why he remains the standard by which all of his successors are measured.
This book is part of Holt's The American Presidents Series, edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Sean Wilentz.
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Maltz, Earl M. SLAVERY AND THE SUPREME COURT 1825-1861. Lawrence, 2009, 1st ed., 344p.
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During America's turbulent antebellum era, the Supreme Court decided important cases--most famously Dred Scott--that spoke to sectional concerns and shaped the nation's response to the slavery question. Much scholarship has been devoted to individual cases and to the Taney Court, but this is the first comprehensive examination of the major slavery cases that came before the Court between 1825 and 1861.
Earl Maltz presents a detailed analysis of all eight cases and explains how each fit into the slavery politics of its time, beginning with The Antelope, heard by the John Marshall Court, and continuing with the seven other cases taken before the Roger Taney Court: The Amistad, Groves v. Slaughter, Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Strader v. Graham, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Ableman v. Booth, and Kentucky v. Denison.
Case by case, Maltz identifies the political and legal forces that shaped each of the judicial outcomes while clarifying the evolution of the Court's slavery-related jurisprudence. He reveals the beliefs of each justice about the morality of slavery and the judicial role in constitutional cases to show how their actions were determined by a complex interaction of political and doctrinal considerations.
Although the progression of the Court's decisions reflects a change in the tenor of the conflict over slavery, the aftermath of those decisions illustrates the limits of the Court's ability to change the dynamic that governed political struggles over such divisive issues. As the first accessible account of all of these cases, Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861 underscores the Court's limited capability to resolve the intractable political conflicts that sharply divided our nation during this period.
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Miller, Brian C. JOHN BELL HOOD AND THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL WAR MEMORY. kNOXVILLE, 2010, 1st ed., 344p., photos, notes, index.
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In this first biography of the general in more than twenty years, Miller offers a new, original perspective, directly challenging those historians who have pointed to Hood’s perceived personality flaws, his alleged abuse of painkillers, and other unsubstantiated claims as proof of his incompetence as a military leader. This book takes into account Hood’s entire life—as a student at West Point, his meteoric rise and fall as a soldier and Civil War commander, and his career as a successful postwar businessman. In many ways, Hood represents a typical southern man, consumed by personal and societal definitions of manhood that were threatened by amputation and preserved and reconstructed by Civil War memory. Miller consults an extensive variety of sources, explaining not only what Hood did but also the environment in which he lived and how it affected him.
What emerges is a more nuanced, balanced portrait, unfettered by the one-sided perceptions of previous historical narratives. It gives Hood the fair treatment he has been denied for far too long. By looking at Hood’s formative years, his wartime experiences, and his postwar struggles to preserve his good name, this book opens up a provocative new perspective on the life of this controversial figure.
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Miller, Robert J. BOTH PRAYED TO THE SAME GOD: RELIGION AND FAITH IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Lanham: (2007). 1st ed., 243p |
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This is an impressive work bringing together the large but disparate literature on American Religion and the Civil War. Both Prayed to the Same God is the first book-length, comprehensive study of religion in the Civil War. While much research has focused on religion in a specific context of the civil war, this book provides a needed overview of this vital yet largely forgotten subject of American History. Writing passionately about the subject, Father Robert Miller presents this history in an accessible but scholarly fashion. Beginning with the religious undertones in the lead up to the war and concluding with consequences on religion in the aftermath, Father Miller not only shows us a forgotten aspect of history, but how our current historical situation is not unprecedented.
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Miller, William Lee. PRESIDENT LINCOLN: THE DUTY OF A STATESMAN New York (2008) 1 st ed., 512p., d.j.
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William Lee Miller’s new book closely examines the great man in that hugely important office: Abraham Lincoln as president. Wars waged by American presidents have come to be pivotal historical events. Here Miller analyzes the commander-in-chief who coped with the profound moral dilemmas of America’s bloodiest war. With wit and penetrating sensitivity, Miller shows us a Lincoln with unusual intellectual power, as he brings together the great themes that will be his legend—preserving the United States of America while ending the odious institution that corrupted the nation’s meaning. Miller finds in this superb politician a remarkable presidential combination: an indomitable resolve, combined with the judgment that keeps it from being mindless stubbornness; and a supreme magnanimity, combined with the discriminating judgment that keeps it from being sentimentality.
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Minow, Newton and LaMay, Craig. INSIDE THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: THEIR IMPROBABLE PAST AND PROMISING FUTURE. (2008), Chicago. 1st ed., 240p., appendices, notes, index, dj.
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Newton Minow’s long engagement with the world of television began nearly fifty years ago when President Kennedy appointed him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. As its head, Minow would famously dub TV a “vast wasteland,” thus inaugurating a career dedicated to reforming television to better serve the public interest. He has been chairman of PBS and on the board of CBS and elsewhere, but his most lasting contribution remains his leadership on televised presidential debates. He was assistant counsel to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson when Stevenson first proposed the idea of the debates in 1960; he served as cochair of the presidential debates in 1976 and 1980; and he helped create and is currently vice chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized the debates for the last two decades.
Written with longtime collaborator Craig LaMay, this fascinating history offers readers for the first time a genuinely inside look into the origins of the presidential debates and the many battles—both legal and personal—that have determined who has been allowed to debate and under what circumstances.
They also explore the many ways in which the new media might serve to broaden the debates’ appeal and informative power.
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Myers, Dr. Barton A. EXECUTING DANIEL BRIGHT: Race, Loyalty and Guerrilla Violence in a Coastal Carolina Community 1861-1865. Baton Rouge, 216p, halftones, map.
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On December 18, 1863, just north of Elizabeth City in rural northeastern North Carolina, a large group of white Union officers and black enlisted troops under the command of Brigadier General Edward Augustus Wild executed a local citizen for his involvement in an irregular resistance to Union army incursions along the coast. Daniel Bright, by conflicting accounts either a Confederate soldier home on leave or a deserter and guerrilla fighter guilty of plundering farms and harassing local Unionists, was hanged inside an unfinished postal building. The initial fall was not mortal, and according to one Union soldier’s account, Bright suffered a slow death by “strangulation, his heart not ceasing to beat for twenty minutes.” Race, political loyalties, power, and guerrilla violence all shaped the life of Daniel Bright and the home he died defending, and Myers shows how the interplay of these four dynamics created a world where irregular military activity could thrive.
Myers opens with an analysis of antebellum slavery, race relations, slavery debates, and the role of the environment in shaping the antebellum economy of northeastern North Carolina. He then details the emergence of a rift between Unionist and Confederate factions in the area in 1861, the events in 1862 that led to the formation of local guerrilla bands, and General Wild’s 1863 military operation in Pasquotank, Camden, and Currituck counties. He explores the local, state, regional, and Confederate Congress’s responses to the events of the Wild raid and specifically to Daniel Bright’s hanging, revealing the role of racism in shaping those responses. Finally, Myers outlines the outcome of efforts to negotiate neutrality and the state of local loyalties by mid-1864.
Microhistory at its finest, Executing Daniel Bright adds a thought-provoking chapter to the ever-expanding history of how Americans have coped with guerrilla war.
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Nugent, Walter. HABITS OF EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN EXPANSION. (2008) New York, 1st ed., 416p., maps, illustrations, d.j..
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Discussions abound today about the state of the union, its place in the world, and the founding fathers’ intentions. Did they want the United States to become a republic or an empire? Thomas Jefferson, after all, called the young nation an “empire for liberty.” Later words through two centuries all evoked empire: “manifest destiny” in the 1840s, “benevolent assimilation” in 1898, and “our responsibility to lead” in 2002.
Since Jefferson’s day, Americans have proudly proclaimed liberty and cherished democracy even as they have often behaved imperially.
Acclaimed historian Walter Nugent shows how the United States has long lived with the contradiction inherent in Jefferson ’s famous phrase “empire for liberty.” Enlightening, empathetic, comprehensive, and well-sourced, this book explains the deep roots of America’s imperialism as no other has done.
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Percoco, James A., SUMMERS WITH LINCOLN: LOOKING FOR THE MAN IN THE MONUMENTS, Bronx (2008), 1 st ed., 224p., illus., d.j.
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Across the country, in the middle of busy city squares and hidden on quiet streets, there are nearly 200 statues erected in memory of Abraham Lincoln. No other American has ever been so widely commemorated. A few years ago, anticipating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth in 2009, Jim Percoco, a history teacher with a passion for both Lincoln and public sculpture, set off to see what he might learn about some of these monuments—what they meant when they were unveiled, and what they mean to us today. The result is this captivating book, a fascinating chronicle of four summers on the road looking for Lincoln stories in statues of marble and bronze. His descriptions of works so often seen as clichés tease fresh meaning from mute stone and cold metal—raising provocative questions not just about who Lincoln might have been, but also about what we’ve wanted him to be in the monuments we’ve built.
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Perman, Michael. PURSUIT OF UNITY: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH. Chapel Hill, (2010). 1st ed., 400p., dj, illus.
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During the nineteenth century, the South experienced nearly continuous political crisis from nullification through secession, war, and Reconstruction, concluding with the disfranchisement campaigns at century's end. The struggle for power took a different form in the twentieth century, as the South's political class forged the Solid South and then maneuvered to perpetuate its control within the region and its influence within the nation.
But there was also continuity within this pattern of discord and crisis. First, southern politics generated--to a degree not found elsewhere in the United States--a remarkable array of unusual and colorful politicians, such as John C. Calhoun, William Mahone, James K. Vardaman, Huey Long, George Wallace, and Lyndon Johnson. Even more significant was the lack of a competitive, two-party politics for the better part of the more than two centuries since the nations founding. For most of the nineteenth century, the Souths political system was characterized by the dominance of one party, the Democrats, and in the twentieth, by the one-party monopoly known as the Solid South.
This propensity toward one-party politics differentiated the South and its political history from the rest of the country. But since the passage of the momentous Voting Rights Act in 1965, one-party politics has all but disappeared and, along with it, the South's pursuit of unity.
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Plouffe, David. THE AUDACITY TO WIN: THE INSIDE STORY AND LESSONS OF BARACK OBAMA'S HISTORIC VICTORY. New York, 1st ed., 400p.
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David Plouffe not only led the effort that put Barack Obama in the White House, but he also changed the face of politics forever and reenergized the idea of democracy itself. The Audacity to Win is his story of that groundbreaking achievement, taking readers inside the remarkable campaign that led to the election of the first African American president.
For two years Plouffe worked side by side with Obama, charting the course of the campaign. His is the ultimate insider's tale, revealing both the strategies that delivered Obama to office and how the candidate and campaign handled moments of great challenge and opportunity. Moving from the deliberations about whether to run at all, through the epic primary battle with Hillary Clinton and the general election against John McCain, Plouffe showcases the high-wire gamesmanship that fascinated pundits and the drama and intrigue that captivated a nation.
The Audacity to Win chronicles the arrival of a new moment in American life at the convergence of digital technology and grassroots organization, and the exciting possibilities revealed by a campaign that in many ways functioned as a $1 billion start-up with laser-like focus and discipline. In this extraordinary book, David Plouffe unfolds one of the most important political stories of our time, one whose lessons are not limited to politics, but reach to the greatest heights of what we dream about for our country and ourselves.
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Powell, Dave. THE MAPS OF CHICKAMAUGA: AN ATLAS OF THE CHICKAMAUGA CAMPAIGN, INCLUDING THE TULLAHOMA OPERATIONS, JUNE 22 - SEPTEMBER 23, 1863. El Dorado Hills, CA, 1st ed. 2009, 320p.
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Third in a new series of campaign studies that take a different approach toward military history, The Maps of Chickamauga explores this largely misunderstood battle through the use of 126 full-color maps, graphically illustrating the complex tangle of combat's ebb and flow that makes the titanic bloodshed of Chickamauga one of the most confusing actions of the American Civil War. Track individual regiments through their engagements at fifteen to twenty-minute intervals or explore each army in motion as brigades and divisions maneuver and deploy to face the enemy. The Maps of Chickamauga allows readers to fully grasp the action at any level of interest.
The maps lay out the troops and terrain as they were in September of 1863. Opening and closing chapters describe each army's approach to the battlefield and the retreat and pursuit to Chattanooga in the aftermath of the bloody combat. In between, sections are devoted to the fighting of September 18, 19, and 20, following the battle as it unfolds from a series of limited collisions between isolated columns into the bloody action of the last two days. Situation maps reflect the posture of each army on an hourly basis, while tactical maps reveal the intricacies of regimental and battery movements.
The text accompanying each map explains the action in succinct detail, supported by a host of primary sources. Eyewitness accounts vividly underscore the human aspect of the actions detailed in the maps as brigades and regiments collide. Meticulously researched and footnoted by David Powell with cartography by David Friedrichs, The Maps of Chickamauga relies on the participants' own words to recreate the course of battle.
The Maps of Chickamauga is an ideal companion for battlefield bushwhacking or simply armchair touring. Full color brings the movements to life, allowing readers to grasp the surging give and take of regimental combat in the woods and fields of North Georgia.
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Prokopowicz, Dr. Gerald. DID LINCOLN OWN SLAVES?: AND OTHER FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN. New York (2007), later ed., 352 pages, illus., biblio., d.j.
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For nine years Prokopowicz served as
scholar-in-residence at the Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He
was asked thousands of questions during his tenure, hundreds a day
sometimes, about Lincoln--What kind of law did he practice? Did he have
a happy childhood? Did his family own slaves? Why did he start the
Civil War?
Prokopowicz found the public's questions were often stimulating, provocative and perceptive. Some were simply funny and weird, while others were based on legend, myth or misconception. This book is an entertaining and informative “biography” of Lincoln told in a question and answer format and organized chronologically, beginning with a section on “The Boy Lincoln” and moving through Lincoln's life in politics up to the presidency, the Civil War, emancipation, his assassination and finally, his legacy. Prokopowicz synthesizes the best of Lincoln scholarship with writing that is lively and accessible, supporting his facts with authoritative references and an up-to-date bibliography.
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Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. READING THE MAN: A PORTRAIT OF ROBERT E. LEE THROUGH HIS PRIVATE LETTERS. New York: (2007). 1st edition, 658p., illustrations. |
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In this Lincoln Prize-winning effort Elizabeth Brown Pryor has uncovered important documents in both private and public collections that give a stunning personal account of Robert E. Lee’s military ability, his beliefs, and his time. Pryor presents dozens of these previously unpublished letters in their entirely, using them as departure points for a series of surprising “historical excursions” that shed new light on every aspect of Lee, telling his life story with an innovative blend of analysis, historiography, and rich period detail Through them we are able to look across time at Lee’s troubled childhood, the hardening of his anti-abolitionist views, his celebrated but controversial battlefield performance, and his final wrenching years.
As Pryor’s exhaustive research shows, Robert E. Lee had no premonition of fame, nor saw himself as a tragic, heroic figure, and as a result is letters are remarkably open. The Robert E. Lee who emerges in these pages is more complex and contradictory --- and far more fascinating --- than the familiar stone icon.
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Reed, III, Fred L. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE IMAGE OF HIS GREATNESS. Atlanta: Whitman, 2009. 1st edition, 288p., full color illustrations.
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Nearly 150 years after his death, Abraham Lincoln consistently ranks at or near the top of every poll of America's best, most admired, or most popular president ever.
During this bicentennial anniversary of his birth and for years after, Lincoln’s image will continuously be in the public spotlight. The U.S. Mint will issue four new Lincoln penny designs in 2009. A yearlong celebration has been organized and supported by the congressionally established Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. In the midst of all the excitement and commemoration debuts Fred Reed's outstanding new work, Abraham Lincoln: The Image of His Greatness. Beautifully illustrated in full color, with hundreds of private and public images, Reed's book explores the popular depiction of Lincoln as "ideal, idol, and icon." The martyred president is seen on coins, tokens, medals, postage stamps, and paper money - and also in oil paintings, magazine covers, popular advertisements, political cartoons, and other diverse media. Like Phil Kunhardt in Looking For Lincoln, Fred Reed understands the crucial role artifacts play in our memory and understanding of the 16th president.
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Rhea, Gordon C. COLD HARBOR: GRANT AND LEE, MAY 26- JUNE 3, 1864 . Baton Rouge : 2002. 1st ed., 532p., illustrated, maps. |
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In his gripping fourth volume on the spring 1864 Overland campaign - which pitted Ulysses S. Grant against Robert E. Lee for the first time in the Civil War - Gordon Rhea vividly re-creates the battle and maneuvers from the North Anna stalemate through the Cold Harbor offensive. Every imaginable primary source has been exhausted to unravel the strategies, mistakes, gambles, and problems with subordinates that preoccupied two exquisitely matched minds.
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Rhea, Gordon C. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS: MAY 5 – 6, 1864 . Baton Rogue: LSU Press, 1994. 512p., illustrated, maps. |
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With this book Gordon Rhea burst on to the Civil War scene, pursuing an ambitious project to document the battles of Grant's Overland campaign as they had never been documented before. Although the battles at the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania had previously received one-volume treatments, the famous bloodbath ant Cold Harbor was understudied, and the important conflicts on the North Anna River had never been treated as a distinct battle. These massive battles are treated with the scholarship they require, and deserve, through Rhea's untiring research and analytical mind.
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Rhea, Gordon. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GRANT AND LEE: THE WILDERNESS THROUGH COLD HARBOR. Baton Rouge: (2007). 1 st ed., 134p., 24 Halftones, 61 Color Illustrated, 15 Maps. |
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In early May 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant initiated a drive through central Virginia to crush Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. For forty days, the armies fought a grinding campaign from the Rapidan River to the James River that helped decide the course of the Civil War. Several of the war's bloodiest engagements occurred in this brief period: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River , Totopotomoy Creek, Bethesda Church , and Cold Harbor. Rhea provides a rich, fast-paced narrative, movingly illustrated by more than sixty powerful color images from Heisey, who captures the many moods of these hallowed battlegrounds as they appear today. At once an engaging military history and a vivid pictorial journey, In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee offers a fresh vision of some of the country's most significant historic sites.
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Rhea, Gordon C. TO THE NORTH ANNA RIVER: GRANT AND LEE, MAY 13-25 1864 . Baton Rouge: LSU Press, (2000). later ed., 505p., illustrated , maps. |
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With his third book, Rhea resumes his spectacular narrative of the initial campaign between Grant and Lee in the spring of 1864. May 13 through 25th was critical in the clash between North and South. During those 13 days - an interlude bracketed by horrific battles that riveted the public's attention - a game of guile and endurance between Grant and Lee escalated into a suspenseful draw on Virginia 's North Anna River .
As new; dust jacket. Signed . |
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Smith, Timothy. THE GOLDEN AGE OF BATTLEFIELD PRESERVATION: THE DECADE OF THE 1890s AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FIRST FIVE MILITARY PARKS. Knoxville, 1st ed., 294p., illus. |
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The 1890s, argues Timothy B. Smith in his new book, represented the
climax of battlefield preservation in America. But what makes this
decade so important?
This decade was the perfect time for the establishment of these national parks. Five Civil War battlegrounds—at Gettysburg, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Shiloh, Antietam, and Vicksburg—were commemorated as national sites during this time. Just past the bitterness and racial tensions of Reconstruction and prior to the explosive growth brought on by the Second Industrial Revolution, the time was right for the war's veterans from both sides to come together, in a spirit of reconciliation and brotherhood, to lead the efforts to open the parks. As yet unmarred by development, these battlefield sites were preserved mostly intact, just how the veterans would have remembered them. To date, they represent the country's finest preserved battlefields.
Smith's book is the first to look at the process of battlefield reservation as a whole. He focuses on how each of these sites was established and the important individuals—the congressmen, the former soldiers, the veteran commissioners—who were the catalysts for the creation of these parks.
The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation is a watershed book about an essential period in the history of battlefield preservation and will be of interest to any reader who wishes to have a better understanding how such preservation efforts were initiated.
We have two misinscribed copies. This book usually is $38.95. The misinscribed copies are $30.00.
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Stern, Julia. MARY CHESNUT'S CIVIL WAR EPIC. Chicago, (2010). 1st ed., 336p., dj, illus.
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A genteel southern intellectual, saloniste, and wife to a prominent colonel in Jefferson Davis’s inner circle, Mary Chesnut today is remembered best for her penetrating Civil War diary. Composed between 1861 and 1865 and revised thoroughly from the late 1870s until Chesnut’s death in 1886, the diary was published first in 1905, again in 1949, and later, to great acclaim, in 1981. This complicated literary history and the questions that attend it—which edition represents the real Chesnut? To what genre does this text belong?—may explain why the document largely has, until now, been overlooked in literary studies.
Julia A. Stern’s critical analysis returns Chesnut to her rightful place among American writers. In Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Epic, Stern argues that the revised diary offers the most trenchant literary account of race and slavery until the work of Faulkner and that, along with his Yoknapatawpha novels, it constitutes one of the two great Civil War epics of the American canon. By restoring Chesnut’s 1880s revision to its complex, multidecade cultural context, Stern argues both for Chesnut’s reinsertion into the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters and for her centrality to the literary history of women’s writing as it evolved from sentimental to tragic to realist forms.
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Swan, James B. Chicago’s Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War. Carbondale, IL: 2009. 1st edition, 320p., illustrations.
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Extensively documented and richly detailed, Chicago’s Irish Legion tells the compelling story of Chicago’s 90th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, the only Irish regiment in General Sherman’s XV Corps.
Swan’s sweeping history of this singular regiment and its pivotal role in the Western Theater of the Civil War draws heavily from primary documents and first-person observations, giving readers an intimate glimpse into the trials and triumphs of ethnic soldiers during the most deadly war in American history. Composed mainly of foreign-born recruits, the volunteers proved to be instrumental in various battles and sieges, including the marches to the sea and through the Carolinas, suffering great casualties and providing indispensable support for the Union.
With a meticulous eye for accuracy, Swan traces the remarkable journey of these unique soldiers from their regiment’s inception and first military engagement in 1862 to their disbandment and participation in the Grand Review of General William T. Sherman’s army in 1865.
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Stowell, Daniel, ed., THE PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN: LEGAL DOCUMENTS AND CASES, 4 vols with slipcase. (2008). Charlottesville, VA, 2328p., illus.
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Many in politics began their careers in the law; no one has cut such a distinguished path in this regard as Abraham Lincoln. Before his presidency, from 1836 to 1861, Lincoln practiced law in the courts of central Illinois. Part of an ambitious undertaking to collect and publish the surviving documentary record of Lincoln's life, this four-volume set addresses his quarter-century law career.
The cases represented paint a vivid picture of America in the decades leading up to the Civil War. The nation's surging expansion is reflected in cases over land speculation, property disputes, construction, and, of course, the railroads, whose interests are a consistent theme throughout. Other trials touch on domestic law, the Black Laws, even the California gold rush.
This collection will appeal to all scholars and students of the law and its history, as well as to anyone interested in antebellum America or presidential biography. No understanding of Lincoln is complete without a look at the great career in law that preceded his remarkable presidency.
Signed on bookplate. (Not included in FREE SHIPPING OFFER.)
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Swanson, James L. MANHUNT: THE 12-DAY CHASE FOR LINCOLN 'S KILLER. (NY: 2006). later edition, 448p., illus., illus. eps. |
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James Swanson debuted this best-selling account of Booth's flight, from his murder of President Lincoln to his death in the Garrett barn, on Virtual Book Signing on March 11, 2006. |
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Sword, Wiley. COURAGE UNDER FIRE: PROFILES IN BRAVERY FROM THE BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1st edition, 318p., illus. |
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Through the immediacy of soldiers' letters and diaries written on the battlefield, in camps, and on deathbeds, Wiley Sword writes of the complexities in a soldier's mind when coming to grips with life and death in the time of the Civil War. Courage Under Fire includes the stories of soldiers--men like Illinois Lt. Col. Frank Curtiss, whose courage was revealed when he refused a useless charge into fortified Rebel lines. Sword includes Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, one of the South's greatest military tacticians, who left diaries showing his mission to refine his methods to save lives while winning battles. Also closely examined is John Bell Hood's aggressive behavior at Franklin , where he tragically sacrificed much of his army. This action is assessed in terms of both moral and physical courage. Fletcher Pratt Award -winner Wiley Sword constructs a vivid picture of bravery under extreme stress.
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Tagg, Larry. THE UNPOPULAR MR. LINCOLN. THE STORY OF AMERICA'S MOST REVILED PRESIDENT. El Dorado Hills, CA.: (2009). 1st edition, 456p., illustrations.
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Today, Abraham Lincoln is a beloved American icon, widely considered to be our best president. It was not always so. Larry Tagg's The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln is the first study of its kind to concentrate on what Lincoln's contemporaries actually thought of him during his lifetime. Be forewarned: your preconceived notions are about to be shattered.
Torn by civil war, the era in which our sixteenth president lived and governed was the most rough-and-tumble in the history of American politics. The violence of the criticism aimed at Lincoln by the great men of his time on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line is simply startling. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the spectacular prejudice against him is often shocking for its cruelty, intensity, and unrelenting vigor. The plain truth is that Mr. Lincoln was deeply reviled by many who knew him personally, and by hundreds of thousands who only knew of him.
Of all the Lincoln books slated for publication, The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln will be the "must-read" title for general readers and scholars alike.
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Taylor, Paul. ORLANDO M. POE: CIVIL WAR GENERAL AND GREAT LAKES ENGINEER. Kent, OH (2010). 1st ed., 360p., dj, illus., notes, bibliography, index.
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Orlando M. Poe chronicles the life of one of the most influential yet underrated and overlooked soldiers during the Civil War. After joining the Union Army in 1861, Poe commanded the 2nd Michigan Infantry in the Peninsula Campaign and led brigades at Second Bull Run and Fredericksburg. He was then sent west and became one of the Union heroes in the defense of Knoxville. Poe served under several of the war’s greatest generals, including George McClellan and William T. Sherman, who appointed him chief engineer to oversee the burning of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. Though technically only a captain in the regular army at the war’s end, Poe was one of Sherman’s most valued subordinates, and he was ultimately appointed brevet brigadier general for his bravery and service.
After the war, Poe supervised the design and construction of numerous Great Lakes lighthouses, all of which are still in service. He rejoined Sherman’s staff in 1873 as engineer aide-de-camp and continued his role as trusted advisor until the general’s retirement in 1884. Poe then returned to his adopted home in Detroit where he began planning his ultimate post–Civil War engineering achievement: the design and construction of what would become the largest shipping lock in the world at Sault St. Marie, Michigan.
Mining an extensive collection of Poe’s unpublished personal papers that span his entire civil and military career, and illustrating the narrative with many previously unpublished photographs, Paul Taylor brings to life for the first time the story of one of the nineteenth century’s most overlooked war heroes.
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Waugh, Joan. U. S. GRANT: AMERICAN HERO, AMERICAN MYTH. Chapel Hill, later ed., 384p.
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At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings. In an insightful blend of biography and cultural history.
In U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, Joan Waugh traces Grant's shifting national and international reputation, illuminating the role of memory in our understanding of American history. She captures a sense of what led nineteenth-century Americans to overlook Grant's obvious faults and hold him up as a critically important symbol of national reconciliation and unity. Waugh further shows that Grant's reputation and place in public memory closely parallel the rise and fall of the northern version of the Civil War story in which the United States was the clear, morally superior victor and Grant was the emblem of that victory. After the failure of Reconstruction, the dominant Union myths about the war gave way to a southern version that emphasized a more sentimental remembrance of the honor and courage of both sides and ennobled the "Lost Cause." By the 1920s, Grant's reputation had plummeted.
Most Americans today are unaware of how revered Grant was in his lifetime. Joan Waugh uncovers the reasons behind the rise and fall of his renown, underscoring as well the fluctuating memory of the Civil War itself.
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Wheeler, Tom. MR. LINCOLN'S T-MAILS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN USED THE TELEGRAPH TO WIN THE CIVIL WAR. (NY): (2006). 1 st edition., 227p., illustrated. |
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The Civil War was the first "modern war." Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which Abraham Lincoln used to stay connected to the forces in the field in almost real time. No leader in history had ever possessed such a powerful tool to gain control over a fractious situation.
An eager student of technology, Lincoln (the only president to hold a patent) had to learn to use the power of electronic messages. Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails tells a big story within a small compass. By paying close attention to Lincoln's "lightning messages," we see a great leader adapt to a new medium. No reader of this work of history will be able to miss the contemporary parallels. Watching Lincoln carefully word his messages—and follow up on those words with the right actions—offers a striking example for those who spend their days tapping out notes on computers and Blackberries. An elegant work of history, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails is an instructive example of timeless leadership lessons.
As new; dust jacket. Inscribed to previous owner. |
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White, Jr., Ronald C. A LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY. New York, 2009, later ed., 796p., illus., photos, notes, biblio, index.
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Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life.
Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address.
Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincoln who comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.”
A transcendent, sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understanding of its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of Americans. It is poised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemorates the bicentennial of his birth.
Signed on bookplate.
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Williams, Frank. JUDGING LINCOLN . 202p., illustrated. |
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“Both historians and general readers will welcome this treasury from one of the wisest and most original students of Abraham Lincoln and his times. This elegant and fascinating book confirms Frank Williams' important place in the firmament of Lincoln scholars and does a brilliant job of showing us why Lincoln's ideals and methods of leadership are so necessary for Americans to understand almost a century and a half after his passing.” Michael Beschloss, presidential historian.
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Wilson, Douglas L. LINCOLN 'S SWORD: THE PRESIDENCY AND THE POWER OF WORDS. New York (2006). Later Edition. 352p. illustrated. |
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Winner of the 2007 Lincoln Prize. A fascinating and illuminating study of the composition, content, and intent of Lincoln 's most important presidential writings. Profoundly influential at the time, Lincoln 's words continue to shape our understanding of American history. Wilson examines the circumstances that prompted Lincoln to compose each document (the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and his two inaugural addresses, among them), suggesting what Lincoln hoped to accomplish with them, and make clear—with the help of reproductions of the documents themselves—how very carefully Lincoln honed his words to achieve the greatest possible power of persuasiveness. Wilson shows us how, in the performance of his presidential duties, the pen was Lincoln 's mightiest sword.
Douglas Wilson is co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College; author, Lincoln Before Washington.
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