James McPherson's classic book For Cause & Comrades explained "why men fought in the Civil War"-and spurred countless other historians to ask and attempt to answer the same question. But few have explored why men did not fight. That's the question Paul Taylor answers in this groundbreaking Civil War history that examines the reasons why at least ......
Taking a novel approach to the military history of the post-Civil War West, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley examines the careers of seven military leaders who served as major generals for the Union in the Civil War, then as brigadier generals in command of the U.S. Army's western departments. By examining both periods in their careers, ......
Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy
As the sectional crisis gripped the United States, the rancor increasingly spread to the halls of Congress. Preston Brooks's frenzied assault on Charles Sumner was perhaps the most notorious evidence of the dangerous divide between proslavery Democrats and the new antislavery Republican Party. But as disunion loomed, rifts within the majority ......
The Campaign and Battle of Tupelo/Harrisburg, Mississippi, June-July 1864
Fighting Nathan Bedford Forrest in North Mississippi During the summer of 1864, a Union column commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith set out from Tennessee with a goal that had proven impossible in all prior attempts-to find and defeat the cavalry under the command of Confederate major general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest's cavalry was ......
Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War
By the time Abraham Lincoln asserted in 1858 that the nation could not "endure permanently half slave and half free," the rift that would split the country in civil war was well defined. The origins and evolution of the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the early years of the American Republic, as Stephen G. ......
A governor embraces patriotism over partisanship in a crucial Union stateBefore his election to the state's executive office in 1862, David Tod was widely regarded as Ohio's most popular Democrat. Tod rose to prominence in the old Western Reserve, rejecting the political influence of his well-known father, a former associate justice of Ohio's ......
A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery (1814-71) waged a far more personal and radical war against slavery than popular history suggests. It is the true story of this militant abolitionist that Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer tell in ......
Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations
Although many associate Franklin D. Roosevelt with the inauguration of the robust, dominant American presidency, the roots of his executive leadership style go much deeper. Examining the presidencies of John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Howard Taft, Stephen Rockwell traces emerging connections between presidential action and a ......
Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations
Although many associate Franklin D. Roosevelt with the inauguration of the robust, dominant American presidency, the roots of his executive leadership style go much deeper. Examining the presidencies of John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Howard Taft, Stephen Rockwell traces emerging connections between presidential action and a ......
