Author: Jonathan A. Noyalas Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786425083 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 219
Book Description
When the South fired the first shot of the Civil War in April 1861, hundreds of volunteers flocked to answer President Lincoln's call to arms, anxious to defend their country and uphold the sanctity of the Union. Among these first volunteers was Robert H. Milroy. Determined to obtain a military education and denied his wish to attend West Point, Milroy had at last secured a position to attend Captain Partridge's Military Academy at Norwich University in Vermont. After graduating, however, he was thwarted time and again in his desire for a military career, quickly discovering that military appointments tended to favor West Point graduates. A fervent abolitionist and dedicated patriot, Milroy craved military action and viewed the Civil War as his long-awaited opportunity to achieve the glorious reputation he so ardently desired. Compiled from primary sources such as Milroy's correspondence and the letters of those who knew him, this biography details the life and times of General Robert H. Milroy. Although perhaps not one of the major players on the stage of Civil War drama, Milroy was one of the staunchest defenders not only of the Union but of the Emancipation Proclamation as well. Focusing primarily on Milroy's Civil War career, this work serves to provide information about lesser known operations in western Virginia during 1861 and 1862 as well as illustrate the bonds that formed between commanders and their men. It also provides a case study of how an abolitionist general enforced his will in various regions throughout the Confederacy. Appendices contain a portion of Milroy's unfinished autobiography and a list of troops commanded by Milroy in combat.
Author: Kevin Campbell Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1514492652 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 675
Book Description
Author Kevin Campbell in this work examines in detail the swirling cavalry fight at Brandy Station. He also gives a lucid, well-written account of the debacle that befell Robert H. Milroy and his ill-fated division at Winchester and Carters Woods. Those battles, bloody in their own right, were soon relegated to the back pages when the horrific Battle of Gettysburg began dominating the press and the postwar reminiscences of the veterans. We can learn much from this new work, with its treasury of pertinent eyewitness accounts and clear prose. His skill in digging through the regimentals, official records, diaries, and other materials is evident, as well as his ability to interweave them into a cohesive narrative that brings the battles, personalities, and long hours of marching to light.
Author: A Thing Not as End in Itself Publisher: Page Publishing Inc ISBN: 1644623471 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
His great grandfather was a monkey. The Primitive Savage grew up on a tree in Africa. His parents were poor and their tree was not a big tree. All his education was under the small tree. He was told if he walked upright, his brain will grow, but he could never understand why. He tried unsuccessfully to walk, just like his parents and grandparents before him, in order to grow a bigger brain, but all his could do is to lean on a tree to support himself standing on two. But walking was extremely difficult. He only managed to grow a small brain. Now he is a thing.
Author: Eric J. Wittenberg Publisher: Savas Beatie ISBN: 1611212898 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 529
Book Description
A comprehensive, deeply researched history of the pivotal 1863 American Civil War battle fought in northern Virginia. June 1863. The Gettysburg Campaign is underway. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia pushes west into the Shenandoah Valley and then north toward the Potomac River. Only one significant force stands in its way: Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy’s Union division of the Eighth Army Corps in the vicinity of Winchester and Berryville, Virginia. What happens next is the subject of this provocative new book. Milroy, a veteran Indiana politician-turned-soldier, was convinced the approaching enemy consisted of nothing more than cavalry or was merely a feint, and so defied repeated instructions to withdraw. In fact, the enemy consisted of General Lee’s veteran Second Corps under Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell. Milroy’s controversial decision committed his outnumbered and largely inexperienced men against some of Lee’s finest veterans. The complex and fascinating maneuvering and fighting on June 13-15 cost Milroy hundreds of killed and wounded and about 4,000 captured (roughly one-half of his command), with the remainder routed from the battlefield. The combat cleared the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley of Federal troops, demonstrated Lee could obtain supplies on the march, justified the elevation of General Ewell to replace the recently deceased Stonewall Jackson, and sent shockwaves through the Northern states. Today, the Second Battle of Winchester is largely forgotten. But in June 1863, the politically charged front-page news caught President Lincoln and the War Department by surprise and forever tarnished Milroy’s career. The beleaguered Federal soldiers who fought there spent a lifetime seeking redemption, arguing their three-day “forlorn hope” delayed the Rebels long enough to allow the Army of the Potomac to arrive and defeat Lee at Gettysburg. For the Confederates, the decisive leadership on display outside Winchester masked significant command issues buried within the upper echelons of Jackson’s former corps that would become painfully evident during the early days of July on a different battlefield in Pennsylvania. Award-winning authors Eric J. Wittenberg and Scott L. Mingus Sr. combined their researching and writing talents to produce the most in-depth and comprehensive study of Second Winchester ever written, and now in paperback. Their balanced effort, based upon scores of archival and previously unpublished diaries, newspaper accounts, and letter collections, coupled with familiarity with the terrain around Winchester and across the lower Shenandoah Valley, explores the battle from every perspective.
Author: John H. Matsui Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 0807175323 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
In Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares, John H. Matsui argues that the political ideology and racial views of American Protestants during the Civil War mirrored their religious optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, perfectibility, and the millennium. While previous historians have commented on the role of antebellum eschatology in political alignment, none have delved deeply into how religious views complicate the standard narrative of the North versus the South. Moving beyond the traditional optimism/pessimism dichotomy, Matsui divides American Protestants of the Civil War era into “premillenarian” and “postmillenarian” camps. Both postmillenarian and premillenarian Christians held that the return of Christ would inaugurate the arrival of heaven on earth, but they disagreed over its timing. This disagreement was key to their disparate political stances. Postmillenarians argued that God expected good Christians to actively perfect the world via moral reform—of self and society—and free-labor ideology, whereas premillenarians defended hierarchy or racial mastery (or both). Northern Democrats were generally comfortable with antebellum racial norms and were cynical regarding human nature; they therefore opposed Republicans’ utopian plans to reform the South. Southern Democrats, who held premillenarian views like their northern counterparts, pressed for or at least acquiesced in the secession of slaveholding states to preserve white supremacy. Most crucially, enslaved African American Protestants sought freedom, a postmillenarian societal change requiring nothing less than a major revolution and the reconstruction of southern society. Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Civil War as it reveals the wartime marriage of political and racial ideology to religious speculation. As Matsui argues, the postmillenarian ideology came to dominate the northern states during the war years and the nation as a whole following the Union victory in 1865.
Author: Jonathan A. Noyalas Publisher: University Press of Florida ISBN: 0813072670 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
The African American experience in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction This book examines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the Black experience in the region until now. Correcting previous assumptions that slavery was not important to the Valley, and that enslaved people were treated better there than in other parts of the South, Jonathan Noyalas demonstrates the strong hold of slavery in the region. He explains that during the war, enslaved and free African Americans navigated a borderland that changed hands frequently—where it was possible to be in Union territory one day, Confederate territory the next, and no-man’s land another. He shows that the region’s enslaved population resisted slavery and supported the Union war effort by serving as scouts, spies, and laborers, or by fleeing to enlist in regiments of the United States Colored Troops. Noyalas draws on untapped primary resources, including thousands of records from the Freedmen’s Bureau and contemporary newspapers, to continue the story and reveal the challenges African Americans faced from former Confederates after the war. He traces their actions, which were shaped uniquely by the volatility of the struggle in this region, to ensure that the war’s emancipationist legacy would survive. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller
Author: Jonathan A. Noyalas Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443874094 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
The scene of incessant battles, campaigns, and occupations, Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley had been touched by the Civil War’s cruel hand during four years of conflict. In an effort to commemorate the Civil War’s sesquicentennial in the Shenandoah Valley, historians Jonathan A. Noyalas and Nancy T. Sorrells, have assembled a first-rate team of scholars, on behalf of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, to examine the Shenandoah Valley’s Civil War era story. Based on presentations made during the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation’s sesquicentennial conferences, this collection of twelve essays examines a variety of aspects of the Civil War era in the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy.” From analyses of leadership, to the importance of the Second Battle of Winchester, to the various campaigns’ impact on the Valley’s demographically diverse population; the complexities of unionism in the Shenandoah, to General Robert H. Milroy’s enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation; the role poetry and art played in immortalizing the event of Sheridan’s Ride; and the postwar activities of the Valley’s Ladies Memorial Associations, as well as attempts by members of the Sheridan’s Veterans’ Association to advance postwar reconciliation, this diverse collection illuminates the varying and complex ways in which the conflict impacted the Valley, and how the events in the Shenandoah impacted the Civil War’s outcome.
Author: Jonathan A. Noyalas
Author: Kevin Campbell
Author: A Thing Not as End in Itself
Author: Hugh MARTIN (of Edinburgh.)
Author: Hugh MARTIN (of Edinburgh.)
Author: Eric J. Wittenberg
Author: John H. Matsui
Author: Hugh Martin
Author: Jonathan A. Noyalas
Author: Jonathan A. Noyalas