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Author: Robert V. Bruce Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 1787204022 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 543
Book Description
First published in 1956, this is an account of the arming of the Union forces in the Civil War, and of Lincoln’s part in it. It has never been told in any comprehensive way before, and shows Lincoln in a new and engaging light. Lincoln was determined to win the war, yet his generals seemed unable to give him a victory, so he reasoned that a more efficient weapon would have to be invented. However, his main opponent, General James W. Ripley, who sat in charge of army ordnance, believed the war would be short and didn’t want a vast supply of expensive arms left over. Standardized guns and ammunition made supplying the troops in the field easier. Lincoln was in the thick of it. He wanted mortar boats to help open the upper Mississippi as they had helped Porter take New Orleans. When he discovered a big snafu had delayed production, one J. D. Mills came to Washington with a crude machine gun that was soon christened the coffee-mill gun. Probably the biggest and longest controversy involved muzzle-loading rifles—favoured by Ripley—and breech-loading rifles—the Soldier’s choice, as he could lie down and load a breechloader at least five times as fast as a muzzle-loader. In addition to these and other standard arms, the inventors offered a wide catalogue of innovations: rockets, steam guns, liquid fire, a submarine, explosive bullets, a proposed poison gas, and so on down to the fantastic. This book is a big American story of Washington in wartime, and it will appeal to everybody who ever had any contact with the armed services. For the specialist, it offers quite a quantity of previously unpublished material. Its biggest merit is, however, that it is just plain fascinating reading, the kind of book no one should start late in the evening if he wants any sleep.
Author: Robert V. Bruce Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 1787204022 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 543
Book Description
First published in 1956, this is an account of the arming of the Union forces in the Civil War, and of Lincoln’s part in it. It has never been told in any comprehensive way before, and shows Lincoln in a new and engaging light. Lincoln was determined to win the war, yet his generals seemed unable to give him a victory, so he reasoned that a more efficient weapon would have to be invented. However, his main opponent, General James W. Ripley, who sat in charge of army ordnance, believed the war would be short and didn’t want a vast supply of expensive arms left over. Standardized guns and ammunition made supplying the troops in the field easier. Lincoln was in the thick of it. He wanted mortar boats to help open the upper Mississippi as they had helped Porter take New Orleans. When he discovered a big snafu had delayed production, one J. D. Mills came to Washington with a crude machine gun that was soon christened the coffee-mill gun. Probably the biggest and longest controversy involved muzzle-loading rifles—favoured by Ripley—and breech-loading rifles—the Soldier’s choice, as he could lie down and load a breechloader at least five times as fast as a muzzle-loader. In addition to these and other standard arms, the inventors offered a wide catalogue of innovations: rockets, steam guns, liquid fire, a submarine, explosive bullets, a proposed poison gas, and so on down to the fantastic. This book is a big American story of Washington in wartime, and it will appeal to everybody who ever had any contact with the armed services. For the specialist, it offers quite a quantity of previously unpublished material. Its biggest merit is, however, that it is just plain fascinating reading, the kind of book no one should start late in the evening if he wants any sleep.
Author: Thomas B. Allen Publisher: National Geographic Books ISBN: 9781426303791 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
Shows the part technology played in the North winning the Civil War over the South and how Lincoln appreciated technology after awhile.
Author: Burrus M. Carnahan Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813138213 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would "have no lawful right" to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, 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." As the Civil War intensified, the Lincoln administration slowly and reluctantly accorded full belligerent rights to the Confederacy under the law of war. This included designating a prisoner of war status for captives, honoring flags of truce, and negotiating formal agreements for the exchange of prisoners -- practices that laid the intellectual foundations for emancipation. Once the United States allowed Confederates all the privileges of belligerents under international law, it followed that they should also suffer the disadvantages, including trial by military courts, seizure of property, and eventually the emancipation of slaves. Even after the Lincoln administration decided to apply the law of war, it was unclear whether state and federal courts would agree. After careful analysis, author 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. In Act of Justice, Carnahan contends that Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the psychological warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Carnahan's exploration of the president's war powers illuminates the origins of early debates about war powers and the Constitution and their link to international law.
Author: Tom Wheeler Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061749834 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
This “intriguing” look at the sixteenth president’s telegraph usage during the Civil War “revisits a familiar hero, but does so from an utterly new perspective” (Ken Burns). The Civil War was the first “modern war.” Because of rapid changes in American society, Abraham Lincoln became president of a divided United States during a period of technological and social revolution. Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which 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. Without precedent to guide him, Lincoln began by reading the telegraph traffic among his generals. Then he used the telegraph to supplement his preferred form of communication—meetings and letters. He did not replace those face-to-face interactions. Through this experience, Lincoln crafted the best way to guide, reprimand, praise, reward, and encourage his commanders in the field. Written by a former FCC chairman, Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails tells a big story within a small compass—both an elegant work of history and a timeless lesson in leadership. 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 their various devices. “Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails shines. . . . an accessible jaunt through this formative American event.” —USA Today “Wheeler shows a Lincoln groping for a best-use of new technology and learning the limitations of the ‘killer app.’”—Booklist “Altogether captivating.” —Harold Holzer, author of Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
Author: Louis A. Del Monte Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1640124357 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 327
Book Description
War at the Speed of Light describes the revolutionary and ever-increasing role of directed-energy weapons (such as laser, microwave, electromagnetic pulse, and cyberspace weapons) in warfare. Louis A. Del Monte delineates the threat that such weapons pose to disrupting the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, which has kept the major powers of the world from engaging in nuclear warfare. Potential U.S. adversaries, such as China and Russia, are developing hypersonic missiles and using swarming tactics as a means to defeat the U.S. military. In response, the U.S. Department of Defense established the 2018 National Security Strategy, emphasizing directed-energy weapons, which project devastation at the speed of light and are capable of destroying hypersonic missiles and enemy drones and missile swarms. Del Monte analyzes how modern warfare is changing in three fundamental ways: the pace of war is quickening, the rate at which weapons project devastation is reaching the speed of light, and cyberspace is now officially a battlefield. In this acceleration of combat called "hyperwar," Del Monte shows how disturbingly close the world is to losing any deterrence to nuclear warfare.
Author: Brian Kilmeade Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 052554058X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendship, and in the process changed the entire course of history. Abraham Lincoln was White, born impoverished on a frontier farm. Frederick Douglass was Black, a child of slavery who had risked his life escaping to freedom in the North. Neither man had a formal education, and neither had had an easy path to influence. No one would have expected them to become friends—or to transform the country. But Lincoln and Douglass believed in their nation’s greatness. They were determined to make the grand democratic experiment live up to its ideals. Lincoln’s problem: he knew it was time for slavery to go, but how fast could the country change without being torn apart? And would it be possible to get rid of slavery while keeping America’s Constitution intact? Douglass said no, that the Constitution was irredeemably corrupted by slavery—and he wanted Lincoln to move quickly. Sharing little more than the conviction that slavery was wrong, the two men’s paths eventually converged. Over the course of the Civil War, they’d endure bloodthirsty mobs, feverish conspiracies, devastating losses on the battlefield, and a growing firestorm of unrest that would culminate on the fields of Gettysburg. As he did in George Washington's Secret Six, Kilmeade has transformed this nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out how these two heroes, through their principles and patience, not only changed each other, but made America truly free for all.
Author: James Lander Publisher: SIU Press ISBN: 0809329905 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Born on the same day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were true contemporaries. Though shaped by vastly different environments, they had remarkably similar values, purposes, and approaches. In this exciting new study, James Lander places these two iconic men side by side and reveals the parallel views they shared of man and God. While Lincoln is renowned for his oratorical prowess and for the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as many other accomplishments, his scientific and technological interests are not widely recognized; for example, many Americans do not know that Lincoln is the only U.S. president to obtain a patent. Darwin, on the other hand, is celebrated for his scientific achievements but not for his passionate commitment to the abolition of slavery, which in part drove his research in evolution. Both men took great pains to avoid causing unnecessary offense despite having abandoned traditional Christianity. Each had one main adversary who endorsed scientific racism: Lincoln had Stephen A. Douglas, and Darwin had Louis Agassiz. With graceful and sophisticated writing, Lander expands on these commonalities and uncovers more shared connections to people, politics, and events. He traces how these two intellectual giants came to hold remarkably similar perspectives on the evils of racism, the value of science, and the uncertainties of conventional religion. Separated by an ocean but joined in their ideas, Lincoln and Darwin acted as trailblazers, leading their societies toward greater freedom of thought and a greater acceptance of human equality. This fascinating biographical examination brings the mid-nineteenth-century discourse about race, science, and humanitarian sensibility to the forefront using the mutual interests and pursuits of these two historic figures.
Author: Douglas Waller Publisher: Simon & Schuster ISBN: 1501126857 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 624
Book Description
This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the nation—filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue. Veteran CIA correspondent Douglas Waller delivers a riveting account of the heroes and misfits who carried out a shadow war of espionage and covert operations behind the Confederate battlefields. Lincoln’s Spies follows four agents from the North—three men and one woman—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration after he learns of an assassination attempt from his agents working undercover as Confederate soldiers. But he proved less than competent as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Sharpe deployed secret agents throughout the South, planted misinformation with Robert E. Lee’s army, and outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets that she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of history. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. He assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, DC. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these operatives was Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take whatever chances necessary to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies is a “meticulous chronicle of all facets of Lincoln’s war effort” (Kirkus Reviews) and an excellent choice for those wanting “a cracking good tale” (Publishers Weekly) of espionage in the Civil War.
Author: Harold Holzer Publisher: Fordham Univ Press ISBN: 0823265641 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 366
Book Description
In these 16 essays, Lincoln scholars offer fresh perspectives and revealing new research on the life and times of America’s greatest president. Ubiquitous and enigmatic, the historical Lincoln, the literary Lincoln, even the cinematic Lincoln have all proved both fascinating and irresistible. Though some 16,000 books have been written about him, there is always more to say, new aspects of his life to consider, new facets of his persona to explore. Exploring Lincoln offers a selection of sixteen enlightening and entertaining papers presented at the Lincoln Forum symposia over the past three years. Shining new light on particular aspects of Lincoln’s life and his tragically abbreviated presidency—from his work on the campaign trail to his fraught relationship with General McClellan to Mary Lincoln’s mental health—Exploring Lincoln presents a compelling snapshot of current Lincoln scholarship and a fascinating window into understanding America’s greatest president.
Author: Robert V. Bruce
Author: Robert V. Bruce
Author: Thomas B. Allen
Author: Burrus M. Carnahan
Author: Tom Wheeler
Author: Louis A. Del Monte
Author: William Henry Herndon
Author: Brian Kilmeade
Author: James Lander
Author: Douglas Waller
Author: Harold Holzer