Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier

Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier
Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
Total Pages : 262
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780807163597
ISBN-13 : 0807163597
Rating : 4/5 (97 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier by : M. Jane Johansson

Download or read book Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier written by M. Jane Johansson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War experiences of Albert C. Ellithorpe, a Caucasian Union Army officer commanding the tri-racial First Indian Home Guards, illuminate remarkable and understudied facets of campaigning west of the Mississippi River. Major Ellithorpe’s unit—comprised primarily of refugee Muscogee Creek and Seminole Indians and African Americans who served as interpreters—fought principally in Arkansas and Indian Territory, isolated from the larger currents of the Civil War. Using Ellithorpe’s journal and his series of Chicago Evening Journal articles as her main sources, M. Jane Johansson unravels this exceptional account, providing one of the fullest examinations available on a mixed-race Union regiment serving in the border region of the West. Ellithorpe's insightful observations on Indians and civilians as well as the war in the trans-Mississippi theater provide a rare glimpse into a largely forgotten aspect of the conflict. He wrote extensively about the role of Indian troops, who served primarily as scouts and skirmishers, and on the nature of guerrilla warfare in the West. Ellithorpe also exposed internal problems in his regiment; some of his most dramatic entries concern his own charges against Caucasian officers, one of whom allegedly stole money from the unit's African American interpreters. Compiled here for the first time, Ellithorpe’s commentary on the war adds a new chapter to our understanding of America’s most complicated and tragic conflict.

Bonds of Salvation

Bonds of Salvation
Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
Total Pages : 334
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780807174524
ISBN-13 : 0807174521
Rating : 4/5 (24 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Bonds of Salvation by : Ben Wright

Download or read book Bonds of Salvation written by Ben Wright and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Wright’s Bonds of Salvation demonstrates how religion structured the possibilities and limitations of American abolitionism during the early years of the republic. From the American Revolution through the eruption of schisms in the three largest Protestant denominations in the 1840s, this comprehensive work lays bare the social and religious divides that culminated in secession and civil war. Historians often emphasize status anxieties, market changes, biracial cooperation, and political maneuvering as primary forces in the evolution of slavery in the United States. Wright instead foregrounds the pivotal role religion played in shaping the ideological contours of the early abolitionist movement. Wright first examines the ideological distinctions between religious conversion and purification in the aftermath of the Revolution, when a small number of white Christians contended that the nation must purify itself from slavery before it could fulfill its religious destiny. Most white Christians disagreed, focusing on visions of spiritual salvation over the practical goal of emancipation. To expand salvation to all, they created new denominations equipped to carry the gospel across the American continent and eventually all over the globe. These denominations established numerous reform organizations, collectively known as the “benevolent empire,” to reckon with the problem of slavery. One affiliated group, the American Colonization Society (ACS), worked to end slavery and secure white supremacy by promising salvation for Africa and redemption for the United States. Yet the ACS and its efforts drew strong objections. Proslavery prophets transformed expectations of expanded salvation into a formidable antiabolitionist weapon, framing the ACS's proponents as enemies of national unity. Abolitionist assertions that enslavers could not serve as agents of salvation sapped the most potent force in American nationalism—Christianity—and led to schisms within the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches. These divides exacerbated sectional hostilities and sent the nation farther down the path to secession and war. Wright’s provocative analysis reveals that visions of salvation both created and almost destroyed the American nation.

Colonels in Blue--Missouri and the Western States and Territories

Colonels in Blue--Missouri and the Western States and Territories
Author :
Publisher : McFarland
Total Pages : 250
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781476675893
ISBN-13 : 1476675899
Rating : 4/5 (93 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Colonels in Blue--Missouri and the Western States and Territories by : Roger D. Hunt

Download or read book Colonels in Blue--Missouri and the Western States and Territories written by Roger D. Hunt and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biographical dictionary catalogs the Union army colonels who commanded regiments from Missouri and the western States and Territories during the Civil War. The seventh volume in a series documenting Union army colonels, this book details the lives of officers who did not advance beyond that rank. Included for each colonel are brief biographical excerpts and any available photographs, many of them published for the first time.

The Second Colorado Cavalry

The Second Colorado Cavalry
Author :
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages : 289
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780806166902
ISBN-13 : 0806166908
Rating : 4/5 (02 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Second Colorado Cavalry by : Christopher M. Rein

Download or read book The Second Colorado Cavalry written by Christopher M. Rein and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War, the Second Colorado Volunteer Regiment played a vital and often decisive role in the fight for the Union on the Great Plains—and in the westward expansion of the American empire. Christopher M. Rein’s The Second Colorado Cavalry is the first in-depth history of this regiment operating at the nexus of the Civil War and the settlement of the American West. Composed largely of footloose ’59ers who raced west to participate in the gold rush in Colorado, the troopers of the Second Colorado repelled Confederate invasions in New Mexico and Indian Territory before wading into the Burned District along the Kansas border, the bloodiest region of the guerilla war in Missouri. In 1865, the regiment moved back out onto the plains, applying what it had learned to peacekeeping operations along the Santa Fe Trail, thus definitively linking the Civil War and the military conquest of the American West in a single act of continental expansion. Emphasizing the cavalry units, whose mobility proved critical in suppressing both Confederate bushwhackers and Indian raiders, Rein tells the neglected tale of the “fire brigade” of the Trans-Mississippi Theater—a group of men, and a few women, who enabled the most significant environmental shift in the Great Plains’ history: the displacement of Native Americans by Euro-American settlers, the swapping of bison herds for fenced cattle ranges, and the substitution of iron horses for those of flesh and bone. The Second Colorado Cavalry offers us a much-needed history of the “guerilla hunters” who helped suppress violence and keep the peace in contested border regions; it adds nuance and complexity to our understanding of the unlikely “agents of empire” who successfully transformed the Central Plains.

Cherokee Civil Warrior

Cherokee Civil Warrior
Author :
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages : 247
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780806192567
ISBN-13 : 0806192569
Rating : 4/5 (67 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Cherokee Civil Warrior by : W. Dale Weeks

Download or read book Cherokee Civil Warrior written by W. Dale Weeks and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2023-02-16 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the Cherokee Nation, the Civil War was more than a contest between the Union and the Confederacy. It was yet another battle in the larger struggle against multiple white governments for land and tribal sovereignty. Cherokee Civil Warrior tells the story of Chief John Ross as he led the tribe in this struggle. The son of a Scottish father and mixed-blood Indian mother, John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross’s efforts to protect the tribe’s interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century, from the forced removal policies of the 1830s to the exigencies of the Civil War era. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees, slaveholding and nonslaveholding, to remain neutral in a war they did not support—a position that became untenable when the United States withdrew its forces from Indian Territory. The vacated forts were quickly occupied by Confederate troops, who pressured the Cherokees to align with the South. Viewed from the Cherokee perspective, as Weeks does in this book, these events can be seen in their proper context, as part of the history of U.S. “Indian policy,” failed foreign relations, and the Anglo-American conquest of the American West. This approach also clarifies President Abraham Lincoln’s acknowledgment of the federal government’s abrogation of its treaty obligation and his commitment to restoring political relations with the Cherokees—a commitment abruptly ended when his successor Andrew Johnson instead sought to punish the Cherokees for their perceived disloyalty. Centering a Native point of view, this book recasts and expands what we know about John Ross, the Cherokee Nation, its commitment to maintaining its sovereignty, and the Civil War era in Indian Territory. Weeks also provides historical context for later developments, from the events of Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee to the struggle over tribal citizenship between the Cherokees and the descendants of their former slaves.

New Fields of Adventure

New Fields of Adventure
Author :
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
Total Pages : 402
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781621908623
ISBN-13 : 1621908623
Rating : 4/5 (23 Downloads)

Book Synopsis New Fields of Adventure by : M. Jane Johansson

Download or read book New Fields of Adventure written by M. Jane Johansson and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2024-05-10 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lyman Gibson Bennett (1832–1904) had a curious mind and a keen sense of humor. He had an engineer’s mentality and a poet’s grasp of language, except for spelling. As a Union soldier, Bennett saw extensive service in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A writer of considerable energy and intelligence, Bennett’s wartime diaries recount his diverse and wide-ranging military record, stretching geographically from the prairies of Illinois to the Rocky Mountains, while a postwar account details, among other things, his labors to recruit “Mountain Feds” in the Ozarks. This volume provides the perspective of an individual who was both a topographical engineer—with extensive experience that spanned the country from Arkansas to the Overland Trail—and a common soldier. As a member of the Thirty-Sixth Illinois Infantry, Bennett provided one of the most detailed contemporary accounts of the pivotal Battle of Pea Ridge, March 7–8, 1862. By December 1863, Bennett was promoted to first lieutenant in the newly formed Fourth Arkansas Cavalry (US) and wrote an invaluable first-person account of guerrilla fighting in the Ozark mountains. Readers will delight in Bennett’s witty descriptions of the ankles (and even higher!) of ladies as they gathered their skirts to trek through the mud; his sometimes-cutting words about his fellow hospital patients; and his wry comments on that “exclusively southern institution,” the chigger. New Fields of Adventure will prove useful to scholars of the Ozarks, landscape studies, and the Civil War in the West.

Women in Civil War Texas

Women in Civil War Texas
Author :
Publisher : University of North Texas Press
Total Pages : 312
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781574416510
ISBN-13 : 1574416510
Rating : 4/5 (10 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Women in Civil War Texas by : Deborah M. Liles

Download or read book Women in Civil War Texas written by Deborah M. Liles and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in Civil War Texas is the first book dedicated to the unique experiences of Texas women during the Civil War. It fills the literary void in Texas women’s history during this time, connects Texas women’s lives to southern women’s history, and shares the diversity of experiences of women in Texas during the Civil War. An introductory essay situates the anthology within both Civil War and Texas women’s history. Contributors explore Texas women and their vocal support for secession and in support of a war, coping with their husbands’ wartime absences, the importance of letter-writing as a means of connecting families, and how pro-Union sentiment caused serious difficulties for women. They also analyze the effects of ethnicity, focusing on African American, German, and Tejana women’s experiences. Finally, two essays examine the problem of refugee women in east Texas and the dangers facing western frontier women. These essays develop the historical understanding of what it meant to be a Texas woman during the Civil War and also contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the war and its effects.