United States Military History

G. Ward Hubbs uses a stark and iconic political cartoon to illuminate postwar conflicts over the meaning of freedom in the American South. The cartoon first appeared in the Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor, published by local Ku Klux Klan boss Ryland Randolph, as a swaggering threat aimed at three individuals. The four men associated with the cartoon were archetypes of those who were seeking to rebuild a South shattered by war. Their lives, but especially their four very different understandings of freedom, help to explain many of the conflicts of the 1860s.

America in the antebellum years was a deeply troubled country, divided by partisan gridlock and ideological warfare. The Civil War that followed brought America to the brink of self-destruction. But it also created a new country from the ruins of the old one - bolder and stronger than ever. No event in the war was more destructive, or more important, than William Sherman's legendary march through Georgia - crippling the heart of the South's economy, freeing thousands of slaves, and marking the beginning of a new era.

These stories begin with brief family histories that bring the Peltier and the Scottish Keillor families together. John was the fifth of the 12 children that Wilburn and Barbara Peltier raised on the flat salt grass prairie of Southeast Texas after they married. The life they created for their family on their rice farm and cattle ranch provided fertile ground for the life experiences that are shared in these settings. At the age of 19, naïve and fresh from the farm, John was drafted into the US Army. After surviving boot camp and medical corpsman training, he found himself in Vietnam.

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native enlisted when he turned 18, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home - all in the same day.

Their story was almost forgotten by history. Now known as the Wereth Eleven, these brave African-American soldiers left their homes to join the Allied effort on the front lines of WWII. As members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, they provided crucial fire support at the Siege of Bastogne. Among the few who managed to escape the Nazis' devastating Ardennes Offensive, they found refuge in the small village of Wereth, Belgium.

In Lincoln's Last Speech, renowned historian and author Louis P. Masur offers insight into this critical address and its vision of a reconstructed United States. Coming two days after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox and a week after the fall of Richmond, Lincoln's speech was expected to be a victory oration. Instead he looked to the future, discussing how best to restore the seceded states to the national government and even endorsing limited black suffrage.

Can you keep a secret? Maybe you can, but the United States government cannot. Since the birth of our country, nations large and small, from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen the most precious secrets of the United States. Written by Michael Sulick, former director of CIA's clandestine service, Spying in America presents a history of more than 30 espionage cases inside the United States.

Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under 12 defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.

An exciting and accurate portrayal of the military action in the southern colonies that led to a new American nation. A companion to Pancake's study of the northern campaign, 1777: The Year of the Hangman, this volume deals with the American Revolution in the Carolinas. Together, the two books constitute a complete history of the Revolutionary War.

While the Civil War is mainly remembered for its epic battles between the Northern and Southern armies, the Union was simultaneously waging another campaign - dubbed "Anaconda" - that was gradually depriving the South of industry and commerce, thus rendering the exploits of its field armies moot. When an independent Dixie finally met the dustbin of history, it was the North's coastal campaign, as much as the achievements of its main forces, that was primarily responsible.

In this impressive, well-researched biography, Phelps separates historical fact from long-standing myth to reveal the life of Nathan Hale, a young man who deserves to be remembered as an original American patriot. Using Hale's own journals and letters as well as testimonies from his friends and contemporaries, Phelps depicts the Revolution as it was seen from the ground.

General Sherman's Christmas opens on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 24, 1864, one month before Christmas. Sherman was relentlessly pushing his troops across Georgia, reaching Savannah days before Christmas. His methodical encroachment of the city from all sides eventually convinced Confederate general W. J. Hardee to slip away in darkness across an improvised causeway toward South Carolina to the north.

It was the most famous bank robbery of all time, involving the legendary James-Younger gang's final shocking holdup - the infamous Northfield Raid - and the thrilling two-week chase that followed. Mark Lee Gardner, author of the critically acclaimed To Hell on a Fast Horse, takes us inside Northfield's First National Bank and outside to the streets as Jesse James and his band of outlaws square off against the heroic citizens who risked their lives to defeat America's most daring criminals.

In 1832, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk attempted to forge an alliance to preserve the homelands of the confederated tribes on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Patrick J. Jung examines the causes, course, and consequences of the ensuing war with the U.S. Correcting mistakes that plagued previous histories, and drawing on recent ethno-historical interpretations, Jung shows the outcome can be understood by discussing intertribal rivalry, military ineptitude, and racial dynamics.

Long relegated to a secondary position behind Gettysburg, Vicksburg has more recently earned consideration by historians as the truly decisive battle of the Civil War. Indeed, Vicksburg is fascinating on many levels. A focal point of both western armies, the Federal campaign of maneuver that finally isolated the Confederates in the city was masterful. The Navy’s contribution to the Federal victory was significant. The science of the fortifications and siege tactics are rich in detail.

George Rogers Clark (1752-1818) led four victorious campaigns against the Indians and British in the Ohio Valley during the American Revolution, but his most astonishing coup was recapturing Fort Sackville in 1779 when he was only 26. For 18 days, in the dead of winter, Clark and his troops marched through bone-chilling nights to reach the fort. With a deft mix of guile and violence, Clark led his men to triumph without losing a single soldier.

How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political objectives and a vision of what victory means? In this provocative challenge to US policy and strategy, Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war, particularly limited wars.

The book is a history of the Western frontier at the end of the US Civil War. It covers the Sioux war that broke out in the Great Lakes region in detail, exploring the roots and results of the conflict.

Among the piles of obsolete farm and household implements, haystacks, dust, and debris abandoned in her historic barn, Katie Aldridge discovered a box containing the Civil War letters of Charles Freeman Biddlecom. Painstakingly transcribing and lightly editing more than 100 letters written by the soldier to his wife during his service, Ms. Aldridge resurrected the voice of the Civil War combat soldier. The tone and character of "Charlie's" detailed accounts of the war compelled Ms. Aldridge to find out more.

His name is carved in granite, his likeness cast in bronze, his legend as large as the role he played as America's first president. But before he was a commander-in-chief, George Washington was a general in a revolution that would decide the future of the people and land he called his own. Author Paul Vickery tracks the unlikely rise of Washington, a man whose stature in command of a young army became prelude to a presidency. As Vickery writes, "He learned to become the father of our country by first being the father of our military."