A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans

A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans PDF Author: Albert Gaius Hills
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078647193X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book contains the transcribed journals and reports of a war correspondent for the Boston Journal covering the campaign that captured New Orleans in 1862. Hills' journals begin in November 1861 and describe the Union preparations for the main assault and subsequent move up the Mississippi river, the attack on forts Jackson and St. Phillip, and his impression of the captured city. His observations from Union vessels in the Gulf Squadron as he covered the war in the Gulf are also included. His articles for the Boston Journal have herein been set near timely journal entries along with other notes to help the reader understand the context of what was going on in the war at the same time. A narrative of Hills' life using available records and family documents is included.

A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans

A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans PDF Author: Albert Gaius Hills
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078647193X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book contains the transcribed journals and reports of a war correspondent for the Boston Journal covering the campaign that captured New Orleans in 1862. Hills' journals begin in November 1861 and describe the Union preparations for the main assault and subsequent move up the Mississippi river, the attack on forts Jackson and St. Phillip, and his impression of the captured city. His observations from Union vessels in the Gulf Squadron as he covered the war in the Gulf are also included. His articles for the Boston Journal have herein been set near timely journal entries along with other notes to help the reader understand the context of what was going on in the war at the same time. A narrative of Hills' life using available records and family documents is included.

An Absolute Massacre

An Absolute Massacre PDF Author: James G. Hollandsworth, Jr.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807130292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
In the summer of 1866, racial tensions ran high in Louisiana as a constitutional convention considered disenfranchising former Confederates and enfranchising blacks. On July 30, a procession of black suffrage supporters pushed through an angry throng of hostile whites. Words were exchanged, shots rang out, and within minutes a riot erupted with unrestrained fury. When it was over, at least forty-eight men—an overwhelming majority of them black—lay dead and more than two hundred had been wounded. In An Absolute Massacre, James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., examines the events surrounding the confrontation and offers a compelling look at the racial tinderbox that was the post-Civil War South.

William Howard Russell's Civil War

William Howard Russell's Civil War PDF Author: William Howard Russell
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820332003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Having won renown in the 1850s for his vivid warfront dispatches from the Crimea, William Howard Russell was the most celebrated foreign journalist in America during the first year of the Civil War. As a special correspondent for The Times of London, Russell was charged with explaining the American crisis to a British audience, but his reports also had great impact in America. They so alienated both sides, North and South, that Russell was forced to return to England prematurely in April 1862. My Diary North and South (1863), Russell's published account of his visit remains a classic of Civil War literature. It was not in fact a diary but a narrative reconstruction of the author's journeys and observations based on his private notebooks and published dispatches. Despite his severe criticisms of American society and conduct, Russell offered in that work generally sympathetic characterizations of the Northern and Southern leadership during the war. In this new volume, Martin Crawford brings together the journalist's original diary and a selection of his private correspondence to resurrect the fully uninhibited Russell and to provide, accordingly, a true documentary record of this important visitor's first impressions of America during the early months of its greatest crisis. Over the course of his visit, Russell traveled widely throughout the Union and the new Confederacy, meeting political and social leaders on both sides. Included here are spontaneous - and often unflattering - comments on such prominent figures as William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis, Mary Todd Lincoln, and George B. McClellan, as well as quick sketches of New York, Washington, New Orleans, and other cities. Alsorevealed for the first time are the anxiety and despair that Russell experienced during his visit - a state induced by his own self-doubt, by concern over the health and situation of his wife in England, and, finally, by the bitter criticism he received in America over his reports, especially his famous description of the Union retreat from Bull Run in July 1861. A sometimes vain and pompous figure, Russell also emerges here as an individual of exceptional tenacity - a man who abhorred slavery and remained convinced of the essential rectitude of the Northern cause even as he criticized Northern leaders, their lack of preparedness for war, and the apparent disunity of the Northern population. In calmer times, Crawford notes, Russell's independent qualities might have brought him admiration, but in the turbulent climate of Civil War America they succeeded only in arousing deep suspicion.

A Bohemian Brigade

A Bohemian Brigade PDF Author: James M. Perry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Focusing on a self-proclaimed "bohemian brigade" of Civil War journalists, this volume considers the nature of combat correspondence. Perry describes how competition drove journalists to file stories prematurely, sometimes erroneously predicting the outcome of battles. He also considers army commanders' distrust of war correspondents in spite of their sometimes important contributions.

Lt. Spalding in Civil War Louisiana

Lt. Spalding in Civil War Louisiana PDF Author: Michael D. Pierson
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807164410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In July 1862, Union Lieutenant Stephen Spalding wrote a long letter from his post in Algiers, Louisiana, to his former college roommate. Equally fascinating and unsettling for modern readers, the comic cynicism of the young soldier’s correspondence offers an unusually candid and intimate account of military life and social change on the southern front. A captivating primary source, Spalding’s letter is reproduced here for the first time, along with contextual analysis and biographical detail, by Michael D. Pierson. Lt. Spalding in Civil War Louisiana lifts the curtain on the twenty-two-year-old’s elitist social attitudes and his consuming ambition, examining the mind of a man of privilege as he turns to humor to cope with unwelcome realities. Spalding and his correspondent, James Peck, both graduates of the University of Vermont, lived in a society dominated by elite young men, with advantages granted by wealth, gender, race, and birth. Caught in the middle of the Civil War, Spalding adopts a light-hearted tone in his letter, both to mask his most intimate thoughts and fears and distance himself from those he perceives as social inferiors. His jokes show us an unpleasantly stratified America, with blacks, women, and the men in the ranks subjected to ridicule and even physical abuse by an officer with more assertiveness than experience. His longest story, a wild escapade in New Orleans that included abundant drinking and visits to two brothels, gives us a glimpse of a world in which men bonded through excess and indulgence. More poignantly, tactless jests about death, told as his unit suffers its first casualties, reveal a man struggling to come to terms with mortality. Evidence of Spalding’s unfulfilled aspirations, like his sometimes disturbing wit, allows readers to see past his entitlement to his human weaknesses. An engrossing picture of a charismatic but flawed young officer, Lt. Spalding in Civil War Louisiana offers new ways to look at the society that shaped him.

My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune

My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune PDF Author: Jean-Charles Houzeau
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807167231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
When Belgian scientist Jean-Charles Houzeau arrived in New Orleans in 1857, he was disturbed that America, founded on the principle of freedom, still tolerated the institution of slavery. In late 1864, he became managing editor of the New Orleans Tribune, the first black daily newspaper published in the United States. Ardently sympathetic to the plight of Louisiana’s black population and reveling in the fact that his dark complexion led many people to assume he was black himself, Houzeau passionately embraced his role as the Tribune’s editor and principal writer. My Passage at the New Orleans “Tribune,” first published in Belgium in 1872, is Houzeau’s memoir of the four years he spent as both observer and participant in the drama of Reconstruction. Houzeau records the efforts of New Orleans’s free blacks to secure their civil rights and to assume as well the cause of the newly freed slaves. With a scientist’s keen and sensitive eye, he observes the turmoil of Reconstruction in Louisiana and recalls the per-sonalities of the black leaders, the tensions within the black community, and his own day-to-day struggle to make the Tribune a nationally respected vehicle for the advancement of black rights and equality. Scholars have long recognized the importance of the New Orleans Tribune as a source for both southern and African American history. My Passage at the New Orleans “Tribune,” meticulously edited and annotated by David C. Rankin, offers a unique firsthand account of the newspaper’s operation and crusade, written by the energetic and dedicated man who guided it to prominence.

Occupied City

Occupied City PDF Author: Gerald Mortimer Capers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


The Letter Writer

The Letter Writer PDF Author: James Welsh
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781494849931
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Growing up in 1850s Alabama, Cooper Waterman longed to become a man of letters - a lofty dream for a handicapped lad who was poor and fatherless, and left school at 13 to become a shoeshine boy. But with his imagination, a notebook and a stub of a pencil, he rose to become a newspaper reporter, eventually going off to serve as a Civil War correspondent. Covering an epic American struggle, Cooper survives the siege of Vicksburg and rides through bloody cavalry battles with the formidable General Nathan Bedford Forrest, taking time along the way to write letters to home for hundreds of wounded or illiterate soldiers. Compelling, ringing with authenticity and told through the eyes of a southern journalist, The Letter Writer is a Civil War story remarkably different than any you may have ever read.

Mutiny at Fort Jackson

Mutiny at Fort Jackson PDF Author: Michael D. Pierson
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807832286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"The mutineers were soldiers primarily recruited from New Orleans's large German and Irish immigrant populations. Pierson shows that the new nation had done nothing to encourage poor white men to feel they had a place of honor in the southern republic. He argues that the mutineers actively sought to help the Union cause. In a major reassessment of the Union administration of New Orleans that followed, Pierson demonstrates that Benjamin "Beast" Butler enjoyed the support of many white Unionists in the city.".

The Union's Capture of New Orleans During the Civil War

The Union's Capture of New Orleans During the Civil War PDF Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781508952930
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the campaign and occupation written by Benjamin Butler and others *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." - Benjamin Butler's General Order No. 28 In 1860, New Orleans was just as unique a city as it is today. It was racially and linguistically diverse, with many French, German, and Spanish speakers, and a population of white, black, and mixed-race inhabitants. Louisiana's population was 47% slave and also had one of the largest numbers of free blacks in the country. Situated near the mouth of the continent's largest river, the Mississippi, it was an international center for trade and industry. New Orleans was the sixth largest city in the country and the largest in any of the states that would end up joining the Confederacy. The volume of trade through its port was second only to New York, and the city's commercial ties with England and Spain and cultural ties with France meant that the European powers would be looking closely at how the city fared in the Civil War, especially after it was occupied by Union forces. The Lincoln administration, fearful of European meddling in the war effort, had to constantly keep European opinion in mind when dealing with the captured city, and the story of New Orleans in the Civil War is one of far-reaching political, racial, and social tensions. Given its importance, it's somewhat surprising in retrospect that the Union managed to capture New Orleans in an easier manner than places like Vicksburg and Atlanta. Admiral David Farragut's naval forces battered their shaky Confederate counterparts and were able to get over a dozen ships upriver past a couple of crucial Confederate forts along the Mississippi. By May 1862, Union forces occupied the city and General Benjamin Butler became its military governor, leaving the last true bastion of Confederate defenses on the Mississippi at Vicksburg. When Grant captured that in July 1863, the Union controlled the entire river and essentially cut the Confederacy in two. In many ways, the occupation of New Orleans for the rest of the war is as intriguing a story as the campaign to capture it. Butler was a political general, and while he would go on to be a politician in the North after the war, he became the most reviled man in the South as a result of his reign in New Orleans. During a governorship that helped earn him the moniker "Beast," Butler became notorious for several acts, including seizing a massive amount of money that had been deposited in the Dutch consul's office. But it was General Order No. 28, which said any woman in town who insulted a member of the Army would be treated like "a "woman of the town plying her avocation" (in other words, she'd be treated as a prostitute) that earned widespread condemnation across the nation, and even abroad in England. Butler was considered so brutal in the South that Confederate president Jefferson Davis personally ordered that he should be executed if he was captured. As it turned out, he never was, and when he was recalled east, he served in commands for the duration of the war before going on to a distinguished political career. The Union's Capture of New Orleans during the Civil War: The Campaign for the Confederacy's Most Important Mississippi River Stronghold chronicles the history of the campaign and the occupation of New Orleans by the Union in 1862.