Engineering Security

Engineering Security PDF Author: Mark A. Smith
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817359907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Thorough examination of the antebellum fortifications that formed the backbone of U.S. military defense during the National Period The system of coastal defenses built by the federal government after the War of 1812 was more than a series of forts standing guard over a watery frontier. It was an integrated and comprehensive plan of national defense developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and it represented the nation’s first peacetime defense policy. Known as the Third System since it replaced two earlier attempts, it included coastal fortifications but also denoted the values of the society that created it. The governing defense policy was one that combined permanent fortifications to defend seaports, a national militia system, and a small regular army. The Third System remained the defense paradigm in the United States from 1816 to 1861, when the onset of the Civil War changed the standard. In addition to providing the country with military security, the system also provided the context for the ongoing discussion in Congress over national defense through annual congressional debates on military funding.

Engineering Security

Engineering Security PDF Author: Mark A. Smith
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817359907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Thorough examination of the antebellum fortifications that formed the backbone of U.S. military defense during the National Period The system of coastal defenses built by the federal government after the War of 1812 was more than a series of forts standing guard over a watery frontier. It was an integrated and comprehensive plan of national defense developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and it represented the nation’s first peacetime defense policy. Known as the Third System since it replaced two earlier attempts, it included coastal fortifications but also denoted the values of the society that created it. The governing defense policy was one that combined permanent fortifications to defend seaports, a national militia system, and a small regular army. The Third System remained the defense paradigm in the United States from 1816 to 1861, when the onset of the Civil War changed the standard. In addition to providing the country with military security, the system also provided the context for the ongoing discussion in Congress over national defense through annual congressional debates on military funding.

Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron

Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron PDF Author: Ronald Utt
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
ISBN: 1621570029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
Chronicles the naval history of the War of 1812 and the birth of the United States Navy, when a small American force stunningly defeated the powerful British Navy in a series of battles.

Amateurs, to Arms!

Amateurs, to Arms! PDF Author: John R. Elting
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616202866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Begun in ignorance of the military reality, the War of 1812 was our "most unmilitary war," fought catch-as-catch-can with raw troops, incompetent officers, and appallingly inadequate logistics. American soil was invaded along three frontiers, thte nation's capital was occupied and burned, and the secession of the New England states loomed as a possibility. In Amateurs, to Arms! distinguished military historian Colonel John R. Elting shows how the young republic fought and almost lost its "Second War for Independence," and how it was saved by the handful of amateur soldiers and sailors who survived, masters their deadly new professions, and somehow battled Great Britain to a standstill along our wilderness borders and on the high seas.

Neither Victor nor Vanquished

Neither Victor nor Vanquished PDF Author: William Weber
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612346073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In 1812, less than forty years after breaking from Britain, the United States found itself in another war with its former colonial master. Now, during the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812 comes Neither Victor nor Vanquished, William Weber's reappraisal of this critical but frequently misunderstood conflict.

Sword of the Border

Sword of the Border PDF Author: John D. Morris
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873386593
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Jacob Jennings Brown was one of the most successful generals of his era, and his military reforms were still in operation in the 20th century. This text presents a study of his career, focusing on his involvement in the creation of a professional army and the establishment of a command structure.

Hacks, Sycophants, Adventurers & Heroes

Hacks, Sycophants, Adventurers & Heroes PDF Author: David G. Fitz-Enz
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications
ISBN: 1589797000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Often confused by advisors of little military talent, President James Madison put his trust, and that of the people, in the grasp of hacks, sycophants, adventurers, and a few good men. This is the story of the good, the bad, and the outrageous that held the future of the young nation in their hands and prevailed in spite of a twenty-one-ship navy and an amateur army, pitched at the greatest military machine of its time.

Titan

Titan PDF Author: William R. Nester
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806155337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Book Description
When the leaders of the French Revolution executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1793, they sent a chilling message to the hereditary ruling orders in Europe. Believing that monarchy anywhere presented a threat to democratic rule in France, the leaders of the revolution declared war on European aristocracies, including those of Great Britain. For more than twenty years thereafter, France and England waged a protracted war that ended in British victory. In Titan, William R. Nester offers a deeply informed and thoroughly fascinating narrative of how England accomplished this remarkable feat. Between 1789 and 1815, British leaders devised, funded, and led seven coalitions against the revolutionary and Napoleonic governments of France. In each enterprise, statesmen and generals searched for order amid a complex welter of bureaucratic, political, economic, psychological, technological, and international forces. Nester combines biographies of great men—the likes of William Pitt, Horatio Nelson, and Arthur Wellesley—with an explanation of the critical decisions they made in Britain’s struggle for power and his own keen analysis of the forces that operated beyond their control. Their efforts would eventually crush France and Napoleon and establish a system of European power relations that prevented a world war for nearly a century. The interplay of individuals and events, the importance of conjunctures and contingency, the significance of Britain's island character and resources: all come into play in Nester's exploration of the art of British military diplomacy. The result is a comprehensive and insightful account of the endeavors of statesmen and generals to master the art of power in a complex battle for empire.

Macedonian Armies after Alexander 323–168 BC

Macedonian Armies after Alexander 323–168 BC PDF Author: Nicholas Sekunda
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782003223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC threw the Macedonians into confusion; there was no capable heir, and no clear successor among the senior figures in Alexander's circle. Initial attempts to preserve the unity of Alexander's conquests gave way to a period of bloody and prolonged warfare. For well over a century the largely mercenary armies of Alexander's successors imposed their influence over the whole of the Near East, while absorbing local military practices. After Rome's decisive defeat of Carthage in 202 BC, Macedonia came under increasing pressure from the Romans. Three wars between the two powers culminated in the Roman victory at Pydna in 168 BC, which laid Alexander's empire to rest and established Roman hegemony in the Near East. Drawing upon a wide array of archaeological and written sources and written by a noted authority on the Hellenistic period, this survey of the organization, battle history and appearance of the armies of Alexander's successors is lavishly illustrated with specially commissioned full-colour artwork.

When Washington Burned

When Washington Burned PDF Author: Arnold Blumberg
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612001130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
A vivid account of the often forgotten 1812 conflict between a young United States and an imperial Britain, including maps and illustrations. Scarcely three decades after the United States won its independence, the massive strength of its mother country returned, seeking to enforce its will on its wayward offspring. The combats were various in scale and ferocity, stretching from the wilds of the Canadian border to the swamps of New Orleans, while on the high seas, the fledgling American navy slugged it out bravely with fearsome Britannia—and achieved shocking success. On land, the Americans initially had less luck and witnessed the burning of their new capital at Washington, DC, by British redcoats, even as a gallant bastion off Baltimore continued to hold its flag high beneath the “rockets’ red glare.” Though unnecessary for geopolitical purposes, as the war had already ended, Gen. Andrew Jackson punctuated the conflict profoundly with a disastrous defeat of Wellington’s veterans near the Crescent City. Lavishly illustrated with dozens of images of the fighting and the soldiers, this book illuminates an exciting, even if frequently forgotten, episode in our history—one of America’s first great crises.

Civil-Military Relations during the War of 1812

Civil-Military Relations during the War of 1812 PDF Author: Reginald C. Stuart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313381542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Civil-military relations in the era of the War of 1812 must be seen as a broad theme, not just the particular relationships between officers, military organizations, and civil government and civilians. Civil-military attitudes were interwoven in the lives of Americans and must be seen as ideological and social in character with political expressions. Secondarily, the War of 1812 was a transition period from the matrix of ideas inherited from English history and the War of Independence experience with an Atlantic orientation toward the national experience and continental orientation of the 19th Century. This book is a thematic exploration of civil-military themes in the era of the War of 1812. It begins with the immediate post-American Revolutionary era, the Constitutional Founding, and works through events in the 1790s and 1800s that illustrated how the Founding Fathers used the military as an aid to the civil power to maintain political order; how republican ideology colored the kind of military system American leaders in this era believed their country should have: in particular the heavy reliance upon the militia as an ideological ideal that failed in practice; the first glimmerings of volunteerism as an alternate, and later substitute for the militia idea; and an episodic use of military power to enforce civil political authority. The evolution of these civil-military themes occurred within the larger evolution of the United States as a small country with an Atlantic orientation perched along the eastern seaboard of North American into a continental country after 1815 because of the defeat of Indian tribes, the eclipse and elimination of Spanish territorial control in the Gulf of Mexico littoral and the trans-Mississippi West, and the rapprochement with Great Britain on sharing upper North America.