Chicago's Battery Boys

Chicago's Battery Boys PDF Author: Richard Brady Williams
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1611210062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1016

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Book Description
The history of an artillery unit and its role in the Civil War, at Vicksburg and beyond, with photos, maps, and illustrations. The celebrated Chicago Mercantile Battery was organized by the Mercantile Association, a group of prominent Chicago merchants, and mustered into service in August of 1862. The Chicagoans would serve in many of the Western theater’s most prominent engagements until the war ended in the spring of 1865. The battery accompanied Gen. William T. Sherman during his operations against Vicksburg as part of the XIII Corps under Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith. The artillerists performed well throughout the campaign at such places as Chickasaw Bluff, Port Gibson, Champion Hill, Big Black River, and the siege operations of Vicksburg. Ancillary operations included the reduction of Arkansas Post, Fort Hindman, Milliken’s Bend, Jackson, and many others. After reporting to Gen. Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Department of the Gulf, the Chicago battery transferred to New Orleans and ended up taking part in Banks’s disastrous Red River Campaign in Louisiana. The battery was almost wiped out at Sabine Crossroads, where it was overrun after hand-to-hand fighting. Almost two dozen battery men ended up in Southern prisons. Additional operations included expeditions against railroads and other military targets. Chicago’s Battery Boys is based upon many years of primary research and extensive travel by the author through Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Richard Williams skillfully weaves contemporary accounts by the artillerists themselves into a rich and powerful narrative that is sure to please the most discriminating Civil War reader. “Measures up to the standard of excellence set for this genre by the late John P. Pullen back in 1957 when he authored The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War.” —Edwin C. Bearss, from the Foreword

Chicago's Battery Boys

Chicago's Battery Boys PDF Author: Richard Brady Williams
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1611210062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1016

Get Book Here

Book Description
The history of an artillery unit and its role in the Civil War, at Vicksburg and beyond, with photos, maps, and illustrations. The celebrated Chicago Mercantile Battery was organized by the Mercantile Association, a group of prominent Chicago merchants, and mustered into service in August of 1862. The Chicagoans would serve in many of the Western theater’s most prominent engagements until the war ended in the spring of 1865. The battery accompanied Gen. William T. Sherman during his operations against Vicksburg as part of the XIII Corps under Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith. The artillerists performed well throughout the campaign at such places as Chickasaw Bluff, Port Gibson, Champion Hill, Big Black River, and the siege operations of Vicksburg. Ancillary operations included the reduction of Arkansas Post, Fort Hindman, Milliken’s Bend, Jackson, and many others. After reporting to Gen. Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Department of the Gulf, the Chicago battery transferred to New Orleans and ended up taking part in Banks’s disastrous Red River Campaign in Louisiana. The battery was almost wiped out at Sabine Crossroads, where it was overrun after hand-to-hand fighting. Almost two dozen battery men ended up in Southern prisons. Additional operations included expeditions against railroads and other military targets. Chicago’s Battery Boys is based upon many years of primary research and extensive travel by the author through Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Richard Williams skillfully weaves contemporary accounts by the artillerists themselves into a rich and powerful narrative that is sure to please the most discriminating Civil War reader. “Measures up to the standard of excellence set for this genre by the late John P. Pullen back in 1957 when he authored The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War.” —Edwin C. Bearss, from the Foreword

Chicago's Battery Boys

Chicago's Battery Boys PDF Author: Richard Brady Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781932714388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book sets forth in stunning detail the history of the "Battery Boys." Based upon years of primary research and a wealth of archival documents, this study features more than 100 previously unpublished wartime letters, diaries, and other eyewitness reports that enrich our understanding of what they endured for the cause of liberty and the Union.

Chicago's Battery Boys

Chicago's Battery Boys PDF Author: Richard Brady Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 630

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Book Description
The celebrated Chicago Mercantile Battery was organized by the Mercantile Association, a group of prominent Chicago merchants, and mustered into service in August of 1862. The Chicagoans would serve in many of the Western Theater's most prominent engagements until the war ended in the spring of 1865. The battery accompanied General William T. Sherman during his operations against Vicksburg as part of the XIII Corps under General A. J. Smith. The artillerists performed well throughout the campaign at such places as Chickasaw Bluffs, Port Gibson, Champion Hill, Big Black River, and the siege operations of Vicksburg. Ancillary operations included the reduction of Arkansas Post, Fort Hindman, Milliken's Bend, Jackson, and many others. After reporting to General Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Department of the Gulf, the Chicago battery transferred to New Orleans and ended up taking part in Banks' disastrous Red River Campaign in Louisiana. The battery was almost wiped out at Sabine Crossroads (Mansfield), where it was overrun after hand-to-hand fighting. Almost two dozen battery men ended up in Southern prisons. Additional operations included expeditions against railroads and other military targets. Chicago's Battery Boys is the based upon many years of primary research and extensive travel by the author through Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Williams skillfully weaves contemporary accounts by the artillerists themselves into a rich and powerful narrative that is sure to please the most discriminating Civil War reader. His study will be hailed as a classic unit history comparable to the wonderful regimental studies of the late 19th Century. Noted historian and author Edwin C. Bearss, in his long and extraordinary Foreword, writes this: "As a unit history, The Chicago Mercantile Battery and the Civil War in the Western Theater measures up to the standard of excellence set for this genre by the late John P. Pullen back in 1957 when he authored The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War."

Vicksburg

Vicksburg PDF Author: Donald L. Miller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1451641397
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize Winner of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. It took Grant’s army and Admiral David Porter’s navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender. In this “elegant…enlightening…well-researched and well-told” (Publishers Weekly) work, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city “with probing intelligence and irresistible passion” (Booklist). He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. With Vicksburg “Miller has produced a model work that ties together military and social history” (Civil War Times). Vicksburg solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but ultimately he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war—the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.

Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi, The

Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi, The PDF Author: Jim Woodrick
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1626197296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Even after a grueling forty-seven-day siege at Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant could not rest on his laurels. Just fifty miles away in Jackson, Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston and the "Army of Relief" still posed a threat to Grant's hard-won victory. General William Tecumseh Sherman countered by marching Union troops to Jackson. After a weeklong siege under a hot Mississippi sun, Johnston's army abandoned the city, leaving the fate of Jackson in the hands of Sherman's troops. Historian Jim Woodrick recounts the Civil War devastation and rebirth of Mississippi's capital.

Champion Hill

Champion Hill PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611210003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
The Mississippi battle between Grant’s and Pemberton’s forces that sealed Vicksburg’s fate. The Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The fighting on May 16, 1863, took place just twenty miles east of the river city, where the advance of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Federal army attacked Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s hastily gathered Confederates. The bloody fighting seesawed back and forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line, sending Pemberton’s army into headlong retreat. The victory on Mississippi’s wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him the command of the entire US armed forces. Timothy Smith, a historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive account of this long-overlooked battle. This book, winner of a nonfiction prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, is grounded upon years of primary research, rich in analysis and strategic and tactical action, and a compelling read.

Parading Patriotism

Parading Patriotism PDF Author: Adam J. Criblez
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1609090888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Parading Patriotism covers a critical fifty-year period in the nineteenth-century when the American nation was starting to expand and cities across the Midwest were experiencing rapid urbanization and industrialization. Historian Adam Criblez offers a unique and fascinating study of five midwestern cities—Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Indianapolis—and how celebrations of the Fourth of July in each of them formed a microcosm for the country as a whole in defining and establishing patriotic nationalism and new conceptions of what it was like to be an American. Criblez exposes a rich tapestry of mid-century midwestern social and political life by focusing on the nationalistic rites of Independence Day. He shows how the celebratory façade often masked deep-seated tensions involving such things as race, ethnicity, social class, political party, religion, and even gender. Urban celebrations in these cities often turned violent, with incidents marked by ethnic conflict, racial turmoil, and excessive drunkenness. The celebration of Independence Day became an important political, cultural, and religious ritual on social calendars throughout this time period, and Criblez illustrates how the Midwest adapted cultural developments from outside the region—brought by European immigrants and westward migrants from eastern states like New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The concepts of American homegrown nationalism were forged in the five highlighted midwestern cities, as the new country came to terms with its own independence and how historical memory and elements of zealous and belligerent patriotism came together to construct a new and unique national identity. This ground-breaking book draws on both unpublished sources (including diaries, manuscript collections, and journals) and copious but under-utilized print resources from the region (newspapers, periodicals, travelogues, and pamphlets) to uncover the roots of how the Fourth of July holiday is celebrated today. Criblez's insightful book shows how political independence and republican government was promoted through rituals and ceremonies that were forged in the wake of this historical moment.

The Red River Campaign and Its Toll

The Red River Campaign and Its Toll PDF Author: Henry O. Robertson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147662447X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The Red River Campaign in the spring of 1864 was one of the most destructive of the Civil War. The agricultural wealth of the Red River Valley tempted Union General Nathaniel P. Banks to invade with 30,000 troops in an attempt to seize control of the river and confiscate as much cotton as possible from local plantations. After three months of chaos, during which the countryside was destroyed and many slaves freed themselves, Banks was defeated by a smaller Confederate force under General Richard Taylor. This book takes a fresh look at the fierce battles at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, the Union army's escape from Monett's Ferry and the burning of Alexandria, and explains the causes and consequences of the war in Central Louisiana.

For Duty and Destiny

For Duty and Destiny PDF Author: Lloyd A. Hunter
Publisher: Indiana Historical Society
ISBN: 0871953692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
William Taylor Stott was a native Hoosier and an 1861 graduate of Franklin College, who later became the president who took the college from virtual bankruptcy in 1872 to its place as a leading liberal arts institution in Indiana. The story of Franklin College is the story of W. T. Stott, yet his influence was not confined to the school’s parameters. Stott was an inspirational and intellectual force in the Indiana Baptist community, and a foremost champion of small denominational colleges and of higher education in general. He also fought in the Eighteenth Indiana Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, rising from private to captain by 1863. Stott’s diary reveals a soldier who was also a scholar.

A Connecticut Yankee at War

A Connecticut Yankee at War PDF Author: Robert Grandchamp
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company
ISBN: 1455620785
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Of the many fascinating people whose lives have been nearly lost to history, George Lee Gaskell was one of the most interesting. Gaskell was a Union lieutenant, world traveler, polyglot, and politician with a keen eye for his surroundings and the natural world. His letters highlight the very human realities of his Army service that go beyond the monumental battles he fought in: Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and others. Fiercely anti-slavery and disgusted by the attitudes of some of the slaveholding planters in the South, Gaskell encountered these prejudices firsthand when he was promoted to second lieutenant and transferred to the United States Colored Troops serving in Louisiana. His remarkable story ranges from a one-room schoolhouse in Connecticut to the thriving metropolis of Zanzibar to war, life, and love on the banks of the Mississippi. Gaskell’s experiences, told through his own words in letters to his cherished sister and to his hometown newspaper, speak of an exceptional man forged in an extraordinary time.