Author: Philip Hatfield, PhD
Publisher: 35th Star Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
The story of Captain John Valley Young personifies the body of rugged Union Army volunteers from West Virginia during the Civil War: highly resilient, stubbornly independent, and fiercely patriotic. Using Captain Young’s wartime letters to his wife, Paulina Franklin Young, and his daughters, Sarah and Emily Young, along with his diary and numerous other original soldier accounts, this book reveals the experiences of a Union soldier and his family who were truly willing to “Sacrifice All for the Union.” Young, a farmer and Methodist-Episcopalian minister prior to the Civil War, during April 1861 raised a company of Union volunteers at the strongly pro-Southern village of Coalsmouth, Virginia, (modern St. Albans, West Virginia). He was adamantly opposed to slavery, yet often expressed a bitter ire at having to fight a violent civil war because his beloved nation had thus far failed to eradicate the awful practice. While he displayed an unshakeable desire to preserve the Union, Young’s convictions were severely tested as he and his family faced constant dangers from guerillas and Confederate raids in the Kanawha Valley. Captain Young also participated in more than one hundred skirmishes and eleven major engagements in the bloody Shenandoah Valley, and at Petersburg, and Appomattox; more than any other Union officer from West Virginia. He died from tuberculosis in 1867, a sad irony after surviving some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. “…Stand firm to the good old Cause. I have just come from Charleston, and found while there that there will be a change of Commanders in the Department of [West] Virginia. The authorities feel determined that we shall have protection. But if we cannot have better protection than we have had, the country is ruined. But I assure you there will be a change for the better. I don’t know how you will get up to see me now. Well, we must bear it the best we can. Sacrifice All for the Union.” - Captain John Valley Young, Letter to his wife, February 3, 1862
Author: Philip Hatfield
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735073927
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
Using Captain Young's wartime letters to his wife, Paulina Franklin Young, and his daughters, Sarah and Emily Young, along with his diary and numerous other original soldier accounts, this book reveals the experiences of a Union soldier and his family who were truly willing to "Sacrifice All for the Union."
Author: Elisha Hunt Rhodes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307772705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
All for the Union is the eloquent and moving diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, featured throughout Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. Rhodes enlisted into the Union Army as a private in 1861 and left it four years later as a twenty-three-year-old colonel after fighting hard and honorably in battles from Bull Run to Appomattox. Anyone who heard these diaries excerpted in The Civil War will recognize his accounts of those campaigns, which remain outstanding for their clarity and detail. Most of all, Rhodes's words reveal the motivation of a common Yankee foot soldier, an otherwise ordinary young man who endured the rigors of combat and exhausting marches, short rations, fear, and homesickness for a salary of $13 a month and the satisfaction of giving "all for the union."
Author: Frances M. Clarke
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226108643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
This “layered, nuanced, and focused study” of Civil War era writings reveals a popular sense of patriotism and hope in the midst of loss (Journal of American History). The American Civil War is often seen as the first modern war, not least because of the immense suffering it inflicted. Yet unlike later conflicts, it did not produce an outpouring of disillusionment or cynicism in public or private discourse. In fact, most people portrayed the war in highly sentimental and patriotic terms. While scholars typically dismiss this everyday writing as simplistic or naïve, Frances M. Clarke argues that we need to reconsider the letters, diaries, songs, and journalism penned by Union soldiers and their caregivers to fully understand the war’s impact and meaning. In War Stories, Clarke revisits the most common stories that average Northerners told in hopes of redeeming their suffering and hardship—stories that enabled people to express their beliefs about religion, community, and personal character. From tales of Union soldiers who died heroically to stories of tireless volunteers who exemplified the Republic’s virtues, War Stories sheds new light on this transitional moment in the history of war, emotional culture, and American civic life.
Author: William Marvel
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469661861
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 491
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Book Description
Born into a distinguished military family, Fitz John Porter (1822-1901) was educated at West Point and breveted for bravery in the war with Mexico. Already a well-respected officer at the outset of the Civil War, as a general in the Union army he became a favorite of George B. McClellan, who chose him to command the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Porter and his troops fought heroically and well at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill. His devotion to the Union cause seemed unquestionable until fellow Union generals John Pope and Irvin McDowell blamed him for their own battlefield failures at Second Bull Run. As a confidant of the Democrat and limited-war proponent McClellan, Porter found himself targeted by Radical Republicans intent on turning the conflict to the cause of emancipation. He made the perfect scapegoat, and a court-martial packed with compliant officers dismissed him for disobedience of orders and misconduct before the enemy. Porter tenaciously pursued vindication after the war, and in 1879 an army commission finally reviewed his case, completely exonerating him. Obstinately partisan resistance from old Republican enemies still denied him even nominal reinstatement for six more years. This revealing new biography by William Marvel cuts through received wisdom to show Fitz John Porter as he was: a respected commander whose distinguished career was ruined by political machinations within Lincoln's administration. Marvel lifts the cloud that shadowed Porter over the last four decades of his life, exposing the spiteful Radical Republicans who refused to restore his rank long after his exoneration and never restored his benefits. Reexamining the relevant primary evidence from the full arc of Porter's life and career, Marvel offers significant insights into the intersections of politics, war, and memory.
Author: James G. Mendez
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 082328252X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A Great Sacrifice is an in-depth analysis of the effects of the Civil War on northern black families carried out using letters from northern black women—mothers, wives, sisters, and female family friends—addressed to a number of Union military officials. Collectively, the letters give a voice to the black family members left on the northern homefront. Through their explanations and requests, readers obtain a greater apprehension of the struggles African American families faced during the war, and their conditions as the war progressed. The original letters that were received by government agencies, as well as many of the copies of the letters sent in response, are held by the National Archives in Washington, D.C. This study is unique because it examines the effects of the war specifically on northern black families. Most other studies on African Americans during the Civil War focused almost exclusively on the soldiers.
Author: James G. Mendez
Publisher: North's Civil War
ISBN: 9780823282494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
This study analyzes the effects of the Civil War on northern black families as they sacrificed for a Union victory. This book especially studies the effects of the war on these families as they and their soldiers fully supported the Union war effort and strived to gain full American citizenship.
Author: Khizr Khan
Publisher:
ISBN: 0399592490
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Khan electrified viewers around the world when he took the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. When he offered to lend Donald Trump his own much-read and dog-eared pocket Constitution, his gesture perfectly encapsulated the feelings of millions. The oldest of ten children born to farmers in Pakistan, Khan was a university student who read the Declaration of Independence and was awestruck by what might be possible in life. He and his wife instilled in their children the ideals that brought to America, and then tragically lost a son, an Army captain killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq. Here Khan tells readers why we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.
Author: marjory Perez
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780989120975
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
The story of the African America men of western New York who served in the Union Army between 1863-1865; mainly the 54th Massachusetts, 55th Massachusetts, 5th Cavalry, 8th USCT, 14th Rhode Island Regiment Heavy Artillery (also called 11th USCHA), 20th USCT, 26th USCT, 31stUSCT and a list of the western New York men who served in other units.
Author: Matthew Warshauer
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819571393
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
“Serves as a model of what a state-level survey of the Civil War can achieve . . . a potent combination of description and analysis.” —The Civil War Monitor Connecticut in the American Civil War offers a remarkable window into the state’s involvement in a conflict that challenged and defined the unity of a nation. The arc of the war is traced through the many facets and stories of battlefield, home front, and factory. Matthew Warshauer masterfully reveals the varied attitudes toward slavery and race before, during, and after the war; Connecticut’s reaction to the firing on Fort Sumter; the dissent in the state over whether or not the sword and musket should be raised against the South; the raising of troops; the sacrifice of those who served on the front and at home; and the need for closure after the war. This book is a concise, amazing account of a complex and troubling war. No one interested in this period of American history can afford to miss reading this important contribution to our national and local stories.
