Soldiering for Freedom

Soldiering for Freedom PDF Author: Herman J. Obermayer
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 160344601X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
"One of the few people alive today to have seen Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and other leaders of Third Reich, Obermayer wrote compellingly about the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg, describing Goering's leadership qualities when stripped of the symbols of rank. A Jew himself, Obermayer explained his reactions at the trials when he witnessed the first documentary confirmation that six million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust. He knew and wrote about the official U.S. Army hangman at Nuremberg."--Jacket

Soldiering for Freedom

Soldiering for Freedom PDF Author: Herman J. Obermayer
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 160344601X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
"One of the few people alive today to have seen Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and other leaders of Third Reich, Obermayer wrote compellingly about the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg, describing Goering's leadership qualities when stripped of the symbols of rank. A Jew himself, Obermayer explained his reactions at the trials when he witnessed the first documentary confirmation that six million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust. He knew and wrote about the official U.S. Army hangman at Nuremberg."--Jacket

Soldiering for Freedom

Soldiering for Freedom PDF Author: Bob Luke
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421413604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
The story of an enormous step forward in both the struggle for black freedom and the defeat of the Confederacy: turning former enslaved men into Union soldiers. After President Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, Confederate slaves who could reach Union lines often made that perilous journey. A great many of the young and middle-aged among them, along with other black men in the free and border slave states, joined the Union army. These U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), as the War Department designated most black units, materially helped to win the Civil War—performing a variety of duties, fighting in some significant engagements, and proving to the Confederates that Northern manpower had practically no limits. Soldiering for Freedom explains how Lincoln’s administration came to recognize the advantages of arming free blacks and former slaves and how doing so changed the purpose of the war. Bob Luke and John David Smith narrate and analyze how former slaves and free blacks found their way to recruiting centers and made the decision to muster in. As Union military forces recruited, trained, and equipped ex-slave and free black soldiers in the last two years of the Civil War, white civilian and military authorities often regarded the African American soldiers with contempt. They relegated the men of the USCT to second-class treatment compared to white volunteers. The authors show how the white commanders deployed the black troops, and how the courage of the African American soldiers gave hope for their full citizenship after the war. Including twelve evocative historical engravings and photographs, this engaging and meticulously researched book provides a fresh perspective on a fascinating topic. Appropriate for history students, scholars of African American history, or military history buffs, this compelling and informative account will provide answers to many intriguing questions about the U.S. Colored Troops, Union military strategy, and race relations during and after the tumultuous Civil War.

Soldiering For Freedom

Soldiering For Freedom PDF Author: Bob Luke
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 1421413744
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This Civil War history provides an in-depth look at the impact and experiences of African American men fighting in the Union Army. After President Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, many enslaved people in the Confederate south made the perilous journey north—then put their lives at risk again by joining the Union army. These U.S. Colored Troops, as the War Department designated most black units, performed a variety of duties, fought in significant battles, and played a vital part in winning the Civil War. And yet white civilian and military authorities often regarded the African American soldiers with contempt. In Soldiering for Freedom, historians John David Smith and Bob Luke examine how Lincoln’s administration came to the decision to arm free black Americans, how these men found their way to recruiting centers, and how they influenced the Union army and the war itself. The authors show how the white commanders deployed the black troops, and how the courage of the African American soldiers gave hope for their full citizenship after the war. Including twelve evocative historical engravings and photographs, this engaging and meticulously researched book provides a fresh perspective on a fascinating topic.

Soldiers in the Army of Freedom

Soldiers in the Army of Freedom PDF Author: Ian Michael Spurgeon
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806147229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
It was 1862, the second year of the Civil War, though Kansans and Missourians had been fighting over slavery for almost a decade. For the 250 Union soldiers facing down rebel irregulars on Enoch Toothman’s farm near Butler, Missouri, this was no battle over abstract principles. These were men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry, and they were fighting for their own freedom and that of their families. They belonged to the first black regiment raised in a northern state, and the first black unit to see combat during the Civil War. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom is the first published account of this largely forgotten regiment and, in particular, its contribution to Union victory in the trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War. As such, it restores the First Kansas Colored Infantry to its rightful place in American history. Composed primarily of former slaves, the First Kansas Colored saw major combat in Missouri, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. Ian Michael Spurgeon draws upon a wealth of little-known sources—including soldiers’ pension applications—to chart the intersection of race and military service, and to reveal the regiment’s role in countering white prejudices by defying stereotypes. Despite naysayers’ bigoted predictions—and a merciless slaughter at the Battle of Poison Spring—these black soldiers proved themselves as capable as their white counterparts, and so helped shape the evolving attitudes of leading politicians, such as Kansas senator James Henry Lane and President Abraham Lincoln. A long-overdue reconstruction of the regiment’s remarkable combat record, Spurgeon’s book brings to life the men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry in their doubly desperate battle against the Confederate forces and skepticism within Union ranks.

Freedom by the Sword

Freedom by the Sword PDF Author: William A. Dobak
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510720227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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Book Description
The Civil War changed the United States in many ways—economic, political, and social. Of these changes, none was more important than Emancipation. Besides freeing nearly four million slaves, it brought agricultural wage labor to a reluctant South and gave a vote to black adult males in the former slave states. It also offered former slaves new opportunities in education, property ownership—and military service. From late 1862 to the spring of 1865, as the Civil War raged on, the federal government accepted more than 180,000 black men as soldiers, something it had never done before on such a scale. Known collectively as the United States Colored Troops and organized in segregated regiments led by white officers, some of these soldiers guarded army posts along major rivers; others fought Confederate raiders to protect Union supply trains, and still others took part in major operations like the Siege of Petersburg and the Battle of Nashville. After the war, many of the black regiments took up posts in the former Confederacy to enforce federal Reconstruction policy. Freedom by the Sword tells the story of these soldiers' recruitment, organization, and service. Thanks to its broad focus on every theater of the war and its concentration on what black soldiers actually contributed to Union victory, this volume stands alone among histories of the U.S. Colored Troops.

Five for Freedom

Five for Freedom PDF Author: Eugene L. Meyer
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 161373574X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
On October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of eighteen raiders descended on Harpers Ferry. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house where they barricaded themselves until a contingent of US Marines battered their way in on October 18. The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown's fighters were five African American men—John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, and Osborne Perry Anderson—whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and who, even today, are little remembered. Only Anderson survived, later publishing the lone insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic American Civil War that followed. Five for Freedom is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they were born and raised, how they came together at this fateful time and place, and the legacies they left behind. It is an American story that continues to resonate.

Soldiers of Freedom

Soldiers of Freedom PDF Author: Kai Wright
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Pub
ISBN: 9781579122539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Looks at the history of African Americans in the Armed Forces, from Crispus Attucks at the Boston Massacre to the modern military life.

Freedom's Soldiers

Freedom's Soldiers PDF Author: Ira Berlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521634496
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Freedom's Soldiers tells the story of the 200,000 black men who fought in the Civil War, in their own words and those of eyewitnesses.

Freedom for Themselves

Freedom for Themselves PDF Author: Richard M. Reid
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 080783727X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
More than 5,000 North Carolina slaves escaped from their white owners to serve in the Union army during the Civil War. In Freedom for Themselves Richard Reid explores the stories of black soldiers from four regiments raised in North Carolina. Constructing a multidimensional portrait of the soldiers and their families, he provides a new understanding of the spectrum of black experience during and aftger the war.

WHEREAS

WHEREAS PDF Author: Layli Long Soldier
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979610
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
The astonishing, powerful debut by the winner of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics. —from “WHEREAS Statements” WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.” This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.