Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865

Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 PDF Author: Jay Monaghan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803236059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
The first phase of the Civil War was fought west of the Mississippi River at least six years before the attack on Fort Sumter. Starting with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Jay Monaghan traces the development of the conflict between the pro-slavery elements from Missouri and the New England abolitionists who migrated to Kansas. "Bleeding Kansas" provided a preview of the greater national struggle to come. The author allows a new look at Quantrill's sacking of Lawrence, organized bushwhackery, and border battles that cost thousands of lives. Not the least valuable are chapters on the American Indians’ part in the conflict. The record becomes devastatingly clear: the fighting in the West was the cruelest and most useless of the whole affair, and if men of vision had been in Washington in the 1850s it might have been avoided.

Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865

Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 PDF Author: Jay Monaghan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803236059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
The first phase of the Civil War was fought west of the Mississippi River at least six years before the attack on Fort Sumter. Starting with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Jay Monaghan traces the development of the conflict between the pro-slavery elements from Missouri and the New England abolitionists who migrated to Kansas. "Bleeding Kansas" provided a preview of the greater national struggle to come. The author allows a new look at Quantrill's sacking of Lawrence, organized bushwhackery, and border battles that cost thousands of lives. Not the least valuable are chapters on the American Indians’ part in the conflict. The record becomes devastatingly clear: the fighting in the West was the cruelest and most useless of the whole affair, and if men of vision had been in Washington in the 1850s it might have been avoided.

Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865

Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 PDF Author: Jay Monaghan
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
The Civil War and the years preceding it in Kansas and the Old Southwest.

Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border

Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border PDF Author: Donald Gilmore
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
ISBN: 9781455602308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
During the Civil War, the western front was the scene of some of that conflictï¿1/2s bloodiest and most barbaric encounters as Union raiders and Confederate guerrillas pursued each other from farm to farm with equal disregard for civilian casualties. Historical accounts of these events overwhelmingly favor the victorious Union standpoint, characterizing the Southern fighters as wanton, unprincipled savages. But in fact, as the author, himself a descendant of Union soldiers, discovered, the bushwhackersï¿1/2 violent reactions were understandable, given the reign of terror they endured as a result of Lincolnï¿1/2s total war in the West. In reexamining many of the long-held historical assumptions about this period, Gilmore discusses President Lincolnï¿1/2s utmost desire to keep Missouri in the Union by any and all means. As early as 1858, Kansan and Union troops carried out unbridled confiscation or destruction of Missouri private property, until the state became known as "the burnt region." These outrages escalated to include martial law throughout Missouri and finally the infamous General Orders Number 11 of September 1863 in which Union general Thomas Ewing, federal commander of the region, ordered the deportation of the entire population of the border counties. It is no wonder that, faced with the loss of their farms and their livelihoods, Missourians struck back with equal force.

The Border Between Them

The Border Between Them PDF Author: Jeremy Neely
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 082626591X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The most bitter guerrilla conflict in American history raged along the Kansas-Missouri border from 1856 to 1865, making that frontier the first battleground in the struggle over slavery. That fiercely contested boundary represented the most explosive political fault line in the United States, and its bitter divisions foreshadowed an entire nation torn asunder. Jeremy Neely now examines the significance of the border war on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri line and offers a comparative, cross-border analysis of its origins, meanings, and consequences. A narrative history of the border war and its impact on citizens of both states, The Border between Them recounts the exploits of John Brown, William Quantrill, and other notorious guerrillas, but it also uncovers the stories of everyday people who lived through that conflict. Examining the frontier period to the close of the nineteenth century, Neely frames the guerrilla conflict within the larger story of the developing West and squares that violent period with the more peaceful--though never tranquil--periods that preceded and followed it. Focusing on the countryside south of the big bend in the Missouri River, an area where there was no natural boundary separating the states, Neely examines three border counties in each state that together illustrate both sectional division and national reunion. He draws on the letters and diaries of ordinary citizens--as well as newspaper accounts, election results, and census data--to illuminate the complex strands that helped bind Kansas and Missouri together in post-Civil War America. He shows how people on both sides of the line were already linked by common racial attitudes, farming practices, and ambivalence toward railroad expansion; he then tells how emancipation, industrialization, and immigration eventually eroded wartime divisions and facilitated the reconciliation of old foes from each state. Today the "border war" survives in the form of interstate rivalries between collegiate Tigers and Jayhawks, allowing Neely to consider the limits of that reconciliation and the enduring power of identities forged in wartime. The Border between Them is a compelling account of the terrible first act of the American Civil War and its enduring legacy for the conflict's veterans, victims, and survivors, as well as subsequent generations.

Black Flag

Black Flag PDF Author: Th Goodrich
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Guerrillas
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
From 1861 to 1865, the region along the Missouri-Kansas border was the scene of unbelievable death and destruction. Thousands died, millions of dollars in property was lost, entire populations were violently uprooted. It was here also that some of the greatest atrocities in American history occurred. Yet in the great national tragedy of the Civil War, this savage warfare has seemed a minor episode. Drawing from a wide array of contemporary documents - including diaries, letters, and firsthand newspaper accounts - Thomas Goodrich presents a hair-raising report of life in this merciless guerrilla war. Filled with dramatic detail, Black Flag reveals war at its very worst, told in the words of the participants themselves. Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers, soldiers and civilians, scouts, spies, runaway slaves, the generals and the guerrillas - all step forward to tell of their terrifying ordeals.

Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri

Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri PDF Author: Jonathan Halperin Earle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780700619283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"This multi-faceted study gives readers a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the violence that erupted--long before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter--along the Missouri-Kansas border by blending the political and military with the social and intellectual history of the populace. The fifteen essays together explain why the divisiveness was so bitter and persisted so long, still influencing attitudes 150 years later"--

War to the Knife

War to the Knife PDF Author: Thomas Goodrich
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811766993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Marching armies, cavalry raids, guerilla warfare, massacres, towns and farms in flames—the American Civil War, 1861-1865? No—Kansas, 1854-1861. Before there was Bull Run or Gettysburg, there was Black Jack and Osawatomie. Long before events at Fort Sumter ignited the War Between the States, men fought and died on the Prairies of Kansas over the incendiary issue of slavery. “War to the knife and knife to the hilt,” cried the Atchison Squatter Sovereign. “ Let the watchword be ‘Extermination, total and complete.’” In 1854 a shooting war developed between proslavery men in Missouri and free-staters in Kansas over control of the territory. The prize was whether it would be a slave or free state when admitted to the Union, a question that could decide the balance of power in Washington. Told in the unforgettable words of the men and women involved, War to the Knife is an absorbing account of a bloody episode soon spread east, events in “Bleeding Kansas” have largely been forgotten. But as historian Thomas Goodrich reveals in this compelling saga, what America’s “first civil war” lacked in numbers it more than made up for in ferocity. War to the Knife is a riveting story of blood, fire, and death. It is also a story with an impressive cast of characters: Robert E Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman, Sara Robinson, Jeb Stuart, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley, Julia Lovejoy, William F. Cody. These and more step forward to tell their tale. And casting his long, dark shadow over al is the strange, haunting figure of John Brown—hailed as a prophet by some, denounced as a madman by others.

The Civil War in the Border South

The Civil War in the Border South PDF Author: Christopher Phillips
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 027599502X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The border states during the Civil War have long been ignored or misunderstood in general histories. This book corrects that oversight, explaining how many border state residents used wartime realities to redefine their politics and culture as "Southern." By studying the characteristics of those positioned along this fault line during the Civil War, the centrality of the war issue of slavery, which border residents long eschewed as being divisive, became apparent. This book explains how the process of Southernization occurred during and after the Civil War—a phenomenon largely unexplained by historians. Beyond the broader, more traditional narrative of the clash of arms, within these border slave states raged an inner civil war that shaped the military and political outcomes of the war as well as these states' cultural landscapes. Author Christopher Phillips describes how the Civil War experience in the border states served to form new loyalties and communities of identity that both deeply divided these states and distorted the meaning of the war for postwar generations.

Homesteading the Plains

Homesteading the Plains PDF Author: Richard Edwards
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496202295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
"Homesteading the Plains offers a bold new look at the history of homesteading, overturning what for decades has been the orthodox scholarly view. The authors begin by noting the striking disparity between the public's perception of homesteading as a cherished part of our national narrative and most scholars' harshly negative and dismissive treatment. Homesteading the Plains reexamines old data and draws from newly available digitized records to reassess the current interpretation's four principal tenets: homesteading was a minor factor in farm formation, with most Western farmers purchasing their land; most homesteaders failed to prove up their claims; the homesteading process was rife with corruption and fraud; and homesteading caused Indian land dispossession. Using data instead of anecdotes and focusing mainly on the nineteenth century, Homesteading the Plainsdemonstrates that the first three tenets are wrong and the fourth only partially true. In short, the public's perception of homesteading is perhaps more accurate than the one scholars have constructed. Homesteading the Plainsprovides the basis for an understanding of homesteading that is startlingly different from current scholarly orthodoxy. "--

Unpopular Sovereignty

Unpopular Sovereignty PDF Author: Brent M. Rogers
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803296444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Newly created territories in antebellum America were designed to be extensions of national sovereignty and jurisdiction. Utah Territory, however, was a deeply contested space in which a cohesive settler group the Mormons sought to establish their own popular sovereignty, raising the question of who possessed and could exercise governing, legal, social, and even cultural power in a newly acquired territory. In "Unpopular Sovereignty," Brent M. Rogers invokes the case of popular sovereignty in Utah as an important contrast to the better-known slavery question in Kansas. Rogers examines the complex relationship between sovereignty and territory along three main lines of inquiry: the implementation of a republican form of government, the administration of Indian policy and Native American affairs, and gender and familial relations all of which played an important role in the national perception of the Mormons ability to self-govern. Utah s status as a federal territory drew it into larger conversations about popular sovereignty and the expansion of federal power in the West. Ultimately, Rogers argues, managing sovereignty in Utah proved to have explosive and far-reaching consequences for the nation as a whole as it teetered on the brink of disunion and civil war. "