Lincoln's Loyalists

Lincoln's Loyalists PDF Author: Richard Nelson Current
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555531249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
With this path-breaking book, Richard Nelson Current closes a major gap in our understanding of the important role of white southerners who fought for the Union during the Civil War. The ranks of the Union forces swelled by more than 100,000 of these men known to their friends as "loyalists" and to their enemies as "tories". They substantially strengthened the Union, weakened the Confederacy, and affected the outcome of the Civil War. Despite the assertions of southern governors that Lincoln would get no troops from the South to preserve the Union, every Confederate state except South Carolina provided at least a battalion of white troops for the Union Army. The role of black soldiers (including those from the South) continues to receive deserved attention. Curiously, little heed has been paid to the white southern supporters of the Union cause, and nothing has been published about the group as a whole. Relying almost entirely on primary sources, Current here opens the long-overdue investigation of these many Americans who, at great risk to themselves and their families, made a significant contribution to the Union's war effort. Current meticulously explores the history of the loyalists in each Confederate state during the war. Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia provided over 70 percent of the loyalist troops, but 10,000 from Arkansas, 7,000 from Louisiana, and thousands from North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama volunteered as well. The author weaves the separate state stories into an intriguing and detailed tapestry. The loyalists served in a variety of capacities--some performing mundane tasks, some fighting with valor. Whatever his individual role, each southerner joining the Unionconstituted a double loss to the Confederacy: a subtraction from its own ranks and an addition to the Union's. Undoubtedly, this played an important role in the Confederate defeat.

Lincoln's Loyalists

Lincoln's Loyalists PDF Author: Richard Nelson Current
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555531249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
With this path-breaking book, Richard Nelson Current closes a major gap in our understanding of the important role of white southerners who fought for the Union during the Civil War. The ranks of the Union forces swelled by more than 100,000 of these men known to their friends as "loyalists" and to their enemies as "tories". They substantially strengthened the Union, weakened the Confederacy, and affected the outcome of the Civil War. Despite the assertions of southern governors that Lincoln would get no troops from the South to preserve the Union, every Confederate state except South Carolina provided at least a battalion of white troops for the Union Army. The role of black soldiers (including those from the South) continues to receive deserved attention. Curiously, little heed has been paid to the white southern supporters of the Union cause, and nothing has been published about the group as a whole. Relying almost entirely on primary sources, Current here opens the long-overdue investigation of these many Americans who, at great risk to themselves and their families, made a significant contribution to the Union's war effort. Current meticulously explores the history of the loyalists in each Confederate state during the war. Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia provided over 70 percent of the loyalist troops, but 10,000 from Arkansas, 7,000 from Louisiana, and thousands from North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama volunteered as well. The author weaves the separate state stories into an intriguing and detailed tapestry. The loyalists served in a variety of capacities--some performing mundane tasks, some fighting with valor. Whatever his individual role, each southerner joining the Unionconstituted a double loss to the Confederacy: a subtraction from its own ranks and an addition to the Union's. Undoubtedly, this played an important role in the Confederate defeat.

The Union War

The Union War PDF Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674045629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union.

All for the Union

All for the Union PDF 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."

The war for the Union

The war for the Union PDF Author: Allan Nevins
Publisher: Konecky & Konecky
ISBN: 9781568522968
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
"This account of the first year of the Civil War is much more than a merely military chronicle in which politicians stride on and off the stage. This volume, the first of four dedicated to the War, is a study of the transformation of a nation. Dr. Nevins is supremely conscious of the chaos that faced Lincoln on inauguration day and well aware that confusion could not be finally routed before Appomattox. But the author is also positive that in the opening months of the conflict the first steps were taken to transform the loosely organized country that fretted over Bull Run into the firmly knit nation that emerged in 1865. The war was fought for a more perfect union, and this the reader is never allowed to forget."--Publisher's description.

Bonds of Union

Bonds of Union PDF Author: Bridget Ford
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469626233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
This vivid history of the Civil War era reveals how unexpected bonds of union forged among diverse peoples in the Ohio-Kentucky borderlands furthered emancipation through a period of spiraling chaos between 1830 and 1865. Moving beyond familiar arguments about Lincoln's deft politics or regional commercial ties, Bridget Ford recovers the potent religious, racial, and political attachments holding the country together at one of its most likely breaking points, the Ohio River. Living in a bitterly contested region, the Americans examined here--Protestant and Catholic, black and white, northerner and southerner--made zealous efforts to understand the daily lives and struggles of those on the opposite side of vexing human and ideological divides. In their common pursuits of religious devotionalism, universal public education regardless of race, and relief from suffering during wartime, Ford discovers a surprisingly capacious and inclusive sense of political union in the Civil War era. While accounting for the era's many disintegrative forces, Ford reveals the imaginative work that went into bridging stark differences in lived experience, and she posits that work as a precondition for slavery's end and the Union's persistence.

State of the Union

State of the Union PDF Author: Joshua Beckman
Publisher: Wave Books
ISBN: 1933517336
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
A political anthology from the front lines of American poetics.

Sacrifice All for the Union

Sacrifice All for the Union PDF 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

Calculating the Value of the Union

Calculating the Value of the Union PDF Author: James L. Huston
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807828045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
While slavery is often at the heart of debates over the causes of the Civil War, historians are not agreed on precisely what aspect of slavery-with its various social, economic, political, cultural, and moral ramifications-gave rise to the sectional rift.

The Union As It Is

The Union As It Is PDF Author: Peter B. Knupfer
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 080786255X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The first scholar to trace the meaning and importance of the idea of political compromise from the founding of the Republic to the onset of the Civil War, Knupfer shows how recurring justifications of sectional compromise reflected common ideas about the way governments were supposed to work. Originally published in 1991. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Daughters of the Union

Daughters of the Union PDF Author: Nina Silber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Daughters of the Union casts a spotlight on some of the most overlooked and least understood participants in the American Civil War: the women of the North. Unlike their Confederate counterparts, who were often caught in the midst of the conflict, most Northern women remained far from the dangers of battle. Nonetheless, they enlisted in the Union cause on their home ground, and the experience transformed their lives. Nina Silber traces the emergence of a new sense of self and citizenship among the women left behind by Union soldiers. She offers a complex account, bolstered by women's own words from diaries and letters, of the changes in activity and attitude wrought by the war. Women became wage-earners, participants in partisan politics, and active contributors to the war effort. But even as their political and civic identities expanded, they were expected to subordinate themselves to male-dominated government and military bureaucracies. Silber's arresting tale fills an important gap in women's history. She shows the women of the North--many for the first time--discovering their patriotism as well as their ability to confront new economic and political challenges, even as they encountered the obstacles of wartime rule. The Civil War required many women to act with greater independence in running their households and in expressing their political views. It brought women more firmly into the civic sphere and ultimately gave them new public roles, which would prove crucial starting points for the late-nineteenth-century feminist struggle for social and political equality.