Braxton Bragg

Braxton Bragg
Author: Earl J. Hess
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2016-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469628767

As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817–1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general's military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer. While Hess analyzes Bragg's many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army--including Bragg's superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates--reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general's personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.

Secessionism in African Politics

Secessionism in African Politics
Author: Lotje de Vries
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 509
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319902067

Secessionism perseveres as a complex political phenomenon in Africa, yet often a more in-depth analysis is overshadowed by the aspirational simplicity of pursuing a new state. Using historical and contemporary approaches, this edited volume offers the most exhaustive collection of empirical studies of African secessionism to date. The respected expert contributors put salient and lesser known cases into comparative perspective, covering Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea and South Sudan alongside Barotseland, Cabinda, and the Comoros, among others. Suggesting that African secessionism can be understood through the categories of aspiration, grievance, performance, and disenchantment, the book's analytical framework promises to be a building block for future studies of the topic.

The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession

The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession
Author: James Ker-Lindsay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-10-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199698392

At a time when the question of separatism is becoming increasingly significant in international politics, The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession is the first and only comprehensive account of the ways in which states fight acts of secession on the world stage.

From Awakening to Secession

From Awakening to Secession
Author: Timothy Stunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2000-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567305899

A major study of the impact of the Swiss RTveil (Awakening) on British evangelicals in the 1820s. This book provides an important synthesis of a variety of tendencies and movements which have usually been treated and understood as separate. By resisting the temptation to read back into the 1820s the partisan labels of later decades, Timothy Stunt rediscovers the common ground which was shared by a wide spectrum of Christians who were later seen as mutually hostile. The author considers the influence of the Awakening on radical attitudes to mission and ecclesiastical radicalism in Ireland, pre-Tractarian Oxford, and Scotland. In dealing with the reluctant movement towards secession from the established church, Stunt illuminates and reinterprets the origins of the early Catholic Apostolic Church and the Brethren.

Regional Politics and State Secession

Regional Politics and State Secession
Author: Nelson, Elizabeth A.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1839103779

While a number of movements seek state secession, the majority never achieves internationally recognized statehood. Paradoxically, some movements that have succeeded have had weaker claims to statehood than many movements that have failed. Regional Politics and State Secession seeks to explain the variation in outcomes for secessionist movements. Why do some movements succeed when so many fail?

Rebel Gold

Rebel Gold
Author: Warren Getler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2008-06-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439108943

As a boy growing up in rural Arkansas, Bob Brewer often heard from his uncle and his great-uncle about a particular tree in the woods, the "Bible Tree," filled with strange carvings. Years later he would learn that this tree was carved with symbols associated with the Knights of the Golden Circle, a Civil War­era secret society that had buried gold coins and other treasure in various remote locations across the South and Southwest in hopes of someday funding a second War Between the States. These secret caches were guarded by sentinels, men whose responsibility it was to watch and protect these sites. To his astonishment, Bob discovered that both his uncle and his great-uncle had been twentieth-century sentinels, and that he had grown up near an important KGC treasure site. In Shadow of the Sentinel, Bob Brewer and investigative journalist Warren Getler tell the fascinating story of the Knights of the Golden Circle and the hidden caches the KGC established across the country. Brewer reveals how, with agonizing effort, he eventually deciphered the fiendishly complicated KGC codes and ciphers, which drew heavily on images associated with Freemasonry. (Many of the key KGC post­Civil War leaders were Scottish Rite Masons, who used the cover of that secret fraternity to conduct their activities.) Using his knowledge of KGC symbolism to crack coded maps, Brewer has located several KGC caches and has recovered gold coins, guns, and other treasure from some of them. Shadow of the Sentinel is the most comprehensive account yet of the activities of the KGC after the Civil War and, indeed, into the 1900s. Getler and Brewer suggest that the clandestine network of KGC operatives was far wider than previously thought, and that it included Jesse James, the former Confederate guerrilla whose stage and bank robberies helped to fill KGC treasure chests. This is a rousing and provocative adventure that weaves together one man's personal quest with an intriguing, little-known chapter in America's hidden history.