Kirby Smith's Confederacy

Kirby Smith's Confederacy
Author: Robert L. Kerby
Publisher: University Alabama Press
Total Pages: 562
Release: 1991
Genre: History
ISBN:

Offers a case study of a segment of American society that consumed itself by surrendering everything in pursuit of unattainable military victory With the surrender of Vicksburg in July 1863, the Confederacy's TransMississippi Department, which included Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, western Louisiana, and Indian Territory, was cut off from the remainder of the South. Robert Kerby's insightful volume, originally published in 1972, "has gone far toward filling one of the most conspicuous gaps in the literature on the Confederacy," according to The Journal of Southern History. Kerby investigates the many factors that led to the Department's disintegrating and offers a case study of a segment of American society that consumed itself by surrendering everything, including its principles and ideals, in pursuit of an unattainable military victory.

The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1865

The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1865
Author: William Royston Geise
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1954547439

William Royston Geise was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1970s when he researched and wrote The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861- 1865: A Study in Command in 1974. Although it remained unpublished, it was not wholly unknown. Deep-diving researchers were aware of Dr. Geise’s work and lamented the fact that it was not widely available to the general public. In many respects, studies of the Trans-Mississippi Theater are only now catching up with Geise. This intriguing book traces the evolution of Confederate command and how it affected the shifting strategic situation and general course of the war. Dr. Geise accomplishes his task by coming at the question in a unique fashion. Military field operations are discussed as needed, but his emphasis is on the functioning of headquarters and staff—the central nervous system of any military command. This was especially so for the Trans-Mississippi. After July 1863, the only viable Confederate agency west of the great river was the headquarters at Shreveport. That hub of activity became the sole location to which all isolated players, civilians and military alike, could look for immediate overall leadership and a sense of Confederate solidarity. By filling these needs, the Trans-Mississippi Department assumed a unique and vital role among Confederate military departments and provided a focus for continued Confederate resistance west of the Mississippi River. The author’s work mining primary archival sources and published firsthand accounts, coupled with a smooth and clear writing style, helps explain why this remote department (referred to as “Kirby Smithdom” after Gen. Kirby Smith) failed to function efficiently, and how and why the war unfolded there as it did. Trans-Mississippi Theater historian and Ph.D. candidate Michael J. Forsyth (Col., U.S. Army, Ret.) has resurrected Dr. Geise’s smoothly written and deeply researched manuscript from its undeserved obscurity. This edition, with its original annotations and Forsyth’s updated citations and observations, is bolstered with original maps, photographs, and images. Students of the war in general, and the Trans-Mississippi Theater in particular, will delight in its long overdue publication.

Theater of a Separate War

Theater of a Separate War
Author: Thomas W. Cutrer
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2023-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469666286

Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the Trans-Mississippi Theater was site of major clashes from the war's earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater's distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle.

Lost Causes

Lost Causes
Author: Bradley R. Clampitt
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2022-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807177652

This groundbreaking analysis of Confederate demobilization examines the state of mind of Confederate soldiers in the immediate aftermath of war. Having survived severe psychological as well as physical trauma, they now faced the unknown as they headed back home in defeat. Lost Causes analyzes the interlude between soldier and veteran, suggesting that defeat and demobilization actually reinforced Confederate identity as well as public memory of the war and southern resistance to African American civil rights. Intense material shortages and images of the war’s devastation confronted the defeated soldiers-turned-veterans as they returned home to a revolutionized society. Their thoughts upon homecoming turned to immediate economic survival, a radically altered relationship with freedpeople, and life under Yankee rule—all against the backdrop of fearful uncertainty. Bradley R. Clampitt argues that the experiences of returning soldiers helped establish the ideological underpinnings of the Lost Cause and create an identity based upon shared suffering and sacrifice, a pervasive commitment to white supremacy, and an aversion to Federal rule and all things northern. As Lost Causes reveals, most Confederate veterans remained diehard Rebels despite demobilization and the demise of the Confederate States of America.

The Ranger Ideal Volume 1

The Ranger Ideal Volume 1
Author: Darren L. Ivey
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 665
Release: 2017-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1574417010

Established in Waco in 1968, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum honors the iconic Texas Rangers, a service which has existed, in one form or another, since 1823. They have become legendary symbols of Texas and the American West. Thirty-one Rangers, with lives spanning more than two centuries, have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame. In The Ranger Ideal Volume 1: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1823-1861, Darren L. Ivey presents capsule biographies of the seven inductees who served Texas before the Civil War. He begins with Stephen F. Austin, “the Father of Texas,” who laid the foundations of the Ranger service, and then covers John C. Hays, Ben McCulloch, Samuel H. Walker, William A. A. “Bigfoot” Wallace, John S. Ford, and Lawrence Sul Ross. Using primary records and reliable secondary sources, and rejecting apocryphal tales, The Ranger Ideal presents the true stories of these intrepid men who fought to tame a land with gallantry, grit, and guns. This Volume 1 is the first of a planned three-volume series covering all of the Texas Rangers inducted in the Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas.

The Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, 1861-1865

The Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, 1861-1865
Author: Jeffery S. Prushankin
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2015
Genre: Missouri
ISBN:

If the Civil War had a "forgotten theater," it was the Trans-Mississippi West. Starting in 1861 with the Lincoln administration's desire to maintain control of the far west, Jeffery Prushankin covers battles in New Mexico, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, including Pea Ridge in March 1862 and Pleasant Hill in April 1864. The Red River Expedition and Price's Raid are also described. The narrative places these campaigns and battles in their strategic context to show how they contributed to the outcome of the war.

The Collapse of the Confederacy

The Collapse of the Confederacy
Author: Mark Grimsley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2002-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803271036

Practically all Civil War historians agree that after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864 and Lincoln's triumphant reelection in November, the South had no remaining chance to make good its independence. Well aware that Appomattox and Durham Station were close at hand, historians have treated the war's final months in a fashion that smacks strongly of denouement: the great, tragic conflict rolls on to its now-certain end. ø Certain, that is, to us, but deeply uncertain to the millions of Northerners and Southerners who lived through the anxious days of early 1865. The final months of the Confederacy offer fascinating opportunities-as a case study in war termination, as a period that shaped the initial circumstances of Reconstruction, and as a lens through which to analyze Southern society at its most stressful moment. The Collapse of the Confederacy collects six essays that explore how popular expectations, national strategy, battlefield performance, and Confederate nationalism affected Confederate actions during the final months of the conflict.

More Zeal Than Discretion

More Zeal Than Discretion
Author: Jimmy L. Bryan
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781603440707

Walter P. Lane emigrated from Ireland as a young boy, fought in three wars, sailed the Texas coast with a privateer, and traveled to California and Arizona in search of gold. What drove this man, who in many ways typifies the adventurers who contributed to the westward expansion in the United States during the early nineteenth century? Through his mining of personal papers, memoirs, contemporary sources, and archived collections, Jimmy L. Bryan Jr. has produced a comprehensive portrait of the man who charged across the field at San Jacinto, aided in the removal of Indians and Tejano settlers from the East Texas Redlands, stormed Monterrey with the Texas Rangers during the U.S.-Mexican War, commanded a brigade of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, supported the return to white rule during the turbulent Reconstruction era, and served the State of Texas in various public capacities. Bryan shows how the adventurism of Lane and his comrades provided both ethos and impetus for the westward migration. More Zeal than Discretion will appeal to historians and readers interested in Texas and the West, the Civil War, and the culture of American manhood.

Staff Ride Handbook For The Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863 [Illustrated Edition]

Staff Ride Handbook For The Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863 [Illustrated Edition]
Author: Dr. Christopher Gabel
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782899359

Includes over 30 maps and Illustrations The Staff Ride Handbook for the Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863, provides a systematic approach to the analysis of this key Civil War campaign. Part I describes the organization of the Union and Confederate Armies, detailing their weapons, tactics, and logistical, engineer, communications, and medical support. It also includes a description of the U.S. Navy elements that featured so prominently in the campaign. Part II consists of a campaign overview that establishes the context for the individual actions to be studied in the field. Part III consists of a suggested itinerary of sites to visit in order to obtain a concrete view of the campaign in its several phases. For each site, or “stand,” there is a set of travel directions, a discussion of the action that occurred there, and vignettes by participants in the campaign that further explain the action and which also allow the student to sense the human “face of battle.” Part IV provides practical information on conducting a Staff Ride in the Vicksburg area, including sources of assistance and logistical considerations. Appendix A outlines the order of battle for the significant actions in the campaign. Appendix B provides biographical sketches of key participants. Appendix C provides an overview of Medal of Honor conferral in the campaign. An annotated bibliography suggests sources for preliminary study.

The Forty-Eighters on Possum Creek

The Forty-Eighters on Possum Creek
Author: W. A. Trenckmann
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1933337869

The Forty-Eighters of Possum Creek: A Texas Civil War Story is a departure for State House Press. This remarkable work of vintage historical fiction focuses on the life of one young man, Kuno Sartorius, who grows up and comes of age in a community of educated German immigrants during the waning months of the Civil War. Author William Trenckmann serialized the novel in his newspaper, Das Bellville Wochenblatt [The Bellville Weekly]. His novel, Die Lateiner am Possum Creek is one of the few works of fiction to treat the plight of the minority Texas Germans during the war. However, it is more than a German story, and provides vignettes of all aspects of life, and of all classes in Texas, on both the home front and the Trans-Mississippi theater. Throughout are the young men from all walks of life brought together by Confederate conscription and facing the same hardships of war. Expertly translated and annotated by James C. Kearney, this novel becomes a shadow memoir of the American Civil War. The educated German settlers of Millheim had fled their native land because of strife and revolution, choosing the bucolic life on the Texas frontier over the sophisticated university towns of Germany. Their children, though, faced uncertainties of their own as Texas seceded and joined the Confederacy and depended on all military aged men to do their part in a cause few Germans in the neighborhood cared for, and to perpetuate slavery which most abhorred. Kearney’s notes help the reader navigate the story, and reveal the “story behind the story.”