Essays on Delaware During the Civil War


Book Description

This collection of articles addresses the lives and experiences of Delawareans during the mid-nineteenth century in general and the Civil War in particular. It examines the subject matter from three perspectives, political, military and social, that combined provide an understanding of the issues and circumstances that influenced the people of Delaware and their leaders during this traumatic period. The objective of this publication is to provide an understanding of Delaware's role during those stressful years in our country's history. The citizens of Delaware were not found wanting when Northern and, to a certain extent, Southern leadership called upon them for political support and military service. From a societal point of view, specifically regarding racial equality, however, it is important to recognize the slow progress that Delawareans made over the next century following the Civil War.




The Philadelawareans, and Other Essays Relating to Delaware


Book Description

This volume presents a varied sampling of the author's writings from the past sixty years, along with some previously unpublished materials. It begins with a long prologue that the author calls a literary autobiography, and this story is continued and amplified in introductory notes that accompany each of the following items. the relationship between Delaware and the city of Philadelphia. This theme reappears in many guises in the background of other items as, for example, in a summary of New Castle's history, in an investigation of an experiment in nonresident representation in Congress, and in explanation of the unique importance of an early Wilmington collector of customs. In the last essay, previously unpublished, the relationship is personalized in a reminiscence contributing to the autobiographical theme with which the book began. at the University of Delaware.




They Fought for the Union


Book Description

One of the hardest fighting regiments in the Civil War, the First Delaware Volunteers battled in virtually every engagement with the Army of the Potomac's Second Corps from Antietam to Appomattox. The retelling of these extraordinary and oftentimes flawed men is riveting.




History of Delaware


Book Description




Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign


Book Description

“A fascinating book, and the most detailed account you will find about intelligence operations during the Gettysburg campaign.” —Dr. Vince Houghton, Historian/Curator, International Spy Museum, Washington, DC As intelligence experts have long asserted, “Information in regard to the enemy is the indispensable basis of all military plans.” Despite the thousands of books and articles written about Gettysburg, Tom Ryan’s groundbreaking Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign is the first to offer a unique and incisive comparative study of intelligence operations during what many consider the war’s decisive campaign. Based upon years of indefatigable research, the author evaluates how Gen. Robert E. Lee used intelligence resources, including cavalry, civilians, newspapers, and spies to gather information about Union activities during his invasion of the North in June and July 1863, and how this information guided Lee’s decision-making. Simultaneously, Ryan explores the effectiveness of the Union Army of the Potomac’s intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Both Maj. Gens. Joe Hooker and George G. Meade relied upon cavalry, the Signal Corps, and an intelligence staff known as the Bureau of Military Information that employed innovative concepts to gather, collate, and report vital information from a variety of sources.




Choosing Equality


Book Description

"Examines the desegregation experience, with a focus on the impact of the Supreme Court's decisions from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, through Parents Involved v. Seattle School District in 2007. Assesses desegregation in Delaware, one of the states involved in the original Brown litigation"--Provided by publisher.




The Civil War in the Border South


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.




Five Lectures on the American Civil War, 1861–1865


Book Description

The product of over thirty years of research on the American Civil War by Italy’s most renowned authority on the subject, this study synthetically analyzes the great drama that from 1861 to 1865 devastated the United States and gave life to the modern American nation. The book also highlights how the Civil War was the first conflict of the industrial age and an often neglected premonition of the two great world wars that shook the world in the twentieth century. The short essays presented here are the texts of five lectures delivered several years ago at the Istituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici in Naples and published in Italy in 1997.




Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction


Book Description

The importance of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the history of the United States cannot be overstated. Many historians regard the Civil War as the defining event in American history. At stake was not only freedom for 3.5 million slaves but also survival of the relatively new American experiment in self-government. A very real possibility existed that the union could have been severed, but a collection of determined leaders and soldiers proved their willingness to fight for the survival of what Abraham Lincoln called "the last best hope on earth." The second edition of this highly readable, one-volume Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction looks to place the war in its historical context. The more than 800 entries, encompassing the years 1844-1877, cover the significant events, persons, politics, and economic and social themes of the Civil War and Reconstruction. An extensive chronology, introductory essay, and comprehensive bibliography supplement the cross-referenced dictionary entries to guide the reader through the military and non-military actions of one of the most pivotal events in American history. The dictionary concludes with a selection of primary documents. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Civil War and Reconstruction.




Disestablishment and Religious Dissent


Book Description

On May 10, 1776, the Second Continental Congress sitting in Philadelphia adopted a Resolution which set in motion a round of constitution making in the colonies, several of which soon declared themselves sovereign states and severed all remaining ties to the British Crown. In forming these written constitutions, the delegates to the state conventions were forced to address the issue of church-state relations. Each colony had unique and differing traditions of church-state relations rooted in the colony’s peoples, their country of origin, and religion. This definitive volume, comprising twenty-one original essays by eminent historians and political scientists, is a comprehensive state-by-state account of disestablishment in the original thirteen states, as well as a look at similar events in the soon-to-be-admitted states of Vermont, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Also considered are disestablishment in Ohio (the first state admitted from the Northwest Territory), Louisiana and Missouri (the first states admitted from the Louisiana Purchase), and Florida (wrestled from Spain under U.S. pressure). The volume makes a unique scholarly contribution by recounting in detail the process of disestablishment in each of the colonies, as well as religion’s constitutional and legal place in the new states of the federal republic.