Many Excellent People


Book Description

Many Excellent People examines the nature of North Carolina's social system, particularly race and class relations, power, and inequality, during the last half of the nineteenth century. Paul Escott portrays North Carolina's major social groups, focusing on the elite, the ordinary white farmers or workers, and the blacks, and analyzes their attitudes, social structure, and power relationships. Quoting frequently from a remarkable array of letters, journals, diaries, and other primary sources, he shows vividly the impact of the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Populism, and the rise of the New South industrialism on southern society. Working within the new social history and using detailed analyses of five representative counties, wartime violence, Ku Klux Klan membership, stock-law legislation, and textile mill records, Escott reaches telling conclusions on the interplay of race, class, and politics. Despite fundamental political and economic reforms, Escott argues, North Carolina's social system remained as hierarchical and undemocratic in 1900 as it had been in 1850.




The Civil War in North Carolina, Volume 1: The Piedmont


Book Description

"I think that we can hold our position here against any force that the enemy can bring against us, as we have an admirable position & are all ready. I can give you no idea when the general attack will take place. It may be this evening, tomorrow or at any moment as both parties are apparently ready & we have nothing to do but pitch in."--Captain Charles C. Blacknall, "Granville Rifles," Company G, 23rd North Carolina Troops, Yorktown, Virginia, April 22, 1862 This work is a compilation of letters and diary entries (and a few other documents) that tell the Civil War experiences of soldiers and citizens from 29 North Carolina counties: Alamance, Alexander, Anson, Cabarrus, Caswell, Catawba, Chatham, Cleveland, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Gaston, Granville, Guilford, Iredell, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Moore, Orange, Person, Randolph, Richmond, Rockingham, Rowan, Stanly, Stokes, Union, and Yadkin. The book is arranged chronologically, 1861 through 1865, and a chart at the beginning of each chapter tells the date, subject, document type (letter, diary entry, or other), author, recipient, and the home county and unit of soldiers.




The Papers of Andrew Johnson


Book Description

The correspondence in this volume is related to Johnson's presidency during the Reconstruction Era, including the president's impeachment and the subsequent trial, which resulted in the Senate narrowly voting not to remove him from office.




Women Shaping the South


Book Description

"Expanded from papers presented at the Sixth Southern Conference on Women's History, this collection demonstrates how women of different races and classes transformed the South during its most crucial turning points, including post-Revolution, Civil War, Jim Crow era, World War I, and the civil rights movement"--Provided by publisher.




Ways of War


Book Description

From the first interactions between European and native peoples to the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, military issues have always played an important role in American history. Now in its updated second edition, Ways of War comprehensively explains the place of the military within the wider context of the history of the United States, showing its centrality to American culture, economics, and politics. The fifteen chapters provide a complete survey of the American military's evolution that is designed for semester-length courses. Features of the revised and fully-updated second edition include: • Chronological and comprehensive coverage of North American conflicts in the seventeenth century and all wars undertaken by the United States; • New or expanded sections on Non-English Colonization in Northeast North America, the Beaver Wars, Pontiac’s War, causes of the American Revolution, borderlands conflict from 1848 to 1865, causes of the American Civil War, Reconstruction, the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, Barack Obama’s second term as president, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of the Islamic State; • 50 revised maps, 20 new images, chapter timelines identifying key events, and text boxes providing biographical information and first-person accounts; • A companion website featuring a testbank of essay and multiple choice questions for instructors, as well as student study resources such as an interactive timeline, chapter summaries, annotated further readings, links to online resources, flashcards, and a glossary of key terms. Extensively illustrated and written by experienced instructors, the second edition of Ways of War remains essential reading for all students of American Military History.




Thomas Lanier Clingman


Book Description

Thomas Lanier Clingman: Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains is the first book-length biography of one of the most important, colorful, and controversial figures in nineteenth-century American life. A man of enormous intellect and intense ambition whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the presidency, Clingman was a lawyer, entrepreneur, Civil War general, inventor, amateur scientist, explorer, and, as a U.S. congressman and senator, one of the foremost champions of southern rights. Thomas E. Jeffrey's explanation of how a leading advocate of this cause could thrive within an environment where slavery was only a marginal institution provides fresh insights into the political culture of southern Appalachia, the character of the southern rights movement, and the coming of the Civil War.




Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt


Book Description

This is an account of the seven military operations conducted by the Confederacy against deserters and disloyalists and the concomitant internal war between secessionists and those who opposed secession in the Quaker Belt of central North Carolina. It explains how the "outliers" (deserters and draft-dodgers) managed to elude capture and survive despite extensive efforts by Confederate authorities to hunt them down and return them to the army. The author discusses the development of the secret underground pro-Union organization the Heroes of America, and how its members utilized the Underground Railroad, dug-out caves, and an elaborate system of secret signals and communications to elude the "hunters." Numerous instances of murder, rape, torture and other brutal acts and many skirmishes between gangs of deserters and Confederate and state troops are recounted. In a revisionist interpretation of the Tar Heel wartime peace movement, the author argues that William Holden's peace crusade was in fact a Copperhead insurgency in which peace agitators strove for a return of North Carolina and the South to the Union on the Copperhead basis--that is, with the institution of slavery protected by the Constitution in the returning states.