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While Father Is Away: The Civil War Letters of William H. Bradbury
While Father is Away reveals the intimate story of a British-American’s role in the American Civil War. William Bradbury’s letters home provide a rare window on the unique relationships among husband, wife, and children while a father was away at war.
Yorkshire attorney turned Union volunteer soldier Bradbury became a “privileged private” with extraordinary access to powerful Union generals including Daniel Butterfield, future president Benjamin Harrison, and Clinton B. Fisk, the region’s administrator for the Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction.
The letters also provide an in-depth look at this driven land speculator and manager for the Atchison Topeka Santa Fe Railway. ...Read More
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Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham
Union general, federal judge, presidential contender, and cabinet officer—Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana stands as an enigmatic character in the politics of the Gilded Age, one who never seemed comfortable in the offices he sought. This first scholarly biography not only follows the turns of his career but seeks also to find the roots of his disaffection.
Entering politics as a Whig, Gresham shortly turned to help organize the new Republican Party and was a contender for its presidential nomination in the 1880s. But he became popular with labor and with the Populists and closed his political career by serving ...Read More
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The Self-Inflicted Wound: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century
The essentially tragic political fate of the American South in the nineteenth century resulted from what Robert F. Durden calls a "self-inflicted wound"—the gradual surrender of the white majority to the pride, fears, and hates of racism. In this gracefully written and closely reasoned study, Durden traces the course of southern political life from the predominantly optimistic, nationalistic Jeffersonian era to the sullenly sectional, chronically defensive decades following the Civil War.
Politics, as the clearest reflection of the southern electorate's collective hopes and fears, illustrates the South's transition from buoyant nationalism to aggrieved sectionalism. Like the rest of the new ...Read More
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Shake-Out: Iowa Farm Families in the 1980s
The farm crisis of the 1980s quickly became a media event, with scenes depicted starkly in black and white on color TV. The embattled farmers, accompanied by their advocates, stood holding off bankers and sheriffs wielding foreclosure notices. In this new book, using findings from interviews and participant observation, agricultural historian Mark Friedberger peels away the emotion and rhetoric of the "save the family farm" movement to provide a realistic picture of what happened in on important farm state.
Shake-out: Iowa Farm Families in the 1980s depicts the farm crisis of the 1980s in all its complexity, providing a useful ...Read More
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Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860-1870
Kentucky occupied an unusual position with regard to slavery during the Civil War as well as after. Since the state never seceded, the emancipation proclamation did not free the majority of Kentucky’s slaves; in fact, Kentucky and Delaware were the only two states where legal slavery still existed when the thirteenth amendment was adopted by Congress. Despite its unique position, no historian before has attempted to tell the experience of blacks in the Commonwealth during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Victor B. Howard’s Black Liberation in Kentucky fills this void in the history of slavery and emancipation. In doing so, ...Read More
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Artisans in the North Carolina Backcountry
During the quarter of a century before the thirteen colonies became a nation, the northwest quadrant of North Carolina had just begun to attract permanent settlers. This seemingly primitive area may not appear to be a likely source for attractive pottery and ornate silverware and furniture, much less for an audience to appreciate these refinements. Yet such crafts were not confined to urban centers, and artisans, like other colonists, were striving to create better lives for themselves as well as to practice their trades. As Johanna Miller Lewis shows in this pivotal study of colonial history and material culture, the ...Read More
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High Peaks
Rarely is one allowed such an intimate glimpse into the “high peaks” of a life so extraordinary and exciting as that of C. V. Whitney.
Scion of a distinguished family of great wealth, “Sonny” Whitney early displayed the zest for life and the adventurous spirit which have led him into a varied array of achievements remarkable even for the Whitney clan. A pilot in World War I and an AAF officer in World War II who was involved in such events as Iwo Jima and El Alamein, Whitney later, as assistant secretary of the air force, played a crucial role ...Read More
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The Family Legacy of Henry Clay: In the Shadow of a Kentucky Patriarch
Known as the Great Compromiser, Kentuckian Henry Clay left a valuable legacy to his country by defining the role of Speaker of the House, envisioning a plan, the American System, that foretold the economic development of the nation, and fashioning compromises that postponed civil war until a southern victory was far less likely. He failed, however, to become president, and scholars have placed some blame on his family. This work investigates how his career affected his family and how the family impacted his career. While laboring to form a mature nation, Clay sought to establish a successful family. Accused of ...Read More
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Cecelia and Fanny: The Remarkable Friendship Between an Escaped Slave and Her Former Mistress
In 1846, Cecelia, a 15-year-old slave girl traveled to Niagara Falls with her young Louisville mistress, Frances “Fanny” Thruston Ballard. During their stay, Cecelia made the bold decision to escape, to endure separation from her mother and brother, still enslaved in Kentucky, in order to begin life anew as a free woman in Canada. Yet the separation gnawed at her. So in the 1850s she opened a correspondence with Fanny, as a way of re-establishing connection with her mother. Fanny's return letters, preserved in Louisville archives for a century, allow a glimpse into the thoughts, feelings, and negotiations between these ...Read More
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Passing the Test: Combat in Korea, April-June 1951
For U.S. and UN soldiers fighting the Korean War, the spring of 1951 was brutal. The troops faced a tough and determined foe under challenging conditions. The Chinese Spring Offensive of 1951 exemplified the hardships of the war, as the UN forces struggled with the Chinese troops over Line Kansas, a phase line north of the 38th parallel, in a conflict that led to the war's final stalemate. This book explores the UN responses to the offensive in detail, looking closely at combat from the perspectives of platoons, squads, and the men themselves. The book emphasizes the tactical operations on ...Read More
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