Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861-1865

by by Richard R. Duncan

From the publisher:
During the Civil War, the strategically located town of Winchester, Virginia, suffered from the constant turmoil of military campaigning perhaps more than any other town. Occupied dozens of times by alternating Union and Confederate forces, Winchester suffered from three major battles including some seventy smaller skirmishes. In his voluminous community study of the town over the course of four tumultuous years, Richard R. Duncan shows that in many ways Winchester’s history provides a paradigm of the changing nature of the war. Indeed, Duncan reveals how the town offers a microcosm of the war: slavery collapsed, women assumed control in the absence of men, and civilians vied for authority alongside an assortment of revolving military commanders.

Control over Winchester was vital for both the North and the South. Confederates used it as a base to strike the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and conduct raids into western Maryland and Pennsylvania, and when Federal forces occupied the town, they threatened Staunton—Lee’s breadbasket—and the Virginia Central Railroad. At various times during the war, generals "Stonewall" Jackson, Nathaniel Banks, Robert Milroy, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and Philip Sheridan each controlled the town. Guerilla activity further compounded the region’s strife as insecurity became the norm for its civilian population. In this first scholarly treatment of occupied Winchester, Duncan has compiled a narrative of voices from the entire community, including those of groups often omitted from such studies, such as slaves, women, and Confederate dissenters. He shows how Federal occupation meant an early end to slavery in Winchester and how the paucity of men left women to serve as the major cohesive force in the community, making them a bulwark of Confederate support. He also explores the tensions between civilians and military personnel that inevitably arose as each group sought to protect its interests.

The war, Duncan explains, left Winchester a landscape of wreckage and economic loss. A fascinating case study of civilian survival amid the turmoil of war, Beleaguered Winchester will appeal to Civil War scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Richard R. Duncan is the author of Lee's Endangered Left: The Civil War in Western Virginia, Spring of 1864 and is professor emeritus of history at Georgetown University. He grew up in Winchester, Virginia, and now lives in Alexandria, VA.

From CWBN:
We assigned a release date of June 7 to this undated June release.

Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965

by Robert J. Cook

From the publisher:
In 1957, Congress voted to set up the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. A federally funded agency within the Department of the Interior, the commission's charge was to oversee preparations to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the central event in the Republic's history.

Politicians hoped that a formal program of activities to mark the centennial of the Civil War would both bolster American patriotism at the height of the cold war and increase tourism in the South. Almost overnight, however, the patriotic pageant that organizers envisioned was transformed into a struggle over the Civil War's historical memory and the injustices of Jim Crow. In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of this controversial event and reveals how the broadbased public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement.

Cook shows how the centennial provoked widespread alarm among many African Americans, white liberals, and cold warriors because the national commission failed to prevent southern whites from commemorating the Civil War in a racially exclusive fashion. The public outcry followed embarrassing attempts to mark secession, the attack on Fort Sumter, and the South's victory at First Manassas, and prompted backlash against the celebration, causing the emotional scars left by the war to resurface. Cook convincingly demonstrates that both segregationists and their opponents used the controversy that surrounded the commemoration to their own advantage. Southern whites initially embraced the centennial as a weapon in their fight to save racial segregation, while African Americans and liberal whites tried to transform the event into a celebration of black emancipation.

Forced to quickly reorganize the commission, the Kennedy administration replaced the conservative leadership team with historians, including Allan Nevins and a young James I. Robertson, Jr., who labored to rescue the centennial by promoting a more soberly considered view of the nation’s past. Though the commemoration survived, Cook illustrates that white southerners quickly lost interest in the event as it began to coincide with the years of Confederate defeat, and the original vision of celebrating America's triumph over division and strife was lost.

The first comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Civil War Centennial, Troubled Commemoration masterfully depicts the episode as an essential window into the political, social, and cultural conflicts of America in the 1960s and confirms that it has much to tell us about the development of the modern South.

Robert J. Cook is the author of several books, including Sweet Land of Liberty? The African American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century and Civil War America: Making of a Nation, 1848–1877. He is Professor of American History at the University of Sheffield in England.

From CWBN:
We assigned a release date of June 6 to this undated June release.

Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War

by Edwin C. Bearss

From the publisher:
Edwin C. Bearss presents legendary Civil War battles as they have never before been told, rich with human interest and little-known facts.

In Fields of Honor, Bearss, hailed as the "Homer of the Civil War," shares his encyclopedic knowledge in print for the first time, providing his legions of fans with a tangible collection of his expertise. Culled from recordings of his widely popular battlefield tours, Bearss recounts twenty of the war's most significant battles in lively, detailed prose. Illustrated with exhaustive battlefield maps and fascinating historical images - and published in conjunction with the 140th anniversary of the end of the Civil War - this volume will stand as an important reference for generations to come.

An easily accessible, episodic narrative, Fields of Honor will appeal to Civil War buffs and general interest readers alike. From the first shots at Fort Sumter to the surrender at Appomattox, this engaging collection takes readers through the Civil War in the unique voice that has made Edwin Bearss a living legend.

Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War

by Edwin C. Bearss

From Booklist:
Bearss presents the story of the Civil War as he has in the battlefield tours he has conducted for many years. A former chief historian of the National Parks Service, he chronicles 14 crucial battles, including Fort Sumter, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Sherman's march through the Carolinas, and Appomattox, the battles ranging between 1861 and 1865; included is an introductory chapter describing John Brown's raid in October 1859.

Bearss relates the details of terrain and tactics and of personalities and command decisions; he personalizes generals and politicians, sergeants and privates. The text is augmented by 80 black-and-white photographs and 19 maps. A chance to tour battlefields without leaving home.

Lincoln's White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O.Stoddard

By Harold Holzer

From the publisher:
William Osborn Stoddard, Lincoln’s “third secretary” who worked alongside John G. Nicolay and John Hay in the White House from 1861 to 1865, completed his autobiography in 1907, one of more than one hundred books he wrote. An abridged version was published by his son in 1955 as Lincoln’s Third Secretary: The Memoirs of William O. Stoddard. In this new, edited version, Lincoln’s White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O. Stoddard, Harold Holzer provides an introduction, afterword, and annotations and includes comments by Stoddard’s granddaughter, Eleanor Stoddard. The elegantly written volume gives readers a window into the politics, life, and culture of the mid-nineteenth century.

Stoddard’s bracing writing, eye for detail, and ear for conversation bring a novelistic excitement to a story of childhood observations, young friendships, hardscrabble frontier farming, early hints of the slavery crisis, the workings of the Lincoln administration, and the strange course of war and reunion in the southwest. More than a clerk, Stoddard was an adventurous explorer of American life, a farmer, editor, soldier, and politician.

Enhanced by seventeen illustrations, this narrative sympathetically draws the reader into the life and times of Lincoln’s third secretary, adding to our understanding of the events and the larger-than-life figures that shaped history.

From CWBN:
We assigned June 5 to this undated June release.

Sherman's Forgotten General: Henry W. Slocum

by Brian C. Melton

From the publisher:
Henry Warner Slocum, a Union major general who was a corps and army commander in the Civil War, served from the first call for troops until he stood with Sherman to receive Joseph E. Johnston’s surrender after Appomattox. He saw action at Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, and by the end of the war, he had taken command of the Army of Georgia, yet historians have largely overlooked this key commander.

Brian Melton has written the first scholarly account of this important general––the first full length biography in nearly a century. Although Slocum is remembered primarily for his lackluster performance at Gettysburg, Melton discloses that there is more to him than current history credits, offering a holistic account of his life to show that his career was much more significant than has been supposed.

Brian C. Melton is Assistant Professor of History at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman

Edited by David W. Lowe

From the publisher:
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman served as Gen. George Gordon Meade’s aide-de-camp from September 1863 until the end of the Civil War. Lyman was a Harvard-trained natural scientist who was exceptionally disciplined in recording the events, the players, and his surroundings during his wartime duty. His private notebooks document his keen observations. Published here for the first time, Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman contains anecdotes, concise vignettes of officers, and lively descriptions of military campaigns as witnessed by this key figure in the Northern war effort.

Lyman may well be the finest chronicler of the day-to-day experiences of a staff officer in the Civil War, and his notebook entries have an immediacy, coming as close to real-time reporting as possible. As combat raged, Lyman penciled notations into his dispatch books, including exact times when Meade issued orders and when units deployed. He later transformed his notes into a coherent, historically accurate narrative, filling the account with personal and military details that few others were in a position to observe and including his sketches and hand-drawn maps showing the positions of the army after every significant movement.

With Meade’s Army, editor David W. Lowe has completed a task that should have been undertaken long ago: a proper and scholarly editing of Lyman’s journals. The publication of this significant resource will give historians and students of the Civil War a clearer understanding of the last great campaigns of the Army of the Potomac and of the men who led it.

“Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman is already well-known to students and scholars of the Civil War for his extensive letters first published in 1922. As a member of General George Meade’s staff from September 1863 until the end of the war, Lyman provided colorful commentary on the inner workings of the Army of the Potomac. Now, with the discovery and publication of Lyman’s “private notebooks,” readers will find even more of his illuminating observations. Historian David W. Lowe has salvaged these largely forgotten notebooks, carefully edited them, and made them easily accessible. Wonderfully rich in military detail, Meade’s Army offers a wealth of information from one of the war’s most perceptive chroniclers.” — Lesley J. Gordon, Series Editor, Civil War in the North

David W. Lowe is a historian for the National Park Service. He has published articles in North and South Magazine and Civil War Battlefield Guide and is the author of Civil War Sites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (National Park Service, 1992), Bentonville Battlefield Resources (National Park Service, 2001), and Civil War in Loudoun Valley (National (National Park Service, 2004).

Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah

by Tom Chaffin

From the publisher:
The sleek, 222-foot, black auxiliary steamer Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, ostensibly bound for Bombay. The subterfuge was ended off the shores of Madeira, where the ship was outfitted for war. The newly christened CSS Shenandoah then commenced the last, most quixotic sea story of the Civil War: the 58,000-mile, around-the-world cruise of the Confederacy’s second most successful commerce raider. Before its voyage was over, thirty-two Union merchant and whaling ships and their cargoes would be destroyed. But it was only after ship and crew embarked on the last leg of their journey that the excursion took its most fearful turn.

Four months after the Civil War was over, the Shenandoah’s Captain Waddell finally learned he was, and had been, fighting without cause or state. In the eyes of the world, he had gone from being an enemy combatant to being a pirate—a hangable offense. Now fearing capture and mutiny, with supplies quickly dwindling, Waddell elected to camouflage the ship, circumnavigate the globe, and attempt to surrender on English soil.

Tom Chaffin is the author of Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (H&W, 2002). His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Time, and other publications. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

From Kirkus:
Chaffin does a good job of charting the Shenandoah's path and fortunes, and though the narrative could have stood a little trimming here and there, he makes it clear that there were plenty of worse places to be in the war than on the ship's decks; the officers had time to read the many books they liberated from enemy vessels, while the crew, for all its rebelorthodoxy, merrily disported themselves among the dark women of Ascension, unrepentant pirates to the last. Good reading for Civil War buffs, taking the naval aspect of the conflict well beyond the usual Monitor and Merrimac fare.

From CWBN:
Books on the CSS Shenandoah keep coming. This one joins the ranks of The Voyage of the CSS Shenandoah: A Memorable Cruise (2005); The Last Shot: The Incredible Story of the C.S.S. Shenandoah and the True Conclusion of the American Civil War (2005); and Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah, 1864-65 (1995). We do not know how Sea of Gray differs from its predecessors except that here the subject is backed by a major trade publisher.

Quantrill in Texas: The Forgotten Campaign

by Paul R. Petersen

From the publisher:
The second of a three-volume work that examines the life of one of the most controversial figures of the Civil War, Quantrill in Texas: The Forgotten Campaign documents a part of William C. Quantrill's life and career that has largely been ignored by historians. Indeed, Quantrill's most unrecognized accomplishments outside his adopted state of Missouri occurred in Texas, not in Kansas or Kentucky.
Quantrill in Texas corrects that oversight, carefully exploring for the first time the places and people associated with the guerrilla leader as he moved south during the winter to a safer environment in Texas. The result is a surprising addition to the Quantrill legacy.

His first experience in Texas and his subsequent trips to and from the state reveal that he became acquainted with the noted personalities who lived there. His battles and skirmishes along the way increased his reputation among the citizenry as word spread of his victories throughout the South.

The arrival of Quantrill and his men was welcomed by those who lived in north Texas. While most historians depict him as resting in exile, he occupied himself with battling cattle thieves, warding off Indian attacks, hunting down deserters and draft dodgers, and even quelling riots on behalf of the Confederate cause. Careful research in the official records, local historical records, and archaeological excavations reveals that Quantrill and his men thwarted two known Federal invasions of Texas.

Paul R. Petersen is a highly decorated retired officer of the U.S. Marine Corps and a lifelong resident of Jackson County, Missouri, near where William Quantrill lived. The author of Quantrill of Missouri: The Making of a Guerrilla Warrior, he lives in Raytown, Missouri.

Shenandoah Summer: The 1864 Valley Campaign

by Scott C. Patchan

From the publisher:
Scott C. Patchan has performed a rare feat in his analysis of one of the least-known Civil War campaigns, that of Jubal A. Early, whose foray into the Shenandoah was a Confederate embarrassment and revealed its ultimate weakness. Early's disastrous battles in the Shenandoah Valley and his burning of the town of Chambersburg in retaliation for Union abuses caused Robert E. Lee to dismiss the well-respected but fiery officer in ignominious disgrace. By focusing on military tactics and battle history, Patchan reveals that Early--who was widely reviled--made significant political and military contributions by alarming Washington D.C., and causing Lincoln and the Union generals to rethink their war plan. This superbly argued study resurrects Early's significance as an influential military commander in the Confederate pantheon.

Scott C. Patchan, a Civil War battlefield guide and historian, is the author of Forgotten Fury: The Battle of Piedmont and a consultant and contributing writer for Shenandoah, 1862.

Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War

by Richard B. McCaslin

From the publisher:
It’s one thing to understand that over twenty-thousand Confederate and Union soldiers died at the Battle of Murfreesboro. It’s quite another to study an ambrotype portrait of twenty-year-old private Frank B. Crosthwait, dressed in his Sunday best, looking somberly at the camera. In a tragically short time, he’ll be found on the battlefield, mortally wounded, still clutching the knotted pieces of handkerchief he used in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding from his injuries.

Private Crosthwait’s image is one of more than 250 portraits—many never before published—to be found in the much anticipated Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War. The eighth in the distinguished Portraits of Conflict series, this volume joins the personal and the public to provide a uniquely rich portrayal of Tennesseans—in uniforms both blue and gray—who fought and lost their lives in the Civil War.

Here is the story of a widow working as a Union spy to support herself and her children. Of a father emerging from his house to find his Confederate soldier son dying at his feet. Of a nine-year-old boy who attached himself to a Union regiment after his mother died. Their stories and faces, joined with personal remembrances from recovered letters and diaries and ample historical information on secession, famous battles, surrender, and Reconstruction, make this new Portraits of Conflict a Civil War treasure.

Richard B. McCaslin is an associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Lee in the Shadow of Washington; Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas; and two volumes in the Portraits of Conflict series. He is the winner of the Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and a fellow in the Texas State Historical Association.

Confederate Guerrilla: The Civil War Memoir of Joseph M. Bailey

by T. Lindsay Baker (Editor)

From the publisher:
Joseph M. Bailey's memoir, Confederate Guerilla, provides a unique perspective on the fighting that took place behind Union lines in Federal-occupied northwest Arkansas during and after the Civil War. This story -- now published for the first time -- will appeal to modern readers interested in the grassroots history of the Trans-Mississippi war. Bailey participated in Port Hudson, eventually escaping to northwest Arkansas where he fought as a guerrilla against Federal troops and civilian unionists. After Federal forces gained control of the area, Bailey rejoined the Confederate army and continued in regular service in northeast Texas until the end of the war.

Historians will find the descriptions of military campaigns and the observations on guerrilla war especially valuable. According to Bailey, Southern guerrillas were motivated less by a sense of loyalty to either the Confederate or Union side than by a determination to protect their families and neighbors from the "Mountain Federals." This partisan war waged between the rebel guerrillas and Southern Unionists was essentually a "struggle for supremecy and revenge."

Comprehensive annotations are provided by editor T. Lindsay Baker to illuminate the clarity and reliability of Bailey's late-life memoir.

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 5

Edited by Peter Cozzens

From the publisher:
Indispensable must-reads for all Civil War buffs and historians, bringing together little-known and never before gathered first-hand accounts, articles, maps, and illustrations.

Praise for Volumes 5 and 6:

The first four volumes of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, published in the late nineteenth century, became the best-selling and most frequently cited works ever published on the Civil War. Volume 5, assembled by the acclaimed military historian Peter Cozzens, carries on the tradition of its namesake, offering a dazzling new collection of fresh material written by military and civilian leaders, North and South, on a broad array of war-related topics. Featured articles include General Grant on the second battle of Bull Run, General Beauregard on the Shiloh campaign, General Sherman on the conference at City Point, Joshua Chamberlain on the Fredericksburg campaign, and many more. Also presented are dozens of maps and more than one hundred illustrations.

Peter Cozzens, a foreign service officer, has published many books on the Civil War, including General John Pope: A Life for the Nation and his popular trilogy, The Civil War in the West.

Letters to a Civil War Bride

by Sandra Marsh Mercer (Compiler), Jerry L. Mercer (Compiler)

From the publisher:
Captain Wolcott Pascal Marsh wrote numerous letters to his young bride, Anna, during the early months of the Civil War (May 10, 1861 through December 19, 1862).

These letters were preserved as a family heirloom and are presented here in their original form replete with the rich language and political views of the day. They were written on the battlefield and give detailed descriptions of daily life in the Union Army, successful and failed battle strategies, the tragedy of sudden death, and the fear and flight so commonly experienced by the unseasoned soldier.

Marsh tells of writing one letter while lying on his back in a brush arbor, while on picket duty prior to the first battle of Manassas. Through his letters, readers will become acquainted with Wolcott Pascal Marsh, an average citizen who loved his wife and loved his country. He enlisted in the Union Army just two weeks after their nuptials to join in the fight to preserve the Union.

The authors have added notes from historical journals to help the reader put these letters in their original setting. Historic details of Burnside's campaign in North Carolina; the Battles of South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg; and other notable events are included. Numerous vintage photographs, illustrations and facsimile reprints of original documents enhance the text.

Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families

by Andrew Billingsley

From the publisher
On May 13, 1862, the enslaved African American Robert Smalls (1839-1915) commandeered a Confederate warship, the Planter, from Charleston harbor and piloted the vessel to cheering seamen of the Union blockade, thus securing his place in the annals of Civil War heroics. Slave, pilot, businessman, statesman, U.S. congressman - Smalls played many roles en route to becoming an American icon, but none of his accomplishments was a solo effort. Sociologist Andrew Billingsley offers the first biography of Smalls to assess the influence of his families - black and white, past and present - on his life and enduring legend. In so doing, Billingsley creates a compelling mosaic of evolving black-white social relations in the American South as exemplified by this famous figure and his descendants.

Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was raised with his master's family and grew up amid an odd balance of privilege and bondage. His distinctive situation instilled in him both an understanding of and desire for freedom. Billingsley underscores the influence of the slaveholders' household as well as Smalls's biological family on the development of the passions and abilities that led Smalls to his bid for freedom in 1862. Likewise, Billingsley charts the critical involvement of Smalls's wife, Hannah, and his extended family of black crewmates in the success of that plan.

Smalls served with distinction in the Union forces at the helm of the Planter. After the war he returned to Beaufort and bought the home of his former masters - a house that remained at the center of the Smalls family for a century. A founder of the South Carolina Republican Party, Smalls was elected as a delegate to the black majority 1868 Constitutional Convention, which confirmed the right of black men to vote, as well as to the overwhelmingly white Constitutional Convention of 1895, which took away that right. Between those two events, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, the state senate, and five times to the U.S. Congress. Throughout the trials and triumphs of his public service, Smalls was surrounded by an ever-growing family of supporters. Billingsley illustrates how this support system, coupled with Smalls's dogged resilience, empowered him for political success.

Today three branches of the Smalls family remain: the descendants of his daughter with first wife, Hannah; of Hannah's two daughters from a previous marriage whom Smalls adopted; and of his son with his second wife, Annie. Writing of subsequent generations of Smalls's family, Billingsley delineates the evolving patterns of opportunity, challenge, and change that have been the hallmarks of the African American experience thanks in no small part to the selfless investments in freedom and family made by Robert Smalls of South Carolina.

The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe---Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force

by Stephen Poleski

Reviews:
This first full-scale biography of Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913) makes fascinating reading for aviation buffs and students of nineteenth-century eccentricity. Lowe is best known for organizing the Civil War Army of the Potomac's Balloon Corps, though it was disbanded because of losing high-ranking support, bureaucratic infighting, and, to some extent, the technological immaturity of balloons. Lowe was a stage magician before the war and after it worked seriously in such fields as mountain railroading and the extraction of hydrogen from water. His career suggests a failed Thomas Edison. Endlessly fertile in invention, he lacked an organization to support the development of his ideas and winnow the viable ones from the rest. He never abandoned balloons, however, and left a definite legacy to fixed-wing aviation in the person of his granddaughter, aviatrix Pancho Barnes (1901-75, subject of Lauren Kessler's biography The Happy Bottom Riding Club, 2000). Aviation and history collections may acquire this seemingly tangential book with clear consciences. - Booklist

Secret Lives of the Civil War: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the War Between the States

by Cormac O'Brien

From the publisher:
The author of Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (100,000 in print) and Secret Lives of the First Ladies (30,000 in print) is back with another bizarre look at history's most celebrated personalities. With Secret Lives of the Civil War, Cormac O'Brien unearths a host of strange, little-known facts about Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Harriet Tubman. He also introduces lesser-known people who changed the fate of our country people like:

* Sarah Edmonds, who disguised herself as a man so she could fight in the Battle of Bull Run (the Civil War had a surprising number of women soldiers).
* William Clarke Quantrill, a sociopath who fought in both armies, mostly for the pleasure of shedding blood.
* And of course, Officer Ambrose Burnside, whose unique "sideburns" would later influence generations of Elvis Presley fans.

Complete with 30 dazzling portraits and illustrated maps, Secret Lives of the Civil War is a new look at one of the most fascinating chapters in American history.

Cormac O'Brien is the author of Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (Quirk, 2004) and Secret Lives of the First Ladies (Quirk, 2005). He lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship

by John Baldwin, Ron Powers

From the publisher:
As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to prowl the world’s oceans and sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider’s name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a twenty-four-year-old warrior who might have stepped from the pages of Arthurian legend. Whittle would share command with a dark and brooding veteran of the seas, Capt. James Waddell, and together with a crew of strays, misfits, and strangers, they would spend nearly a year sailing two-thirds of the way around the globe, destroying dozens of Union ships and taking more than a thousand prisoners, all while continually dodging the enemy.

Then, in August of 1865, a British ship revealed the shocking truth to the men of Shenandoah: The war had been over for months, and they were now being hunted as pirates.

What ensued was an incredible 15,000-mile journey to the one place the crew hoped to find sanctuary, only to discover that their fate would depend on how they answered a single question. Wondrously evocative and filled with drama and poignancy, Last Flag Down is a riveting story of courage, nobility, and rare comradeship forged in the quest to achieve the impossible.

From Kirkus:
The story of Confederate raider Shenandoah, which preyed on Yankee shipping in an epic round-the-world voyage. Baldwin, a descendant of the executive officer who left a detailed log of that voyage, teams with Pulitzer Prize winner Powers (Mark Twain, 2005, etc.) to tell the Shenandoah's story.

While their account covers essentially the same territory as Lynn Schooler's The Last Shot (2005), they focus on Baldwin's ancestor, Lieutenant Conway Whittle. In London, Whittle boarded Sea King, a steam-and-sail clipper that had set a record for a passage to China, He sailed to the Madeiras, where he met his fellow officers and Captain James Waddell, evidently a deeply troubled, uncommunicative man who distrusted his subordinates. The ship was renamed Shenandoah, provisioned and armed with cannon and commissioned as a Confederate warship. Her mission: to prey on U.S. commerce and weaken the federals' ability to wage war.

Shenandoah's crew was recruited from captured ships, choosing service with the C.S.A. over being held prisoner. The authors paint Whittle as a romantic hero of the Old South, obsessed with honor and eager to prevent his native land from falling prey to northern aggression. To that end, the raider attacked merchantmen and whalers from the Atlantic to the Bering Sea, where she captured or sank more than three dozen whalers before Waddell was convinced to cease operations by reports that the war was over.

Shenandoah then made her final run back to England, dodging U.S. warships and struggling to keep her crew dedicated to a suddenly pointless mission. Whittle, a southern gentleman to the end, declined a chance to escape from his ship as she lay in the Liverpool docks while British officials decided whether to turn her crew over to U.S. authorities aiming to try them for piracy. In the end, the Brits set them all free. A stirring adventure, smoothly recounted.

About the authors:
John Baldwin, a relative of Conway Whittle, is a magazine writer, lecturer, and the author of two novels. At seventeen, Baldwin was apprenticed to the ship’s carpenter on a merchant vessel sailing the ports of Africa.

Ron Powers, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is the author or coauthor of twelve previous books, among them the number one bestseller Flags of Our Fathers and the acclaimed biography Mark Twain, a finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Becoming Free in the Cotton South

by Susan E. O'Donovan

From the publisher:
Becoming Free in the Cotton South challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or the ending of the story, as most histories do, Susan O'Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of both the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.

This boldly argued work focuses on a small place--the southwest corner of Georgia--in order to explicate a big question: how did black men and black women's experiences in slavery shape their lives in freedom? The reality of slavery's demise is harsh: in this land where cotton was king, the promise of Reconstruction passed quickly, even as radicalism crested and swept the rest of the South. Ultimately, the lives former slaves made for themselves were conditioned and often constrained by what they had endured in bondage. O'Donovan's significant scholarship does not diminish the heroic efforts of black Americans to make their world anew; rather, it offers troubling but necessary insight into the astounding challenges they faced.

Becoming Free in the Cotton South is a moving and intimate narrative, drawing upon a multiplicity of sources and individual stories to provide new understanding of the forces that shaped both slavery and freedom, and of the generation of African Americans who tackled the passage that lay between.

From reviewers:
Susan O'Donovan details the major changes for the slave and free black population of Southwest Georgia in the years of settlement, of the Civil War, and of the economic and political adaptations to emancipation. Of particular importance are the different impacts these changes had upon black men and black women, and upon the relations between belief and behavior in slavery and then in freedom.
--Stanley L. Engerman, University of Rochester

The seismic shifts set in motion by the emancipation reached into every corner of the American South. In exploring one small corner, Becoming Free reveals how the earthquake that accompanied freedom's arrival shifted gender relations in the household, field, and hustings and in the process changed much more. Susan O'Donovan's small story is a big story, an original one, and an important one.
--Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone and Generations of Captivity

As an exposition of how land, labor, and gender structured a hard slavery and a 'hard' emancipation as well, O'Donovan's analytical narrative is hard to beat. An exceptionally rich and textured study that never loses sight of the larger stakes.
--James C. Scott, Yale University

With meticulous and probing scholarship, O'Donovan's work acutely demonstrates the tragic continuities between slavery and freedom in the American South. Her analysis of the intersection of ethno-racial, economic and gender domination immediately after slavery illuminates a crucial period in African American history and radically alters conventional scholarly interpretations of the development of the black family. This exquisitely accomplished and engagingly written work is surely one of the most important studies in African American and Southern histories to appear in years.
--Orlando Patterson, author of Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries

Becoming Free in the Cotton South

by Susan Eva O'Donovan

From the publisher:
Becoming Free in the Cotton South challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or the ending of the story, as most histories do, Susan O'Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of both the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.

This boldly argued work focuses on a small place--the southwest corner of Georgia--in order to explicate a big question: how did black men and black women's experiences in slavery shape their lives in freedom? The reality of slavery's demise is harsh: in this land where cotton was king, the promise of Reconstruction passed quickly, even as radicalism crested and swept the rest of the South. Ultimately, the lives former slaves made for themselves were conditioned and often constrained by what they had endured in bondage. O'Donovan's significant scholarship does not diminish the heroic efforts of black Americans to make their world anew; rather, it offers troubling but necessary insight into the astounding challenges they faced.

Becoming Free in the Cotton South is a moving and intimate narrative, drawing upon a multiplicity of sources and individual stories to provide new understanding of the forces that shaped both slavery and freedom, and of the generation of African Americans who tackled the passage that lay between.