The author raises questions about why the fervent commitment to the emancipation of African Americans was nearly forgotten by his family, exploring the racial attitudes in the author's upbringing and the ingrained racism that still plagues our nation today.

Best remembered as the founder of Hampton Institute and mentor of Booker T. Washington, Samuel Chapman Armstrong played a crucial role in white philanthropy and educational strategies toward nonwhite people in late-nineteenth-century America. Until now, however, there has been no scholarly biography of Armstrong--his story has usually been subsumed within that of his famous protégé. In Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited, Robert Francis Engs illuminates both Armstrong's life and an important chapter in the history of American race relations. Armstrong was the son of missionaries to Hawaii, and as Engs makes clear, his early experiences in a multiracial, predominantly non-European society did much to determine his life's work--the uplift of "backward peoples." After attending Williams College, Armstrong commanded black troops in the Civil War and served as a Freedmen's Bureau agent before founding Hampton in 1869. At the institute, he implemented a unique combination of manual labor education and teacher training, creating an educational system that he believed would enable African Americans and other disfranchised peoples to rise gradually toward the level of white civilization. Recent studies have often blamed Armstrong for "miseducating" an entire generation of African Americans and for Washington's failings as a "race leader." Indeed, as Engs notes, Armstrong's educational designs were paternalistic in the extreme, and in addressing certain audiences, he could sometimes sound like a consummate racist. On the other hand, he frequently expressed a deep devotion to the ultimate equality of African Africans and incorporated the best of his black graduates into the Hampton staff. Sorting through the complexities and contradictions of Armstrong's character and vision, Engs's masterful biography provides new insights into the failures of emancipation and into the sometimes flawed responses of one heir to antebellum abolition and egalitarian Christianity. The Author: Robert Francis Engs is associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-1890.

The story of black soldiers and their white officers in the Civil War.

Aliens changed the world. Portals changed reality. Shadows will destroy us all. The year is 2042, and in the wake of alien contact and rapid expansion, Humanity and her allies find the multi-verse is not a welcoming place. Portals have opened around the colonies and throughout critical systems. Gateways to realities where shapeshifting Elves, monstrous Elementals, and impossible magic hold sway. As the Joint Fleet battles the unbelievable, rapid advancements in technology are pressed, blending the lines between machine and men. On the front lines of the conflict a techno-phobic snub-fighter pilot tries to forget his loss, a captured surgeon struggles to save the unending wounded, and an exiled psionic commando infiltrates the fleet. Their paths lead to the planet Hecate, where they discover that something darker than magic or technology is growing, feeding off the chaos. Forging an alliance seems impossible, but if they should fail it will not mean the loss of a colony or system, it will mean annihilation. The real war has begun among the shadows, and every reality will feel the impact in WarVerse.

"A Question of Manhood" is the first anthology of historical studies focused on themes and issues central to the construction of Black masculinities. The editors identified these essays from among several hundred articles published in recent years in leading American history journals and academic periodicals. Each piece illuminates an important dimension of the complex array of Black male experiences as workers, artists, warriors, and leaders in both slave and free communities in the centuries and decades prior to the end of slavery in the United States. The introduction offers a gendered perspective on, and a race and class framework for the future study of, Black men's history. The introduction weaves the salient points made in each of the historical essays into a fresh narrative of Black male efforts to construct their individual life and community-sustaining identities. Black manhood was shaped not only in relation to Black womanhood, but was variously nurtured and challenged, honed and transformed against a backdrop of white male power and domination, and the relentless expectations and demands on them to struggle, resist, and to facilitate the survival of African-American culture and community.

Explores how the Creek War of 1813–1814 not only affected Creek Indians but also acted as a catalyst for deep cultural and political transformation within the society of the United States’ Cherokee allies The Creek War of 1813–1814 is studied primarily as an event that impacted its two main antagonists, the defending Creeks in what is now the State of Alabama and the expanding young American republic. Scant attention has been paid to how the United States’ Cherokee allies contributed to the war and how the war transformed their society. In Forging a Cherokee-American Alliance in the Creek War, Susan M. Abram explains in engrossing detail the pivotal changes within Cherokee society triggered by the war that ultimately ended with the Cherokees’ forced removal by the United States in 1838. The Creek War (also known as the Red Stick War) is generally seen as a local manifestation of the global War of 1812 and a bright footnote of military glory in the dazzling rise of Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s victory, which seems destined only in historic hindsight, was greatly aided by Cherokee fighters. Yet history has both marginalized Cherokee contributions to that conflict and overlooked the fascinating ways Cherokee society changed as it strove to accommodate, rationalize, and benefit from an alliance with the expanding American republic. Through the prism of the Creek War and evolving definitions of masculinity and community within Cherokee society, Abram delineates as has never been done before the critical transitional decades prior to the Trail of Tears. Deeply insightful, Abram illuminates the ad hoc process of cultural, political, and sometimes spiritual transitions that took place among the Cherokees. Before the onset of hostilities, the Cherokees already faced numerous threats and divisive internal frictions. Abram concisely records the Cherokee strategies for meeting these challenges, describing how, for example, they accepted a centralized National Council and replaced the tradition of conflict-resolution through blood law with a network of “lighthorse regulators.” And while many aspects of masculine war culture remained, it too was filtered and reinterpreted through contact with the legalistic and structured American military. Rigorously documented and persuasively argued, Abram’s award-winning Forging a Cherokee-American Alliance in the Creek War fills a critical gap in the history of the early American republic, the War of 1812, the Cherokee people, and the South.

Features a detailed look at the career of Gen. Adna Romanza Chaffee, the "Father of the Armored Force." Careful study of the battles fought during and between the wars for the armored forces' very survival. Photos of the men and machines that made the American Armored Corps a legend.