Near the end of the Civil War, Army Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck described the 16th New York Volunteer Cavalry as "cowed and useless" after they were "cut up" by Confederate Colonel John Mosby's Rangers. The following April the New Yorkers made their place in history when 26 men led by Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty captured and killed John Wilkes Booth. An amalgam of three partially formed regiments, the 16th was plagued by early desertions, poor leadership and a near mutiny as its First Battalion prepared to march to northern Virginia to bolster the outer defenses of Washington in October 1863. The regiment spent most of the remainder of the war chasing Mosby's cavalry. They won a few tactical victories but were mainly confounded by the Confederate guerrillas. Drawing on personal letters, diaries and memoirs by men of the 16th, and the recollections of Mosby's men, this deeply researched history provides fresh perspective on Mosby's exploits and the hunt for Booth.

Responding to President Lincoln's initial call for troops, the 18th New York Infantry emerged as one of the Excelsior State's first regiments and mustered many of its earliest volunteers. Formed of companies from across the state, the unit saw combat early, suffering the first casualties of the Bull Run campaign when they were ambushed on the march four days before the battle. As part of the Army of the Potomac, they fought at Gaines's Mill, Crampton's Gap, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Drawing on numerous sources including several unpublished letters and diaries, this book gives the complete history of the 18th--from the first enlistee to the last surviving veteran (who died in 1938)--with an emphasis on the experiences of individual soldiers.

Charles A. Bear's An Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution was a work of such powerful persuasiveness as to alter the course of American historiography. No historian who followed in studying the making of the Constitution was entirely free from Beard's radical interpretation of the document as serving the economic interests of the Framers as members of the propertied class. Forrest McDonald's We the People was the first major challenge to Beard's thesis. This superbly researched and documented volume restored the Constitution as the work of principled and prudential men. It did much to invalidate the crude economic determinism that had become endemic in the writing of American history. We the People fills in the details that Beard had overlooked in his fragmentary book. MacDonald's work is based on an exhaustive comparative examination of the economic biographies of the 55 members of the Constitutional Convention and the 1,750 members of the state ratifying conventions. His conclusion is that on the basis of evidence, Beard's economic interpretation does not hold. McDonald demonstrates conclusively that the interplay of conditioning or determining factors at work in the making of the Constitution was extremely complex and cannot be rendered intelligible in terms of any single system of interpretation. McDonald's classic work, while never denying economic motivation as a factor, also demonstrates how the rich cultural and political mosaic of the colonies was an independent and dominant factor in the decision making that led to the first new nation. In its pluralistic approach to economic factors and analytic richness, We the People is both a major work of American history and a significant document in the history of ideas. It continues to be an essential volume for historians, political scientists, economists, and American studies specialists.

This massive illustrated history of the courts and lawyers of New York from 1609-1925 contains a great deal of information that is not available elsewhere. Contents: Part I-Dutch Period: The Bases of American Law, The Dutch Legal System, The Patrons and Their Courts, Burgher Government, Dutch Magistrates. Part II-English Period: The Conflicting Land Titles, The Duke of York's Laws, The Leisler Case. Part III-American Period: Constitutional History, The Courts of Last Resort, The Supreme Court, The Court of Chancery. Part IV: Judicial Distracts and Associations of the Bar, Law Libraries and Law Schools. 59 illustrations.

The Black Woods chronicles the history of Black pioneers in New York's northern wilderness. From the late 1840s into the 1860s, they migrated to the Adirondacks to build farms and to vote. On their new-worked land, they could meet the $250 property requirement New York's constitution imposed on Black voters in 1821, and claim the rights of citizenship. Three thousand Black New Yorkers were gifted with 120,000 acres of Adirondack land by Gerrit Smith, an upstate abolitionist and heir to an immense land fortune. Smith's suffrage-seeking plan was endorsed by Frederick Douglass and most leading Black abolitionists. The antislavery reformer John Brown was such an advocate that in 1849 he moved his family to Timbuctoo, a new Black Adirondack settlement in the woods. Smith's plan was prescient, anticipating Black suffrage reform, affirmative action, environmental distributive justice, and community-based racial equity more than a century before these were points of public policy. But when the response to Smith's offer fell radically short of his high hopes, Smith's zeal cooled. Timbuctoo, Freemen's Home, Blacksville and other settlements were forgotten. History would marginalize this Black community for 150 years. In The Black Woods, Amy Godine recovers a robust history of Black pioneers who carved from the wilderness a future for their families and their civic rights. Her immersive story returns the Black pioneers and their descendants to their rightful place at the center of this history. With stirring accounts of racial justice, and no shortage of heroes, The Black Woods amplifies the unique significance of the Adirondacks in the American imagination.

Throughout history and around the world, community members have come together to build places, be it settlers constructing log cabins in nineteenth-century Canada, an artist group creating a waterfront gathering place along the Danube in Budapest, or residents helping revive small-town main streets in the United States. What all these projects have in common is that they involve local volunteers in the construction of public and community places; they are community-built. Although much attention has been given to specific community-built movements such as public murals and community gardens, little has been given to defining community-built as a whole. This volume provides a preliminary description of community-built practices with examples from the disciplines of urban design, historic preservation, and community art. Taken as a whole, these community-built projects illustrate how the process of local involvement in adapting, building, and preserving a built environment can strengthen communities and create places that are intimately tied to local needs, culture, and community. The lessons learned from this volume can provide community planners, grassroots facilitators, and participants with an understanding of what can lead to successful community-built art, construction, preservation, and placemaking.

Situated south of Montreal and north of the Adirondacks, Clinton County boasts beautiful lake and mountain vistas. Residents of the county, through 13 history museums and historical associations, celebrate their heritage, taking particular care to note early settlers who came south from Canada and north from the capital region. The county's history includes a long military tradition with a citizen's military training camp and Plattsburgh Air Force Base; an active industrial culture that started with iron ore production and continued with the making of various consumer products, such as automobiles, boats, train cars, and paper products; and a vibrant agricultural heritage based on dairy farming, apple orchards, and maple syrup production. Tourism joined industry and agriculture as a significant economic factor in the county's life.