The Civil War is often portrayed as the most brutal war in America's history, a premonition of twentieth-century slaughter and carnage. In challenging this view, Mark E. Neely, Jr., considers the war's destructiveness in a comparative context, revealing the sense of limits that guided the conduct of American soldiers and statesmen. Neely begins by contrasting Civil War behavior with U.S. soldiers' experiences in the Mexican War of 1846. He examines Price's Raid in Missouri for evidence of deterioration in the restraints imposed by the customs of war; and in a brilliant analysis of Philip Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley campaign, he shows that the actions of U.S. cavalrymen were selective and controlled. The Mexican war of the 1860s between French imperial forces and republicans provided a new yardstick for brutality: Emperor Maximilian's infamous Black Decree threatened captured enemies with execution. Civil War battles, however, paled in comparison with the unrestrained warfare waged against the Plains Indians. Racial beliefs, Neely shows, were a major determinant of wartime behavior. Destructive rhetoric was rampant in the congressional debate over the resolution to avenge the treatment of Union captives at Andersonville by deliberately starving and freezing to death Confederate prisoners of war. Nevertheless, to gauge the events of the war by the ferocity of its language of political hatred is a mistake, Neely argues. The modern overemphasis on violence in Civil War literature has led many scholars to go too far in drawing close analogies with the twentieth century's total war and the grim guerrilla struggles of Vietnam.

Offers a freshly documented, detailed investigation of the exemplary military tactics that secured the Americans' victory in the battle of Cowpens, South Carolina, in January 1781 and turned the tide of the Revolutionary War in their favor. UP.

The dramatic battlefield deaths of brother Union Army commanders Robert L. McCook and Daniel McCook, Jr.--members of a prominent Ohio family known as "the Fighting McCooks"--drew the full attention of the news media and a war-weary nation. A veteran of Shiloh and Chickamauga, Colonel Daniel McCook was mortally wounded while leading his brigade in a reckless assault up Kennesaw Mountain in June 1864, on the orders of his friend and former law partner General William Tecumseh Sherman. Brigadier General Robert L. McCook distinguished himself in the western Virginia campaign before he was shot by a Rebel while riding in an ambulance in the summer of 1862. His death, in what was an apparent ambush, set off a firestorm of outrage throughout the North.

After September 11, 2001, ordinary citizens faced a new world ruled by political and religious machinations against the threat of terrorism. While political leaders pursued a policy of militarism, many religious leaders advocated pacifism. Ronald H. Stone advocates a middle road between these two extremes, what he calls prophetic realism. Taking up Reinhold Niebuhr's notion of Christian realism, Stone argues that our current situation calls for hard answers to hard questions. Stone offers compelling evidence that Jesus provides the prophetic model of our interaction with our enemies. This book will change people's minds about the relationship of religion and politics in the contemporary world.

Sherman's March, cutting a path through Georgia and the Carolinas, is among the most symbolically potent events of the Civil War. In Through the Heart of Dixie, Anne Sarah Rubin uncovers and unpacks stories and myths about the March from a wide variety of sources, including African Americans, women, Union soldiers, Confederates, and even Sherman himself. Drawing her evidence from an array of media, including travel accounts, memoirs, literature, films, and newspapers, Rubin uses the competing and contradictory stories as a lens into the ways that American thinking about the Civil War has changed over time. Compiling and analyzing the discordant stories around the March, and considering significant cultural artifacts such as George Barnard's 1866 Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and E. L. Doctorow's The March, Rubin creates a cohesive narrative that unites seemingly incompatible myths and asserts the metaphorical importance of Sherman's March to Americans' memory of the Civil War. The book is enhanced by a digital history project, which can be found at shermansmarch.org.

“An excellent, vividly written” (The Washington Post) account of leadership in wartime that explores how four great democratic statesmen—Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion—worked with the military leaders who served them during warfare. The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show—the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot A. Cohen expertly argues that great statesmen do not turn their wars over to their generals, and then stay out of their way. Great statesmen make better generals of their generals. They question and drive their military men, and at key times they overrule their advice. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds—backwoods lawyer, dueling French doctor, rogue aristocrat, and impoverished Jewish socialist. Yet they faced similar challenges. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners, who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conflict with military men. All four triumphed. The powerful lessons of this “brilliant” (National Review) book will touch and inspire anyone who faces intense adversity and is the perfect gift for history buffs of all backgrounds.

Warfare in colonial North America: paths to revolution / Samuel J. Watson -- The origins of the American Revolution and the opening moves / Edward G. Lengel -- From defeat to victory in the north: 1777-1778 / Edward G. Lengel -- The war in Georgia and the Carolinas / Stephen Conway -- Yorktown, the peace, and why the British failed / Stephen Conway -- To the Constitution and beyond: creating a national state / Samuel J. Watson.

British lawyer and Brigadier-General John Hartman Morgan served as Deputy Adjutant-General in Berlin from 1919-1923 at the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control—a term used in a series of peace treaties concluded after World War I (1914-1918) between different countries. Each of these treaties was concluded between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers (consisting of the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan) on the one hand, and one of the Central Powers like Germany, Turkey or Bulgaria. One of the terms of such treaties required conversion of all of the Central Powers’ military and armaments related production and related facilities into purely commercial use. The decision and the modus operandi to ensure this rested with a Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control. The Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control was also entrusted with a number of other responsibilities, including (a) setting the number of customs officials, local urban and rural police, forest guards and other officials under the control of the Government of the central power concerned; and (b) receiving information relating to the location of the stocks and depots of arms, munitions and war material and their operations. It was during this period of 1919-1923 that Brig.-Gen. Morgan witnessed German attempts to build up their army contravening the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and he published his findings in October 1924 in the Quarterly Review, titled “The Disarmament of Germany and After.” However, it would not be until after World War II that he would decide to elaborate on this theme—the result is the present volume, Assize of Arms: The Disarmament of Germany and Her Rearmament (1919-1939). First published in 1945, it was intended to be published in two volumes; however, owing to Brig.-Gen. Morgan’s passing in 1955, it remained as a single volume. A valuable addition to any World Wars library.

General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating "March to the Sea" in 1864 burned a swath through the cities and countryside of Georgia and into the history of the American Civil War. As they moved from Atlanta to Savannah--destroying homes, buildings, and crops; killing livestock; and consuming supplies--Sherman and the Union army ignited not only southern property, but also imaginations, in both the North and the South. By the time of the general's death in 1891, when one said "The March," no explanation was required. That remains true today. Legends and myths about Sherman began forming during the March itself, and took more definitive shape in the industrial age in the late-nineteenth century. Sherman's March in Myth and Memory examines the emergence of various myths surrounding one of the most enduring campaigns in the annals of military history. Edward Caudill and Paul Ashdown provide a brief overview of Sherman's life and his March, but their focus is on how these myths came about--such as one description of a "60-mile wide path of destruction"--and how legends about Sherman and his campaign have served a variety of interests. Caudill and Ashdown argue that these myths have been employed by groups as disparate as those endorsing the Old South aristocracy and its "Lost Cause," and by others who saw the March as evidence of the superiority of industrialism in modern America over a retreating agrarianism. Sherman's March in Myth and Memory looks at the general's treatment in the press, among historians, on stage and screen, and in literature, from the time of the March to the present day. The authors show us the many ways in which Sherman has been portrayed in the media and popular culture, and how his devastating March has been stamped into our collective memory.

Southerners whose communities were invaded by the Union army during the Civil War endured a profoundly painful ordeal. For most, the coming of the Yankees was a nightmare become real; for some, it was the answer to a prayer. But for all, Stephen Ash argues, invasion and occupation were essential parts of the experience of defeat that helped shape the Southern postwar mentality. When the Yankees Came is the first comprehensive study of the occupied South, bringing to light a wealth of new information about the Southern home front. Examining events from a dual perspective to show how occupation affected the invading forces as well as the indigenous population, Ash concludes that as Federal war aims evolved, the occupation gradually became more repressive. But increased brutality on the part of the Northern army resulted in more determined resistance from white Southerners - a situation that parallels the experience of many other conquering forces. Finally, Ash shows that conflicts between Confederate citizens and Yankee invaders were not the only ones that marked the experience of the occupied South. Internal clashes pitted Southerners against one another along lines of class, race, and politics: plain folk vs. aristocrats, slaves vs. owners, and unionists vs. secessionists.