A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.

Historians have long assumed that ethnic and racial divisions in post–Civil War America were reflected in the U.S. Army, of whose enlistees 40 percent were foreign-born. Now Kevin Adams shows that the frontier army was characterized by a “Victorian class divide” that overshadowed ethnic prejudices. Class and Race in the Frontier Army marks the first application of recent research on class, race, and ethnicity to the social and cultural history of military life on the western frontier. Adams draws on a wealth of military records and soldiers’ diaries and letters to reconstruct everyday army life—from work and leisure to consumption, intellectual pursuits, and political activity—and shows that an inflexible class barrier stood between officers and enlisted men. As Adams relates, officers lived in relative opulence while enlistees suffered poverty, neglect, and abuse. Although racism was ingrained in official policy and informal behavior, no similar prejudice colored the experience of soldiers who were immigrants. Officers and enlisted men paid much less attention to ethnic differences than to social class—officers flaunting and protecting their status, enlisted men seething with class resentment. Treating the army as a laboratory to better understand American society in the Gilded Age, Adams suggests that military attitudes mirrored civilian life in that era—with enlisted men, especially, illustrating the emerging class-consciousness among the working poor. Class and Race in the Frontier Army offers fresh insight into the interplay of class, race, and ethnicity in late-nineteenth-century America.

A richly researched, evocative account of the individuals and institutions involved in the settling of the non-Indian West—and of the impact of the development of the West on the nation as a whole. Making of the American West surveys the experiences of major social groups in the lands from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from the United States' penetration of the region in the early 19th century to its incorporation into national political, economic, and cultural fabric by the early 20th century. This revealing volume offers fascinating portraits of the people and institutions that drove the Western conquest (traders and trappers, ranchers and settlers, corporations, the federal government), as well as of those who resisted conquest or hoped for the emergence of a different society (Indian peoples, Latinos, Asians, wage laborers). Throughout, expert contributors continually return to the growing myth of the West and the impact of its promise of freedom and opportunity on those who sought to "Americanize" it.

The Seventh Military History Symposium of the United States Air Force Academy brought together military historians, frontier historians, western historians, and local historians. The papers presented are arranged in four sections: The Frontier and American Military Tradition Comparison of Military Frontiers Impact of the Military on the Frontier Military Life on the Frontier Papers in the first two sections address the broad weep of the military experience on the frontier. These papers help provide perspective and conceptual framework within which to fit the more specific studies in the third and fourth sections. The fifth section, "The Seventh Military History Symposium in Perspective," includes the reactions and commentary of three leading military historians.

This study focuses on the state's impact on American society from the Civil War to the present. For the past several decades historians have tended to divide themselves into increasingly distinct historical perspectives. This anthology seeks to reverse that trend by linking the viewpoints of political and social historians to interpret the growth of the state and society in the United States since 1865, an era during which the state's role has been expanded and redefined in a diverse and rapidly modernizing America. This technique challenges historians to think more broadly about the interactions between the state and society. Arguing that the close examination of political frameworks offers significant insights into facets of social history, these chapters seek to connect social and political history through a common thread of human experience. Pieces are grouped thematically and chronologically to illustrate how the state's role in society has developed over time. The first six examine the state's influence on, and manipulation by, social groups, particularly women, Native Americans, labor, and the military. The final three demonstrate the impact of political and social thought on the relationship between the state and society.

First Published in 2015. This encyclopaedic collection includes Volumes 1 (A-L) and 2 (M-Z) as well as essays on the settlement of America. It can be argued that the westward expansion occurred only one week after the English landfall at Jamestown, Virginia, on May 14, 1607. Beginning on May 21, Captain John Smith, one of the colonization company’s leaders, and twenty-one companions made their way northwest up the James River for some 50 or 60 miles (80 or 96 km).

Unlike previous histories, this book argues that the politics of slavery profoundly influenced the western mission of the regular army - affecting the hearts and minds of officers and enlisted men both as the nation plummented toward civil war."--BOOK JACKET.