Matthew M. Stith - Böcker

During the American Civil War the western Trans-Mississippi frontier was host to harsh environmental conditions, irregular warfare, and intense racial tensions that created extraordinarily difficult conditions for both combatants and civilians. Matthew M. Stith's Extreme Civil War focuses on Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory to examine the physical and cultural frontiers that challenged Confederate and Union forces alike. A disturbing narrative emerges where conflict indiscriminately beset troops and families in a region that continually verged on social and political anarchy. With hundreds of small fights disbursed over the expansive borderland, fought by civilians -- even some women and children -- as much as by soldiers and guerrillas, this theater of war was especially savage.Despite connections to the political issues and military campaigns that drove the larger war, the irregular conflict in this border region represented a truly disparate war within a war. The blend of violence, racial unrest, and frontier culture presented distinct challenges to combatants, far from the aid of governmental services. Stith shows how white Confederate and Union civilians faced forces of warfare and the bleak environmental realities east of the Great Plains while barely coexisting with a number of other ethnicities and races, including Native Americans and African Americans. In addition to the brutal fighting and lack of basic infrastructure, the inherent mistrust among these communities intensified the suffering of all citizens on America's frontier.Extreme Civil War reveals the complex racial, environmental, and military dimensions that fueled the brutal guerrilla warfare and made the Trans-Mississippi frontier one of the most difficult and diverse pockets of violence during the Civil War.

From Texas to Virginia, towns, regions, counties, regiments, prisons, and even refugee camps played a significant role in shaping the contours of the Civil War. According to historian Daniel E. Sutherland, whose many books and essays helped establish the field of community studies, these varied assemblages of individuals experienced and fought the real war. Following his lead, the contributors to Hundreds of Little Wars reveal how viewing the war from the vantage point of singular communities allows us to better understand the larger conflict. The volume includes contributions from a wide array of Civil War scholars. Lesley J. Gordon and Eric P. Totten examine military outfits, namely the 126th New York Regiment and the 4th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. Madeleine C. Forrest provides an analysis of Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1862, and Matthew M. Stith evaluates a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in East Texas. Christopher Phillips and Scott A. Tarnowieckyi investigate the middle border region spanning the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. Lorien Foote and G. David Schieffler assess the demographically diverse Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, as well as Helena, Arkansas. Barton A. Myers and Terry L. Beckenbaugh employ Sutherland's framing while considering irregular war, first with an examination of partisan officers and then with a survey of the White River Valley in Arkansas. Finally, Niels Eichhorn and Michael Shane Powers assume a transnational viewpoint, comparing Richmond with Vienna, Austria, and analyzing a community of Confederate veterans in Central America.The essays in Hundreds of Little Wars show that no one single conflict defined the Civil War. Instead, hundreds of wars existed, variously categorized by geography, race, gender, environment, and myriad other factors. Only by concentrating on these communities can we grasp the scope and complexity of the Civil War.

During the American Civil War, the western Trans-Mississippi frontier was host to harsh environmental conditions, irregular warfare, and intense racial tensions that created extraordinarily difficult conditions for both combatants and civilians. Matthew M. Stith's Extreme Civil War focuses on Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory to examine the physical and cultural frontiers that challenged Confederate and Union forces alike. A disturbing narrative emerges where conflict indiscriminately beset troops and families in a region that continually verged on social and political anarchy. With hundreds of small fights disbursed over the expansive borderland, fought by civilians— even some women and children—as much as by soldiers and guerrillas, this theater of war was especially savage.Despite connections to the political issues and military campaigns that drove the larger war, the irregular conflict in this border region represented a truly disparate war within a war. The blend of violence, racial unrest, and frontier culture presented distinct challenges to combatants, far from the aid of governmental services. Stith shows how white Confederate and Union civilians faced forces of warfare and the bleak environmental realities east of the Great Plains while barely coexisting with a number of other ethnicities and races, including Native Americans and African Americans. In addition to the brutal fighting and lack of basic infrastructure, the inherent mistrust among these communities intensified the suffering of all citizens on America's frontier.Extreme Civil War reveals the complex racial, environmental, and military dimensions that fueled the brutal guerrilla warfare and made the Trans-Mississippi frontier one of the most difficult and diverse pockets of violence during the Civil War.

Camp Ford's Civil War tells the story of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians, enslaved people and refugees, and the natural world around them during the Civil War. The focal point is a ten-acre piece of land where nearly 5,000 Union prisoners of war sat out of battle while fighting their own distinctive kind of war. The narrative also explains the conflict in the wider southern Trans-Mississippi theater, a place that remains in the historical and historiographical shadow of the Civil War elsewhere. This is a story of what became of the largest prisoner of war camp west of the Mississippi River, but it is also a story about the war in the 200 mile radius around the prison camp - the geographic medium in and through which a remarkably diverse range of human and non-human communities swirled and overlapped to create a fascinating, if understudied, narrative of the Civil War.

Camp Ford's Civil War tells the story of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians, enslaved people and refugees, and the natural world around them during the Civil War. The focal point is a ten-acre piece of land where nearly 5,000 Union prisoners of war sat out of battle while fighting their own distinctive kind of war. The narrative also explains the conflict in the wider southern Trans-Mississippi theater, a place that remains in the historical and historiographical shadow of the Civil War elsewhere. This is a story of what became of the largest prisoner of war camp west of the Mississippi River, but it is also a story about the war in the 200 mile radius around the prison camp - the geographic medium in and through which a remarkably diverse range of human and non-human communities swirled and overlapped to create a fascinating, if understudied, narrative of the Civil War.

In Beyond the Quagmire, thirteen scholars from across disciplines provide a series of provocative, important, and timely essays on the politics, combatants, and memory of the Vietnam War.The essays pose new questions, offer new answers, and establish important lines of debate regarding social, political, military, and memory studies. Part 1 contains four chapters by scholars who explore the politics of war in the Vietnam era. In Part 2, five contributors offer chapters on Vietnam combatants with analyses of race, gender, environment, and Chinese intervention. Part 3 provides four innovative and timely essays on Vietnam in history and memory.

Taken collectively, the chapters in New Perspectives on the First World War: Beyond No Man’s Land not only illuminate pieces of the Great War that remain in the shadow of the broader narratives, but also, and more importantly, foster new perspectives, pose distinct questions, and suggest fresh directions from which future work might emerge. Transnational approaches, the cultural and environmental history of war, and gender’s ubiquitous but heretofore marginalized role in the larger conflict together merit fresh research and careful new interpretation.