Phillip S Greenwalt – författare

“Clear out the Shenandoah Valley “clean and clear,” Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant ordered, in the late summer of 1864.His man for the job: Major General “Little Phil” Sheridan, the bandy-legged Irishman who’d proven himself just the kind of scrapper Grant loved. Grant turned Sheridan loose across Virginia’s most vital landscape, the breadbasket of the Confederacy.In the spring of 1862, a string of Confederate victories in the Valley had foiled Union plans in the state and kept Confederate armies fed and supplied. In 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia used the Valley as its avenue of invasion, culminating in the battle of Gettysburg. The Valley continued to offer Confederates an alluring backdoor to Washington D.C.But when Sheridan returned to the Valley in 1864, the stakes jumped dramatically. To lose the Valley would mean to lose the state, Stonewall Jackson had once said—and now that prediction would be put to the test as Sheridan fought with Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early for possession.For the North, the fragile momentum its war effort had gained by capturing Atlanta would quickly evaporate; for Abraham Lincoln, defeat in the Valley could very well mean defeat in the upcoming election. For the South, more than its breadbasket was at stake—its nascent nationhood lay on the line.Historians Daniel Davis and Philip Greenwalt, longtime students of the Civil War, have spent countless hours researching the Valley battles of ‘64 and walking the ground where those battles unfolded. Bloody Autumn: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 shifts attention away from Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia to the campaign that ultimately determined the balance of power across the Eastern Theatre.

“[Serves] as both a helpful concise history text and as a phenomenal field guide to modern Valley Forge and its surroundings.” —The Colonial Review  An Army of skeletons appeared before our eyes naked, starved, sick and discouraged . . . Gouverneur Morris recorded these words in his report to the Continental Congress after a visit to the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge as part of a fact-finding mission. Morris and his fellow congressmen arrived to conditions far worse than they had expected. After a campaigning season that saw the defeat at Brandywine, the loss of Philadelphia, the capital of the rebellious British North American colonies, and the reversal at Germantown, George Washington and his harried army marched into Valley Forge on December 19, 1777. What transpired in the next six months prior to the departure from the winter cantonment on June 19, 1778 was truly remarkable.   A stoic Virginian, George Washington solidified his hold on the army and endured political intrigue; the quartermaster department was revived with new leadership from a former Rhode Island Quaker; and a German baron trained the army in the rudiments of being a soldier and military maneuvers. Valley Forge conjures up images of cold, desperation, and starvation. Yet Valley Forge also became the winter of transformation and improvement that set the Continental Army on the path to military victory and the fledgling nation on the path to independence. In The Winter that Won the War, historian Phillip S. Greenwalt takes the reader on campaign in the year 1777 and through the winter encampment, detailing the various changes that took place within Valley Forge that ultimately led to the success of the American cause.   “Compelling. . . . wonderfully written. . . . Readers will come away better understanding the challenging duties, hardships, and stubbornness that transformed the army of these common soldiers of different ethnicities and immigrant groups, with African Americans and Native Americans among them, into a capable fighting force.” —The NYMAS Review

In late July of 1861, Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor and 258 Texas cavalry thundered into the small village of Mesilla, tucked along the Rio Grande River in the New Mexico Territory. They skirmished with U.S. regulars seeking to retake the town, and quickly forced them to retreat. It was a small victory that fueled visions of something much, much larger.These Texans were the vanguard of the newly-formed Confederacy, seeking to fulfill long-held Southern dreams of expanding their influence westward to the gold fields of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean ports of Southern California: a Confederate version of Manifest Destiny from “sea to shining sea.”The fighting at Mesilla was the opening act of one of the least-studied campaigns of the Civil War. For the next year, troops from Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California would fight for control of the Southwest, its gold fields, and a route to the Pacific for the Confederacy. They marched across thousands of miles of scorching desert and over towering mountain passes, struggling with each other, hostile tribes, and the brutal elements, with the fate of the region hanging in the balance.Emerging Civil War historians Patrick Kelly-Fischer and Phillip Greenwalt, longtime students of the Civil War, have spent countless hours researching and studying this too-long forgotten New Mexico Campaign of 1862. In Desert Empire: The 1862 New Mexico Campaign, they explore the battles that shaped the course of the war in the Southwest, and shaped the future of the region.