Rod Andrew Jr. – författare

The compelling history of how the US Marines and their allies fought to preserve the Corps and establish its role in national defense.Only five years after Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps was close to becoming a hollow force. A parsimonious Truman administration and a hostile defense secretary, Louis Johnson, had reduced the Corps to a handful of understrength infantry battalions, assorted supporting artillery and tank units, and twelve aircraft squadrons. Its future hung in the balance.In The Marines Fight for Survival, historian and retired Marine Corps Colonel Rod Andrew Jr. guides readers through the dramatic twists and turns of the campaign waged by a handful of senior Marines, citizens, legislators, and journalists to defend the Corps and prevent its elimination or forced irrelevance. Through politicking, intrigue, deception, and extreme moral courage, the Corps defenders waged a bitter battle of policy and publicity in the halls of power and the national media.But while this campaign of persuasion moved the needle in some important ways, the final victory for the Marines future was ultimately won on the battlefields of Korea. Andrew argues that it was the gritty performance of the frontline Marines and their supporting airmen in Korea that ultimately saved the Corps. The elite reputation that they created for themselves, and the affection they had garnered from the public throughout the twentieth century, would not have been possible without the valor and the victories of frontline Marines. The Corps place in the national defense structure was sealed with the Douglas-Mansfield Act of 1952, in which Congress granted a legal voice to the USMC Commandant on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and made the Corps the only service branch to have a permanent minimal strength protected by law.

The compelling history of how the US Marines and their allies fought to preserve the Corps and establish its role in national defense.Only five years after Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps was close to becoming a hollow force. A parsimonious Truman administration and a hostile defense secretary, Louis Johnson, had reduced the Corps to a handful of understrength infantry battalions, assorted supporting artillery and tank units, and twelve aircraft squadrons. Its future hung in the balance.In The Marines Fight for Survival, historian and retired Marine Corps Colonel Rod Andrew Jr. guides readers through the dramatic twists and turns of the campaign waged by a handful of senior Marines, citizens, legislators, and journalists to defend the Corps and prevent its elimination or forced irrelevance. Through politicking, intrigue, deception, and extreme moral courage, the Corps defenders waged a bitter battle of policy and publicity in the halls of power and the national media.But while this campaign of persuasion moved the needle in some important ways, the final victory for the Marines future was ultimately won on the battlefields of Korea. Andrew argues that it was the gritty performance of the frontline Marines and their supporting airmen in Korea that ultimately saved the Corps. The elite reputation that they created for themselves, and the affection they had garnered from the public throughout the twentieth century, would not have been possible without the valor and the victories of frontline Marines. The Corps place in the national defense structure was sealed with the Douglas-Mansfield Act of 1952, in which Congress granted a legal voice to the USMC Commandant on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and made the Corps the only service branch to have a permanent minimal strength protected by law.

Challenging assumptions about a distinctive ""southern military tradition,"" Rod Andrew demonstrates that southern military schools were less concerned with preparing young men for actual combat than with instilling in their students broader values of honor, patriotism, civic duty, and virtue. Southerners had a remarkable tendency to reconcile militarism with republicanism, Andrew says, and following the Civil War, the Lost Cause legend further strengthened the link in southerners' minds between military and civic virtue.

One of the South's most illustrious military leaders, Wade Hampton III was for a time the commander of all Lee's cavalry and at the end of the war was the highest-ranking Confederate cavalry officer. Yet for all Hampton's military victories, he also suffered devastating losses in his family and personal life. Rod Andrew's critical biography sheds light on his central role during Reconstruction as a conservative white leader, governor, U.S. senator, and Redeemer; his heroic image in the minds of white southerners; and his positions and apparent contradictions on race and the role of African Americans in the New South. Andrew also shows that Hampton's tragic past explains how he emerged in his own day as a larger-than-life symbol--of national reconciliation as well as southern defiance.

Andrew Pickens (1739–1817), the hard-fighting South Carolina militia commander of the American Revolution, was the hero of many victories against British and Loyalist forces. In this book, Rod Andrew Jr. offers an authoritative and comprehensive biography of Pickens the man, the general, the planter, and the diplomat. Andrew vividly depicts Pickens as he founds churches, acquires slaves, joins the Patriot cause, and struggles over Indian territorial boundaries on the southern frontier. Combining insights from military and social history, Andrew argues that while Pickens''s actions consistently reaffirmed the authority of white men, he was also determined to help found the new republic based on broader principles of morality and justice.After the war, Pickens sought a peaceful and just relationship between his country and the southern Native American tribes and wrestled internally with the issue of slavery. Andrew suggests that Pickens''s rise to prominence, his stern character, and his sense of duty highlight the egalitarian ideals of his generation as well as its moral shortcomings--all of which still influence Americans'' understanding of themselves.