Civil War in the North – serie

Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman served as Gen. George Gordon Meade's aide-de-camp from September 1863 until the end of the Civil War. Lyman was a Harvard-trained natural scientist who was exceptionally disciplined in recording the events, the players, and his surroundings during his wartime duty. His private notebooks document his keen observations. Published here for the first time, Meade's Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman contains anecdotes, concise vignettes of officers, and lively descriptions of military campaigns as witnessed by this key figure in the Northern war effort.Lyman may well be the finest chronicler of the day-to-day experiences of a staff officer in the Civil War, and his notebook entries have an immediacy, coming as close to real-time reporting as possible. As combat raged, Lyman penciled notations into his dispatch books, including exact times when Meade issued orders and when units deployed. He later transformed his notes into a coherent, historically accurate narrative, filling the account with personal and military details that few others were in a position to observe and including his sketches and hand-drawn maps showing the positions of the army after every significant movement.With Meade's Army, editor David W. Lowe has completed a task that should have been undertaken long ago: a proper and scholarly editing of Lyman's journals. The publication of this significant resource will give historians and students of the Civil War a clearer understanding of the last great campaigns of the Army of the Potomac and of the men who led it.

The chronicle of a Union soldier’s seven months in captivity Besides the risks of death or wounding in combat, the average Civil War soldier faced the constant threat of being captured by the enemy. It is estimated that one out of every seven soldiers was taken captive—more than 194,000 of them from Union regiments—and held in prison camps infamous for breeding disease and death.Sgt. Lyle G. Adair of the 111th United States Colored Troops joined the thousands of Union prisoners when part of his regiment tasked with guarding the rail lines between Tennessee and northern Alabama was captured by Confederate cavalrymen. Adair, who had first enlisted in the 81st Ohio Volunteer Infantry at the age of seventeen and later became a recruiting agent in the 111th, spent the remainder of the war being shuffled from camp to camp as a prisoner of war. By the war’s end, he had been incarcerated in five different Confederate camps: Cahaba, Camp Lawton, Blackshear, Thomasville, and Andersonville.“They Have Left Us Here to Die” is an edited and annotated version of the diary Sergeant Adair kept of his seven months as a prisoner of war. The diary provides vivid descriptions of each of the five camps as well as insightful observations about the culture of captivity. Adair notes with disdain the decision of some Union prisoners to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy in exchange for their freedom and covers the mock presidential election of 1864 held at Camp Lawton, where he and his fellow inmates were forced to cast votes for either Lincoln or McClellan. But most significantly, Adair reflects on the breakdown of the prisoner exchange system between the North and South, especially the roles played by the Lincoln administration and the Northern home front. As a white soldier serving with African Americans, Adair also makes revealing observations about the influence of race on the experience of captivity.Complete with numerous annotations comparing Adair’s accounts with other diaries, memoirs, and official reports, “They Have Left Us Here to Die” provides a platform for delving deeper into the culture of captivity and the Civil War soldier experience.“‘They Have Left Us Here to Die’ touches on the important themes of combat motivation, race, the end of slavery, the experience of captivity, and the competing stories of how the war was remembered. And it does so in the hands of an able storyteller who brings Lyle Adair’s story to life.” – Scott Reynolds Nelson, Legum Professor of History, College of William & Mary

The election of 1860 was a crossroad in American history. Faced with four major candidates, voters in the North and South went to the polls not knowing that the result of the election would culminate in the bloodiest conflict the United States had ever seen. Despite its obvious importance, surprisingly few studies have focused exclusively on this electoral contest itself. In The Election of 1860 Reconsidered, seven historians offer insightful essays that challenge the traditional view of the election, present fresh interpretations, and approach the contest from new angles.In engaging treatments of the main presidential candidates, the authors employ biography to explain the election. Michael S. Green deftly analyses Abraham Lincoln and effectively overturns the view of the Republican as a passive candidate. James L. Huston provides an innovative reconsideration of Stephen A. Douglas in defeat with an insightful look at the Little Giant’s campaign tours of the South. Using the lens of honour, A. James Fuller scrutinises John C. Breckinridge in an enlightening study of the Southern Democratic candidate’s campaign. In another groundbreaking essay, Fuller reconsiders Constitutional Unionist John Bell as a Whig who stood for the Republican principle of compromise. The biographical theme continues in John R. McKivigan’s splendid examination of Frederick Douglass as he carefully guides the reader through the changing attitudes and ambivalence of the abolitionist perspective.As Douglas G. Gardner demonstrates in his fine exposition of the historiographical themes involved with the election, The Election of 1860 Reconsidered includes interdisciplinary concerns and new lines of inquiry. Addressing matters of interest to political scientists as well as historians, Thomas E. Rodgers takes up the issue of voter turnout in a sophisticated analysis that emphasises ideology. Political culture and context allow A. James Fuller to make revealing interdisciplinary connections while using the state of Indiana as a case study to test and refute realignment theory. Turning to observations from across the Atlantic, Lawrence Sondhaus offers a new approach to the election in his penetrating study of how Europeans viewed and misunderstood the U.S. presidential race.This remarkable collection breathes new life into political history and will serve as a primer for a generation of scholars interested in understanding the most important election in American history.

In 1861, Lt. Col. William Hoffman was appointed to the post of commissary general of prisoners and urged to find a suitable site for the construction of what was expected to be the Union’s sole military prison. After inspecting four islands in Lake Erie, Hoffman came upon one in Sandusky Bay known as Johnson’s Island. With a large amount of fallen timber, forty acres of cleared land, and its proximity to Sandusky, Ohio, Johnson’s Island seemed the ideal location for the Union’s purpose. By the following spring, Johnson’s Island prison was born. Johnson’s Island tells the story of the camp from its planning stages until the end of the war. Because the facility housed only officers, several literate diary keepers were on hand; author Roger Pickenpaugh draws on their accounts, along with prison records, to provide a fascinating depiction of day-to-day life. Hunger, boredom, harsh conditions, and few luxuries were all the prisoners knew until the end of the war, when at last parts of Johnson’s Island were auctioned off, the post was ordered abandoned, and the island was mustered out of service.There has not been a book dedicated to Johnson’s Island since 1965. Roger Pickenpaugh presents an eloquent and knowledgeable overview of a prison that played a tremendous role in the lives of countless soldiers. It is a book sure to interest Civil War buffs and scholars alike.