I have been slow to get started reading "Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy" by Peter Carlson, but it is an astounding adventure to read, well written, entertaining, and contains many, new to me details, about the southern campaigns and inmate's lives in Confederate Libby prison.
Thanks again, I recommend this book highly. Well worth reading.
I am thoroughly enjoying it.
@paulag Your link for the book about Krushev's visit to the USA, above, doesn't work, it takes one to a birthday card site, but Peter Carlson's writing impressed me enough to track down his volume about Krushev's tourist visit to the USA
"K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist" - found on Amazon, and it looks like it might be entertaining too. 😃
I am putting it in my Kindle
If you are still looking for books about the civil war, you may be interested in a book on how those who opposed slavery read the Constitution.
The book's title is: The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution
The author is James Oakes
ISBN-13: 978-1324005858
I finished reading "Juniuis and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy" by Peter Carlson.
One of the great things about this book is the careful list of sources by the author, including two books, one by Junius Browne, and one by Albert Richardson, both published shortly after the close of the Civil War in 1865.
Albert Richardson wrote "The Secret Service, The Field, The Dungeon, and the Escape" describing in exquisite detail his travels through the South in the months before the fall of Ft Sumpter, his capture by the Rebels after floating past the guns at Vicksburg, to his escape from Confederate Salisbury Prison and a 400 mile trek though the mountains of South and North Carolina in the dead of Winter on foot. Upon his return to Union lines he sent a telegram to his employer, the New York Tribune saying " Out of the jaws of Death, out of the mouth of Hell!" He did have a way with words!!
One of the really great things I enjoy about Amazon.com is the ability to find out of print books quickly, easily, and often very inexpensively. One never knows if one is to find a real gem, or a tedious, dry volume , but the hunt is always fun. I enjoy books that expand my vocabulary, and from a quick perusal, Richardson and Browne both promise to do exactly that.
Richardson is a superb author, literate, soft spoken, with great memory for conversations held with southern citizens throughout the South before and after the outbreak of the war. He includes a great deal of very specific scenes and currents. He comments often about how the southern citizens "are so certain that the Yankees are all cowards, and will not stand against the Confederate forces". Richardson wrote, in response, a quote from a poem by John Dryden - "Beware the fury of a patient man!"
As an historic side note, the Union Army was slow to get itself together, early on, as an efficient fighting force, but several years of war taught it very well, such that by the end of the war, the Union Army was a superb miltary force, perhaps the best in the world.
It is remarkable how many people in the southern states were against Secession, but were over ruled and overshouted by their more engaged, slave holding plantation owning fellow citizens. Most of the southern states never put Secession to a public vote - Richardson suggests if they had, they might well have not passed! Much discussion centered around the border states, that were states permitting slavery, but not cotton growing states. Kentucky and Tennesse sent troops to both the Union and Confederate forces. The mountains of North Carolina and West Virginia were a hotbed of skirmishes between North and South leaning citizenery.
Junius Browne wrote "Four Years in Secessia: Within and Beyond Union Lines" , published just two weeks after the assassination of President Lincoln. I will have to finish Albert Richardson's book first, but Browne has a wry sense of humor that draws me in too..
I continue to enjoy reading books about the Civil War by folks who were actually there, lived with it, and recorded it with their own eyes.
Be aware, both books were written in 1865, and the language used is not language that is gentle on delicate modern ears. The quotes from the citizens carry commen, back then, racist phrases that are no longer acceptable in society today.
Nonetheless, they are cracking good books, if one has an interest in that terrible time, with lots of very specfic detail omitted from most modern text books.
I have ordered "The Crooked Path to Abolition"
Albert D. Richardson wrote a book after the Civil War entitled "Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean: life and adventure on the prairies, mountains, and Pacific coast" where he travelled with Schulyer Colfax who became US Grant's Vice President.
Richardson wrote a biography on US Grant that is highly regarded, but not availble on a Kindle. I have ordered a copy of the book, published in 1885, mostly becasue I have found Albert Richardson such a great author, almost a century and half after his death.
One other story about Albert Richardson, his life was full, entertaining and very short. He was shot on November 25, 1869 at age 36 by an alcoholic, angry ex-husband. He died on December 2nd 1869, also his wedding day. What, you say?? Read the book to find out the whole story.
The story was reported widely at the time and is covered in a book entitiled "Lost Love:The True Story of Passion, Murder, and Justice in Old New York" written by George Cooper in 1994.
Thank you so much @paulag for the clue to so much great reading. Really a great series of books I found from your suggestion of Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy.
Since you wrote about those southerners who opposed seccession you might also be interested to know that there were a large contingent of "Americans" who opposed the revolutionary war.
If you study an unbiased, unpatriotic history of the time period from 1763 through 1777, you will find that the percentage of Colonists who desired to rebel against the British was not a "supermajority."
Also if you study an unbiased account of the years from 1620 through 1776, you will find that the driving forces behind the reasons for the beginning of most of these colonies had either died out or withered long before 1776. The idea that "religious freedom" was a major issue at the time of the rebellion is based on failing to realize how much change took place over a century and a half of history.
Furthermore, after the English restoration of the monarchy, most colonists prior to the war which began with Washington's unjustifiable attack on May 28, 1754 viewed themselves as British subjects. It is very likely that the behavior of the British soldiers during that war led to discontentment among a very small number of colonialists who started the political movement towards being belligerent towards the British somewhere around 1761 with opposition to the writs of assistance.
But in 1761, the radicals were very few and most were in Massachusetts.
It is very likely that if the malcontents of Massachusetts had not done the things which they did during the 1760s that the revolutionary war would have either not occurred or been delayed for a long period of time.
This is not to suggest that there weren't occasional hard feelings in the other colonies in the early 1760s, there was definitely widespread opposition to the Stamp Act in 1765 but after it was repealed in 1766, most colonialists responded the way that Americans today respond when an unpopular law is repealed. The malcontents in Massachusetts, however, continued to add fuel to the fire of the resentment of the previous year.
I'm confused - General Washington's unjustified attack on May 28, 1954??
I have read a moderate amount about the American Revolution, ( I can even point to a distant ancestor who was a revolutionary soldier in the 1780s) but the Civil War is much more vivid to me, as my great great grandfather was a sergeant in the 60th Indiana Volunteer Regiment for 3 years, from February 1862 to February 1865. I also inherited about a dozen original letters written in pen or pencil, by campfire, from military camps from other family ancestors also serving in the Union Army from 1862 to 1865, stretching from Kentucky down through Georgia and Mississippi.
"Sorry about that, Chief" — Maxwell Smart
I meant 1754 not 1954.
I am going to edit that comment so that subsequent readers will not be equally confused.
I wasn't sure if you were referring to the opening battle of the Seven Years War ( or the French and Indian war for us colonials) for sure, that's why I asked.
I read Fred Anderson's 746 page "Crucible of War" when it was released back in 2000, with great interest, and learned how the 7 Years War lead almost directly to the Revolutionary War a decade later.
As the American soldiers served in the Armed Forces of Great Britain in the Seven Years War in North America, many American officers gained a great deal of confidence in their ability to meet with the Red Coated Army, the greatest military force in the known world....
Described as the First Real World War, it was fought on four continents, and removed the French from North America, and ultimately cost King George much of British North America.
And made young Lieutenant Washington the father of his nation, and a hero for the ages.
And yes, British Loyalists were most of the citizenry early in the years leading to the rebellion. But like all Revolutions, one did not want to remain on the losing side, for a number of reasons, including one's angry fellow citizens.
"Crucible of War" is a monumental work, well worth reading and understanding!
My wife is from the hills of western Pennsylvania, so I am quite familiar with Braddock's March to Fort Duquesne.
Braddock's march took place in 1755.
To call the attack of May 28, 1754 a battle is to ignore the actual events. The french camp was completely unaware of Washington and his force nor had they any reason to suspect that someone might attack them as until that event there had not been any military action.
Washington ordered an unannounced surprise attack on people who had not attacked. That does not constitute a battle anymore than if you were attacked while you were out camping would constitute a battle.
I know Braddock's march was a year later.
In "Crucible of War", as I understand it, there are described several different witness's accounts, as to who shot first, and how that all came to occur.
There were three parties, the French troops, the Colonial troops under Washington, and the Native American forces with the Colonials, that were only partially under Washington's control.
The story I remember as the most striking was that Tanacharison, the “Half King, the Native American leader of the Ohio Iriquois, literally smashed the French Lt. Jumonville's brains out with a war club, the better to start a war between Britain and France, after the French forces surrendered to the Colonials.
I found it very hard to be certain what really happened that May day, and doubt that anyone ever will, as it was lost to history. Or covered up by some of the participants, perhaps, too.
I wonder, also, what verbal instructions Washington might have received from the Governor of Virginia before Washington departed for Pennsylvania, that were not recorded by history.
