A testament to the valor and determination of a common soldier On September 17, 1861, twenty-two-year-old Jacob Haas enlisted in the Sheboygan Tigers, a company of German immigrants that became Company A of the Ninth Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. Over the next three years, Haas and his comrades marched thousands of miles and saw service in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territory, including pitched battles at Newtonia, Missouri, and Jenkins’ Ferry, Arkansas. Haas describes the war from the perspective of a private soldier and an immigrant as he marches through scorching summers and brutally cold winters to fight in some of the most savage combat in the west. His diary shows us an extraordinary story of the valor and determination of a volunteer soldier. Though his health was ruined by war, Haas voiced no regrets for the price he paid to fight for his adopted country.

The Civil War experiences of Albert C. Ellithorpe, a Caucasian Union Army officer commanding the tri-racial First Indian Home Guards, illuminate remarkable and understudied facets of campaigning west of the Mississippi River. Major Ellithorpe’s unit—comprised primarily of refugee Muscogee Creek and Seminole Indians and African Americans who served as interpreters—fought principally in Arkansas and Indian Territory, isolated from the larger currents of the Civil War. Using Ellithorpe’s journal and his series of Chicago Evening Journal articles as her main sources, M. Jane Johansson unravels this exceptional account, providing one of the fullest examinations available on a mixed-race Union regiment serving in the border region of the West. Ellithorpe's insightful observations on Indians and civilians as well as the war in the trans-Mississippi theater provide a rare glimpse into a largely forgotten aspect of the conflict. He wrote extensively about the role of Indian troops, who served primarily as scouts and skirmishers, and on the nature of guerrilla warfare in the West. Ellithorpe also exposed internal problems in his regiment; some of his most dramatic entries concern his own charges against Caucasian officers, one of whom allegedly stole money from the unit's African American interpreters. Compiled here for the first time, Ellithorpe’s commentary on the war adds a new chapter to our understanding of America’s most complicated and tragic conflict.

"Comprises an extensive group of reminiscences published by the St. Louis Missouri Republican between 1885 and 1887"--v. 1, p. xi.

Assembles contributions from thirty-nine leading historians of the American Civil War into a coherent attempt to assess the war's impact on American society

Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the Trans-Mississippi Theater was site of major clashes from the war's earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater's distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle.

"Consists of 54 letters written in 1861 by newspaper correspondent Franc B. Wilkie. Part I, "The Iowa First: Letters From the War," was originally published, under that same title, in 1861. The pamphlet, now exceptionally rare, brought together the reports Wilkie sent back to the Dubuque Herald as he accompanied the First Iowa Infantry from its training camp in Keokuk, Iowa, through to the Battles of Dug Springs and Wilson's Creek, south of Springfield, Missouri (August 2 and 10, 1861). Part II of the book presents for the first time in book form Wilkie's continued correspondence on affairs in Missouri, as it was originally published in the New York Times. While Part I bubbles with the excitement of camp life among the home town boys on their first military expedition, Part II takes a more sedentary and cynical look at military affairs in Missouri under the troubled command of Major General John C. Fr?mont, with occasional forays by Wilkie into the field (Lexington, Shelbina, Springfield, Milford). Series editor Michael E. Banasik again provides extensive annotations, a detailed roster of the First Iowa Infantry, casualty figures for the major military engagements that Wilkie covered, biographies of major participants, and other important background material"--Publisher's website.