Soldier Parrot brings a new level of research and personal grit to Civil War history with this riveting account of how Jacob Parrott, an 18-year-old, illiterate orphan from Ohio became the first soldier to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Parrott, a private in the Union Army, volunteered in 1862 for a secret mission behind Confederate lines to steal a train, tear up railroad tracks, burn bridges, and cut telegraph lines. The mission failed. Parrott and his companions were captured. Several were hung as spies and Parrott spent nearly two years in a Confederate prison. Parrott was only eighteen-years old when he volunteered for the secret mission. He had never been farther than ten miles from his home in Fairfield County. Soldier Parrott is literally the stuff of history--a fast-paced, extremely well-told tale of espionage, capture, trial, and escape. Half the team was executed; the half that escaped received the newly established Medal of Honor.

When America faced its greatest internal crisis, Michigan answered the call with over ninety thousand troops. The story of that sacrifice is preserved in the state's rich collection of Civil War monuments, markers, forts, cemeteries, reenactments, museums and exhibits. Discover how General George A. Custer and the famed Michigan Cavalry Brigade "saved the Union." Visit the chair that President Lincoln was assassinated in at Ford's Theatre, and view the grave of the last African American Union veteran. With a foreword by Civil War historian Jack Dempsey, this work is the first of its kind to chronicle the many Civil War landmarks in the Wolverine State.

"Makes an excellent case for Parrott as an unjustly forgotten historical figure."—The New Yorker "Remind[s] us of the brazenly talented women sidelined by convention."—New York Times The riveting biography of Ursula Parrott—best-selling author, Hollywood screenwriter, and voice for the modern woman. Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life balance, and a host of new challenges facing modern women. Her best sellers, Hollywood film deals, marriages and divorces, and run-ins with the law made her a household name. Part biography, part cultural history, Becoming the Ex-Wife establishes Parrott's rightful place in twentieth-century American culture, uncovering her neglected work and keen insights into American women's lives during a period of immense social change. Although she was frequently dismissed as a "woman's writer," reading Parrott's writing today makes it clear that she was a trenchant philosopher of modernity—her work was prescient, anticipating issues not widely raised until decades after her decline into obscurity. With elegant wit and a deft command of the archive, Marsha Gordon tells a timely story about the life of a woman on the front lines of a culture war that is still raging today.

111 pages, water staines cover.

These essays were written by Shippensburg University History majors in 2010 as a class assignment for their required historical research methods course. It was no ordinary class. At the beginning of the course their professor challenged them to uncover the hidden history of the African-American soldiers and sailors buried in Chambersburg's Mt. Vernon and Lebanon Cemeteries. Over the course of the semester, the students located long-forgotten records and pieced together the remarkable stories of these forgotten heroes. These works have been revised and republished to mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 150th anniversary of the United States War Department's issuance of General Order Number 143 on May 22, 1863-the order that established the federal Bureau of Colored Troops.

This collection of letters and documents offers a rare glimpse into a young officer's interesting but short life. Mary A. Giunta's A Civil War Soldier of Christ and Country tells the story of the relationships between the headstrong John Rodgers Meigs and his family and friends; his heartwarming eagerness to please his demanding parents; his West Point experiences that include a meeting with Abraham Lincoln; and his life as a combatant in the Civil War. John Rodgers Meigs was the son of Union Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, and his official correspondence reveals much about his duties as a military engineer and aide-de-camp to Union generals. The private correspondence between him and his father and mother is especially compelling. Approximately forty of the letters were written in an early version of Pitman shorthand and are here transcribed for the first time. Collectively, they provide an intimate picture of the young Meigs, uncover the concerns of a family with high expectations, and offer a unique look at a devastating war.

The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur explores how a new kind of international military figure emerged from, and exploited, the seventeenth century's momentous political, military, commercial, and scientific changes. In the era of the Thirty Years' War, these figures traveled rapidly and frequently across Europe using private wealth, credit, and connections to raise and command the armies that rulers desperately needed. Their careers reveal the roles international networks, private resources, and expertise played in building and at times undermining the state. Suzanne Sutherland uncovers the influence of military entrepreneurs by examining their activities as not only commanders but also diplomats, natural philosophers, information brokers, clients, and subjects on the battlefield, as well as through strategic marital and family allegiances. Sutherland focuses on Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609–80), a middling nobleman from the Duchy of Modena, who became one of the most powerful men in the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and helped found a new discipline, military science. The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur explains how Montecuccoli successfully met battlefield, court, and family responsibilities while contributing to the world of scholarship on an often violent, fragmented political-military landscape. As a result, Sutherland shifts the perspective on war away from the ruler and his court to instead examine the figures supplying force, along with their methods, networks, and reflections on those experiences.