The initial confrontation between Union general Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Virginia during the Overland Campaign included the pivotal battles of Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Yet this crucial engagement has only recently received the same degree of scrutiny as other Civil War battles. In Lee's Army during the Overland Campaign, Alfred C. Young III makes a significant contribution to that study by providing for the first time accurate information regarding the Confederate side throughout the conflict. While the strength and casualties in Grant's army remain uncontested, historians know much less about Lee's army because of poor record keeping by the Confederates as well as an inordinate number of missing or lost battle reports. The complexity of the Overland Campaign, which consisted of several smaller engagements in addition to the three main clashes, led to considerable historic uncertainty regarding Lee's army. Significant doubts persist about the army's capability at the commencement of the drive, the amount of reinforcements received, and the total of casualties sustained during the entire campaign and at each of the major battles. The prevailing narrative depicts Confederates as outstripped nearly two to one and portrays Grant suffering losses at a rate nearly double that of Lee. Many Civil War scholars contend that the campaign proved a clear numerical victory for Lee but a tactical triumph for Grant. Young's decade of research, however, contests that notion with new statistical data. Through thorough analysis of information compiled from the National Archives and personal estates Young challenges common assumptions about the Overland Campaign, showing clearly that Lee's army stood far larger in strength and size and suffered much higher casualties than previously believed.

This comprehensive study—an honorable mention in the 1971 Frederick Jackson Turner Award competition— traces the emergence and development of the Republican and Federalist party organizations in Virginia and shows how the old oligarchic system based on wealth, influence, and social prestige remained strong in that state after the formation of the new nation. The book covers details of the Virginia Antifederalists' continuing hostility to the federal Constitution, James Madison's switch from the Federalist party to the emerging Republican party, Madison's and Jefferson's attempts to coordinate Republican opposition to Federalist foreign policy, and the Republicans' successful campaign in 1800 to replace President John Adams with a Virginian. Richard R. Beeman's central concern is the style of political life in Virginia and the effect of that style on national party alignments, and his findings demonstrate that the mode of political conduct displayed by Virginia's leaders proved increasingly self-indulgent and dysfunctional by 1800.

Exploring America's material culture, Common Places reveals the history, culture, and social and class relationships that are the backdrop of the everyday structures and environments of ordinary people. Examining America's houses and cityscapes, its rural outbuildings and landscapes from perspectives including cultural geography, decorative arts, architectural history, and folklore, these articles reflect the variety and vibrancy of the growing field of vernacular architecture. In essays that focus on buildings and spaces unique to the U.S. landscape, Clay Lancaster, Edward T. Price, John Michael Vlach, and Warren E. Roberts reconstruct the social and cultural contexts of the modern bungalow, the small-town courthouse square, the shotgun house of the South, and the log buildings of the Midwest. Surveying the buildings of America's settlement, scholars including Henry Glassie, Norman Morrison Isham, Edward A. Chappell, and Theodore H. M. Prudon trace European ethnic influences in the folk structures of Delaware and the houses of Rhode Island, in Virginia's Renish homes, and in the Dutch barn widely repeated in rural America. Ethnic, regional, and class differences have flavored the nation's vernacular architecture. Fraser D. Neiman reveals overt changes in houses and outbuildings indicative of the growing social separation and increasingly rigid relations between seventeenth-century Virginia planters and their servants. Fred B. Kniffen and Fred W. Peterson show how, following the westward expansion of the nineteenth century, the structures of the eastern elite were repeated and often rejected by frontier builders. Moving into the twentieth century, James Borchert tracks the transformation of the alley from an urban home for Washington's blacks in the first half of the century to its new status in the gentrified neighborhoods of the last decade, while Barbara Rubin's discussion of the evolution of the commercial strip counterpoints the goals of city planners and more spontaneous forms of urban expression. The illustrations that accompany each article present the artifacts of America's material past. Photographs of individual buildings, historic maps of the nation's agricultural expanse, and descriptions of the household furnishings of the Victorian middle class, the urban immigrant population, and the rural farmer's homestead complete the volume, rooting vernacular architecture to the American people, their lives, and their everyday creations.

"Ellen Weiss breaks important new ground in her remarkable monograph on Robert R. Taylor. This volume is by far the most detailed account we have of an African American architect. Weiss vividly conveys the immense challenges faced by black architects and professionals of every kind, especially during the rise of Jim Crow. Along the way we get myriad insights on architectural education, architect-client relationships, and the development of a major institution of higher learning."--- Richard Longstreth, George Washington University "Architectural historian Ellen Weiss's book provides a wealth of little-known factual information about Taylor and a scholarly historical analysis of his many contributions in architectural education and professional practice. A must-read for anyone with an interest in architecture and a certain reference for every architecture student."--- Richard Dozier, Dean, Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture & Construction Science, Tuskegee University "Robert R. Taylor's place in history as the first academically-trained African American architect has been well known, but an authoritative assessment of his contribution to American architectural and planning practice has remained elusive until now. Weiss deftly interweaves the story of the Tuskegee campus with an examination of Taylor's pedagogy and the plight of black architects in the early twentieth century."--- Gary Van Zante, Curator of Architecture and Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology