American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.

The Quakers came to America in the 17th century to seek religious freedom. After years of struggle, they achieved success in various endeavors and, like many wealthy colonists of the time, bought and sold slaves. But a movement to remove slavery from their midst, sparked by their religious beliefs, grew until they renounced the slave trade and freed their slaves. Once they rejected slavery, the Quakers then began to petition the state and Federal governments to do the same. When those in power turned a blind eye to the suffering of those enslaved, the Quakers used both legal and, in the eyes of the government, illegal means to fight slavery. This determination to stand against slavery led some Quakers to join with others to be a part of the Underground Railroad. The transition from friend to foe of slavery was not a quick one but one that nevertheless was ahead of the rest of America.