Offers significant insight into the life, heart, mind, and attitudes of an intelligent, educated, young mid-19th-century white Southerner This book contains the letters of George Knox Miller who served as a line officer in the Confederate cavalry and participated in almost all of the major campaigns of the Army of Tennessee. He was, clearly, a very well-educated young man. Born in 1836 in Talladega, Alabama, he developed a great love for reading and the theater and set his sights upon getting an education that would lead to a career in law or medicine; meanwhile he worked as an apprentice in a painting firm to earn tuition. Miller then enrolled in the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his studies. Eloquent, bordering on the lyrical, the letters provide riveting first-hand accounts of cavalry raids, the monotony of camp life, and the horror of battlefield carnage. Miller gives detailed descriptions of military uniforms, cavalry tactics, and prison conditions. He conveys a deep commitment to the Confederacy, but he was also critical of Confederate policies that he felt hindered the army's efforts. Dispersed among these war-related topics is the story of Miller's budding relationship with Celestine “Cellie” McCann, the love of his life, whom he would eventually marry.

Secession is the creation of a new independent state out of an existing state. This key volume examines the political, social and legal processes of the practice of secession. Following an analysis of secessionist movements and their role in attempts at secession, eight case studies are explored to illustrate peaceful, violent, sequential and recursive secessions. This is followed by a look at the theoretical approaches and a discussion that focuses on the economic causes. Normative theories of secession are discussed as well as the status of secession in legal theory and practice. The book systematizes our present knowledge of secessions in an accessible way to readers not familiar with the phenomenon and its consequences. It is ideal as a supplementary text to courses on contemporary political and social movements, applied ethics and political philosophy, international relations and international law, state sovereignty and state formation.

Our nation has produced comparatively few statesmen since the eighteenth century--only Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt seem to clearly qualify--whereas the American Revolution elevated several of its key players to a status of the first political order. Even the shortest list must include Franklin, Hamilton, and the first four presidents. The opening essays in Don Higginbotham's new collection look at the epochal achievements of the Revolutionary era through the perspectives of war, leadership, and state formation. Higginbotham examines how the blend of key personages influenced the creation of a federal system and led to the establishment of a new kind of militia and of West Point, a military academy distinctly different from its counterparts in Europe. The collection also provides a fascinating view into the character of George Washington through an essay examining his relationships with women. The concluding essays turn to the post-Revolutionary era to examine how the North and South, despite profound and persistent bonds, began to grow apart. Higginbotham traces the deepening sectional crisis within the context of the election of Lincoln, and he ends his book with the approach of a second revolution--that of the Confederacy. All of the essays demonstrate Higginbotham's belief that history is not shaped simply by vast, impersonal forces but that, on the contrary, significant and lasting change is to a large extent brought about by the interaction and decisions of individuals. Our unique and remarkable history is a reflection of remarkable people.

It is one of the great questions of American history--why did the Southern states bolt from the Union and help precipitate the Civil War? Now, acclaimed historian William W. Freehling offers a new answer, in the final volume of his monumental history The Road to Disunion. Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject.

During the Civil War, enslavers bought and sold thousands of people, extending a traffic in humanity that had long underpinned American slavery. Despite the pressures of blockades, economic collapse, and unfolding emancipation, the slave trade survived to the war's end. This book provides a vivid look at life within the trade in slaves and tells the story of the wartime slave trade from the perspective of both participants in it and those subjected to it.

The first volume of this Biography has received flattering reviews from critics on the staff of the Nation, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Boston Transcript and the London Times. Both Gamaliel Bradford and William E. Dodd have been warm in their commendation of the second volume. In this volume Mrs. Rowland had written a charming and accurate historical narrative of the Southern Confederacy in which the wife of Jefferson Davis played a part that holds and fascinates the reader. The narrative written in an easy, graceful yet frank and forceful style, places the work among the year's important contributions to American biography.

At a time when the question of separatism is becoming increasingly significant in international politics, The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession is the first and only comprehensive account of the ways in which states fight acts of secession on the world stage.