Another Confederate cavalry raid impends. You hear the snort of an impatient horse, the leathery squeaking of saddles, the low-voiced commands of officers, the muffled cluck of guns cocked in preparation—then the sudden rush of motion, the din of another attack. This classic story seeks to illuminate a little-known theater of the Civil War—the cavalry battles of the Trans-Mississippi West, a region that included Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, the Indian Territory, and part of Louisiana. Stephen B. Oates traces the successes and defeats of the cavalry; its brief reinvigoration under John S. "Rip" Ford, who fought and won the last battle of the war at Palmetto Ranch; and finally, the disintegration of this once-proud fighting force.

With this volume Stephen Z. Starr brings to a triumphant conclusion his prize-winning trilogy on the history of the Union cavalry.The War in the West provides accounts of the cavalry's role in the Vicksburg Campaign, the conquest of central Tennessee, Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea, and the campaign of the Carolinas. Starr never neglects the numerous difficulties the cavalry faced: equipment shortages, inadequate weapons, unsuitable organization, and inept use of the cavalry by many members of the Union high command. And he never ignores the cavalry's own contributions to its failures. He convincingly demonstrates that in the end, in the battle of Nashville and in the Selma Campaign, the Union cavalry proved enormously effective. With this final volume Starr's objective remains "the portrayal of the life and campaigns of the Union cavalry as they were experienced and fought by its troopers and officers."

Collection of forty documents dating from the eve of the Civil War to the collaspe of the Confederacy chronicling the Civil War in Texas.

In 1864, General Sterling Price with an army of 12,000 ragtag Confederates invaded Missouri in an effort to wrest it from the United States Army's Department of Missouri. Price hoped his campaign would sway the 1864 presidential election, convincing war-weary Northern voters to cast their ballots for a peace candidate rather than Abraham Lincoln. It was the South's last invasion of Northern territory. But it was simply too late in the war for the South to achieve such an outcome, and Price grossly mismanaged the campaign, guaranteeing the defeat of his force and of the Confederate States. This book chronicles the Confederacy's desperate, final, ill-fated attempt to win a decisive victory.

Thomas C. Hindman, an ardent defender of slavery and state rights, was the most explosive force in Arkansas politics in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. Energetic in championing a cause, fiery of temperament, and persuasively eloquent in speech, Hindman successfully led fights against Know Nothingism and the machine that had controlled the state's politics. He carried his fight against the abolitionists to Congress and vigorously campaigned for Arkansas' secession from the Union. Mindman raised a regiment at his own expense and drafted the ordinance that created Arkansas' military board. He quickly advanced from the rank of colonel to major general and for a time was commander of the Trans-Mississippi district. When he was reassigned east of the Mississippi, he participated in some of the most pivotal battles of the war, receiving injuries at Chickamauga and the Atlanta campaign. After the war, Hindman joined other Confederate refugees in Mexico. When Maximillian's government collapsed, Hindman returned to Arkansas, unpardoned and disenfranchised, and became the leader of the "Young Democracy, " a group willing to work within the bounds of the first Reconstruction Act. He had begun to build a biracial coalition to compete with the state's Republicans when he was shot at home by an unknown assassin on 27 September 1868.

Drawing on six years of research, this book covers the military service and postwar lives of notable Confederate veterans who moved into Northern California at the end the Civil War. Biographies of 101 former rebels are provided, from the oldest brother of the Clanton Gang to the son of a President to plantation owners, dirt farmers, criminals and everything in between.