One hundred and fifty years ago, Florida was shaken by battle, blockade, economic deprivation, and the death of native sons both within and far outside its borders. Today, tributes to the valor and sacrifice of Florida’s soldiers, sailors, and civilians can be found from the Panhandle to the Keys. Authors Lees and Gaske look at the diversity of Civil War monuments built in Florida between Reconstruction and the present day, elucidating their emblematic and social dimensions. Most monuments built in Florida honor the Confederacy, praising the valor of Southern soldiers and often extolling the righteousness of their “Lost Cause.” At the same time, a fascinating minority of Union monuments also exists in the state—and these bear notably muted messages. Recalling Deeds Immortal shows how the creation of these bronze and stone monuments created new social battlegrounds as, over the years, groups such as the Ladies’ Memorial Associations, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Grand Army of the Republic competed to control the messages behind the memorialization of fallen soldiers and veterans. Examining the evolution of Civil War monuments, the authors demonstrate that the construction of these memorials is itself an important part of Civil War and post-Civil War history.

Horses and mules served during the Civil War in greater number and suffered more casualties than the men of the Union and Confederate armies combined. Using firsthand accounts, this history addresses the many uses of equines during the war, the methods by which they were obtained, their costs, their suffering on the battlefields and roads, their consumption by soldiers, and such topics as racing and mounted music. The book is supplemented by accounts of the "Lightning Mule Brigade," the "Charge of the Mule Brigade," five appendices and 37 illustrations. More than 700 Civil War equines are identified and described with incidental information and identification of their masters.

A biography of the British American who captained a blockade runner for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Captain James Carlin is a biography of a shadowy nineteenth-century British Confederate, James Carlin (1833–1921), who was among the most successful captains running the US Navy’s blockade of Southern ports during the Civil War. Written by his descendent Colin Carlin, Captain James Carlin ventures behind the scenes of this perilous trade that transported vital supplies to the Confederate forces. An Englishman trained in the British merchant marine, Carlin was recruited into the US Coastal and Geodetic Survey Department in 1856, spending four years charting the US Atlantic seaboard. Married and settled in Charleston, South Carolina, he resigned from the survey in 1860 to resume his maritime career. His blockade-running started with early runs into Charleston under sail. These came to a lively conclusion under gunfire off the Stono River mouth. More blockade-running followed until his capture on the SS Memphis. Documents in London reveal the politics of securing Carlin’s release from Fort Lafayette. On his return to Charleston, General P. G. T. Beauregard gave him command of the spar torpedo launch Torch for an attack on the USS New Ironsides. After more successful trips though the blockade, he was appointed superintending captain of the South Carolina Importing and Exporting Company and moved to Scotland to commission six new steam runners. After the war Carlin returned to the southern states to secure his assets before embarking on a gun-running expedition to the northern coast of Cuba for the Cuban Liberation Junta fighting to free the island from Spanish control and plantation slavery. In researching his forebear, the author gathered a wealth of private and public records from England, Scotland, Ireland, Greenland, the Bahamas, and the United States. The use of fresh sources from British Foreign Office and US Prize Court documents and surviving business papers make this volume distinctive. “A groundbreaking work that lifts the veil off the all-important ship captains who supplied the Confederacy with the necessary supplies to sustain its fight for independence. The author does a superb job in relating the story of his relative, James Carlin, a key member of the cadre of captains who sustained the Confederacy by running supplies through the northern blockade on specialized vessels. . . . A sweeping story from England to Charleston, Florida, and Cuba. This book is a must for anyone interested in Southern/Confederate maritime history.” —Stephen R. Wise, author of Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running during the Civil War

When American slaveholders looked west in the mid-nineteenth century, they saw an empire unfolding before them. They pursued that vision through diplomacy, migration, and armed conquest. By the late 1850s, slaveholders and their allies had transformed the southwestern quarter of the nation – California, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Utah – into a political client of the plantation states. Across this vast swath of the map, white southerners defended the institution of African American chattel slavery as well as systems of Native American bondage. This surprising history uncovers the Old South in unexpected places, far beyond the region's cotton fields and sugar plantations. Slaveholders' western ambitions culminated in a coast-to-coast crisis of the Union. By 1861, the rebellion in the South inspired a series of separatist movements in the Far West. Even after the collapse of the Confederacy, the threads connecting South and West held, undermining the radical promise of Reconstruction. Kevin Waite brings to light what contemporaries recognized but historians have described only in part: The struggle over slavery played out on a transcontinental stage.