(Reprint: 1991 printing. F/f. Fullbound in blue with gilt-...)
Reprint: 1991 printing. F/f. Fullbound in blue with gilt-stamped titles along spine. Light shelfwear, else fine in like, unclipped dustjacket. Clean and unmarked textblock. xiii, 345 p., 3 leaves of plates : ill., maps, ports.; 9 x 6 x 1 inches
(The determination with which the Confederate garrison of ...)
The determination with which the Confederate garrison of Port Hudson, Louisiana, held out--for seven weeks, fewer than 5,000 Confederate troops fended off almost 30,000 Yankees--makes it one of the most interesting campaigns of the Civil War. It was, in fact, the longest siege in U.S. military history. Edward Cunningham tells for the first time the complete story of the Union operation against this Confederate stronghold on the Lower Mississippi.
(Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award,...)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this work describes the life of one of the most extraordinary figures in American political history. Huey Long was a great natural politician who looked, and often seemed to behave, like a caricature of the red-neck Southern politico, and yet had become at the time of his assassination a serious rival to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Presidency. In this "masterpiece of American biography" New York Times Book Review, Huey Long stands wholly revealed, analyzed, and understood.
(Sometimes, in American politics, a conflict becomes so he...)
Sometimes, in American politics, a conflict becomes so heated and divisive—as the conflict over slavery did—that the ground is set for civil war. Abraham Lincoln, a pragmatist who wanted to rebuild national unity, ran up against the radicals in his own party who insisted on a rigid solution, regardless of the cost to the country.
Americans at War: The Development of the American Military System
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In Americans at War T. Harry Williams, author of Lincol...)
In Americans at War T. Harry Williams, author of Lincoln and His Generals, offers a concise historical survey of the methods by which the United States government has sought to organize and direct our military forces from the days of the Revolutionary War to the Atomic Age.
In giving his interpretative view of the development of the American command system, Dr. Williams demonstrates convincingly that the American genius―even the genius for making mistakes―has found full expression in the various systems which have been formulated.
During the Revolutionary War, for instance, it was never finally determined just who had the ultimate authority in mapping strategy, Washington or the Continental Congress. The War of 1812 resulted in at least a technical defeat for the United States, Williams says, because of incompetent civilian authority over the military. In the Mexican War and the Civil War, the United States profited from strong war-time presidents, but during the Spanish-American War and World War I the civilian authority left something to be desired.
Military men and the historians will welcome this first attempt to give an overall picture o the American command system through all our wars.
“I know of no man,” one prominent military authority has stated, “who is better qualified by knowledge, insight, and writing ability to discuss the American military experience.”
Military Record of Louisiana: Including Biographical and Historical Papers Relating to the Military Organizations of the State
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This reprint edition of Napier Bartlett’s 1875 memoir a...)
This reprint edition of Napier Bartlett’s 1875 memoir again makes available a valuable resource on Louisiana troops’ participation in the Civil War. Bartlett served throughout the war in Louisiana’s elite Washington Artillery and fought in many battles in Virginia and the East. He later wrote an engaging account of his experiences, A Soldier’s Story of the War, revealing a sensitive man’s reaction to all that combat entails. This narrative constitutes a substantial portion of Military Record of Louisiana.
The balance of the volume provides much detailed information and official data concerning Louisiana units in the Confederate Army, including muster rolls of the Orleans Guard, the Thirteenth Louisiana Regiment, the Washington Artillery, and Louisiana troops who fought in Virginia, the West, and the Trans-Mississippi. It also lists the casualties of various regiments (so far as was known then) and the cemeteries where they were buried, and includes company journals and personal narratives of prominent Louisiana soldiers.
Part memoir, part inventory, Military Record of Louisiana is a storehouse of information for scholars, students, and genealogists alike.
(Here are the characters and personalities of the three gr...)
Here are the characters and personalities of the three great Union generals, explored with intelligence and wit by one of our most distinguished historians of the Civil War. Mr. Williams is interested not only in military skills but in the temperament for command and, most of all, in moral courage. Each of these men, he writes, "represents a particular and significant aspect of leadership, and together they show a progression toward the final type of leadership that had to be developed before the war could be won. Most important, each one illustrates dramatically the relation between character and generalship." From McClellan's eighteenth-century view of war as something like a game conducted by experts on a strategic chessboard; to Sherman's understanding of the violent implications of making war against civilians; to the completeness of character displayed by Grant, Mr. Williams's absorbing investigation offers a fresh perspective on a subject of enduring interest.
Thomas Harry Williams was born on May 19, 1909, in Vinegar Hill, Illinois, the only child of William Dwight Williams, a schoolteacher and lead miner, and Emeline Louisa Collins. His mother died in 1911, and he moved with his father to a farm near Hazel Green, Wisconsin.
Education
Williams graduated from high school in 1927 and entered Platteville State Teachers College, Wisconsin, where he earned a Bachelor of Education degree in 1931.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Williams received a Master of Philosophy degree in 1932 for a thesis on Benjamin Wade that was directed by Carl Russell Fish.
He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1937 with a dissertation on "The Committee on the Conduct of the War: A Study of Civil War Politics. "
Career
Williams was an instructor at the University of Wisconsin's extension division from 1936 to 1938, before going to the University of Omaha (1938 - 1941), where he became assistant professor.
In 1941, he joined the history department of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he would remain until his retirement in 1979, save for the 1966-1967 academic year, when he was Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.
His first book, Lincoln and the Radicals (1941), was a revision of his dissertation, sparking a debate on Lincoln as politician and party leader. Leadership, both military and civilian, would remain Williams's interest for the rest of his career. Lincoln and His Generals was a 1952 Book-of-the-Month Club selection in which Williams studied Lincoln as commander in chief. Williams stressed the "modern" aspects of the Civil War, particularly the command system that the Union developed. Williams focused on Lincoln as a war director from the perspective of modern war, which made the book valuable to professional soldiers and specialists alike. He called Lincoln "a great natural strategist, a better one than any of his generals. " Williams also had the ability to write vivid vignettes of his characters, such as those of zoologist Colonel Theodore Lyman.
Williams gained recognition as an eminent historian of the South, serving as editor from 1947 to 1978 of the Southern Biography Series, published by Louisiana State University Press.
In addition, he served on the Louisiana Civil War Centennial Commission and often spoke to Civil War Round Tables. In addition, Williams wrote the chapter on "The American Civil War" in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 10 (1960).
Americans at War: The Development of the American Military System (1960) begins in the eighteenth century and ends with World War II. Williams observed that war is almost never purely military, particularly in a democracy, and said Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman "understood the political nature of the war. " With his interest in political biography, Williams was in an excellent position to write about high command. He contrasted Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as war leaders and administrators, demonstrating again that a familiarity with the military is not the most important qualification for a director of war.
Williams's portrait of a president as a soldier, Hayes of the Twenty-third: The Civil War Volunteer Officer, was published in 1965.
In 1967 the first volume of Grant's papers was published. Huey Long: A Biography appeared two years later.
The History of American Wars from 1745 to 1918 was published posthumously in 1981.
Thomas Harry Williams died on July 6, 1979, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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In Americans at War T. Harry Williams, author of Lincol...)
Views
Quotations:
"The men I have been drawn to in history are, notably, Abraham Lincoln, Huey Long, Lyndon Johnson - great power artists. "
"I subscribe to a version of the great man theory of history. "
Membership
In 1959, Thomas Williams became president of the Southern Historical Association. Williams also served as vice-president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association.
He was president of the Organization of American Historians (1972 - 1973).
Connections
On September 2, 1937, Thomas Harry Williams married Helen Margaret Jenson; the couple had no children and were divorced in 1947.
On December 27, 1952, he married Estelle Skolfield, by whom he had one child.