The history of Company B, 307 Infantry's participation in The First World War. A part of the 77th Division it trained at Camp Upton, New York before leaving for France.
The author takes the listener on a tour of various ships used in WW1. He discusses the boats and the seamen who occupy them and their encounters with the German U-boats. It is a collection of short stories, each one complete, about them all. The author was also an Olympic athlete; winning a bronze, silver and gold medal in the Athens Olympics of 1896 and a silver in the Paris games of 1900.
"William Jesse "Bill" McDonald (1852 - 1918) in the 1880s served as a deputy sheriff in Wood County. After moving to Hardeman County, he served as deputy sheriff, special Ranger, and U. S. Deputy Marshal of the Northern District of Texas and the Southern District of Kansas.. . . .In 1891 McDonald was selected to replace S. A. McMurry as Captain of Company B, Frontier Battalion. He served as a Ranger captain until 1907. Capt. McDonald and his company took part in a number of celebrated cases including the Fitzsimmons-Maher prize fight, the Wichita Falls bank robbery, the Reese-Townsend feud, and the Brownsville Raid of 1906. His handling of the troops of the 25th U.S. Infantry during this last incident made him known as "a man who would charge hell with a bucket of water." He had a reputation as a gunman that rested upon his his marksmanship, and his ability to use his weapons to intimidate his opponents. … In 1905, McDonald served as bodyguard to President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1907, Governor Campbell made him a state revenue agent. He again fulfilled the role of bodyguard in 1912 for a visit by Woodrow Wilson. Later Wilson appointed him U. S. Marshal for the Northern District of Texas." -- from Chapter 1
Note: This book racially offensive words which were part of the vocabulary of the time. It is LibriVox policy to read texts as written.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thirty radio addresses made throughout his terms as President of the United States between 1933 and 1944. The speeches are snapshots of American life during the turbulent decade that included the Great Depression and World War II.
The Wound Dresser is a series of letters written from the hospitals in Washington by Walt Whitman during the War of the Rebellion to The New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle and his mother, edited by Richard Maurice Burke, M.D., one of Whitman's literary executors.
As a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps during the War of 1812 assigned to Marine Corps headquarters, English sailed to the Mediterranean, and was among the first citizens of the United States known to have visited Egypt. Shortly after arriving in Egypt he resigned his commission, converted to Islam and joined Isma'il Pasha in an expedition up the Nile River against Sennar in 1820, winning distinction as an officer of artillery. He published his Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar (London 1822) regarding his exploits. (Introduction adapted by obform from Wikipedia)
A true war narrative, published in 1918 while WWI was still going on.
"But it is not for those who heard the call in the later months so much as in memory of those early heroes of Mons, who knew the bitterness of a valiant retreat, the horror of forced marches along parched roads, with only the prod of the next man's bayonet to keep him awake, and only a flap cut from the tail of his shirt between the pitiless sun and the dreaded delirium that would leave him a prey to the Huns' barbarities; in memory of these it is that I take up the pen to run the gauntlet of a thousand critical eyes on a way fraught with difficulties." ~ Kate John Finzi
In the American Civil War, the Vicksburg campaign (December 1862-July 1863) was a pivotal victory for the Union under the generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, who as a result was promoted by President Lincoln to command of all the North’s military forces. Historian James M. McPherson called Vicksburg “The most brilliant and innovative campaign of the Civil War.” A U.S. Army field manual called it “the most brilliant campaign ever fought on American soil.” National Park Service Historical Manual number 21 published in 1954.
Volume 2 of The Life begins with some early biography, but moves quickly to Washington's military career as a colonel in the battles against the French in Canada until the cessation of his tenure, after which he marries and appears to settle down. But, of course he is called to lead the troops fighting in the revolution against England about which leadership the remaining of Volume 2 is dedicated to the point of the American rejection of England's Plan for Reconciliation.
High Adventure A Narrative of Air Fighting in France by James Norman Hall; you will find this book although an exciting narrative has an unpolished feel because it was published in June of 1918 while Mr. Hall was a captive in a German POW camp. When he was captured behind enemy lines, the book was still a work in progress. The Armistice would not be reached until November of that year.
Although he does not mention it in this book, Mr. Hall had already served the better part of 15 months with the British Expeditionary Forces, surviving the battle of Loos in Sept – Oct 1915, and upon which his excellent work “Kitchener’s” Mob is Based.
The US did not enter the war until April 1917, and Hall had already served nearly three years as an American with British and French forces, as a machine gunner with the British, and as a pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille.
Pilot training in the French Air Corps was primarily a matter of survival. Visualize if you will, a class of “Penguins”, aircraft with wings too short for flight scurrying about the airfield as student pilots learn to control these machines with no instructor on board, and for that matter in Mr. Halls case there was never an instructor on board. Their solo flight was their first flight. They learned by doing.
The sheer joy and wonder of man’s early experience of leaving the bounds of Earth in an aircraft coupled with the danger and excitement of air combat made “High Adventure” such a good read, I completed the narration ahead of schedule, because I couldn’t put it down.
Mike Vendetti, Narrator, www.mikevendetti.com
In the course of May 1916, the Italian authorities expressed a desire that some independent observer from Great Britain should visit their lines and report his impressions. It was at the time when our brave and capable allies had sustained a set-back in the Trentino owing to a sudden concentration of the Austrians, supported by very heavy artillery. I was asked to undertake this mission. In order to carry it out properly, I stipulated that I should be allowed to visit the British lines first, so that I might have some standard of comparison. The War Office kindly assented to my request. Later I obtained permission to pay a visit to the French front as well. Thus it was my great good fortune, at the very crisis of the war, to visit the battle line of each of the three great Western allies. I only wish that it had been within my power to complete my experiences in this seat of war by seeing the gallant little Belgian army which has done so remarkably well upon the extreme left wing of the hosts of freedom.
My experiences and impressions are here set down, and may have some small effect in counteracting those mischievous misunderstandings and mutual belittlements which are eagerly fomented by our cunning enemy.
An account of the expedition [of the U.S. Army] in pursuit of the hostile Chiricahua Apaches in the spring of 1883. (Book subtitle) Bourke was a Medal of Honor awardee in the American Civil War whose subsequent Army career included several campaigns in the Indian wars of the mid to late 19th century in the American West. He wrote prolifically. He was mostly free of the unfortunate disdain for Native Americans common in 19th century America. He was quite admiring of many aspects of the Native American. “… Bourke had the opportunity to witness every facet of life in the Old West—the battles, wildlife, the internal squabbling among the military, the Indian Agency, settlers, and Native Americans.”
A firsthand account of the deplorable conditions within the most infamous prisoner-of-war camp of the Confederacy. Though functioning only during the last year of the Civil War, nearly 13,000 of 45,000 incarcerated Union soldiers died under inhumane conditions.
Better known today for his influential fantasy writings, Lord Dunsany also wrote a number of sketches during World War One. This compilation of essays written from time spent in France in 1916. Much more thoughtful and melancholy than the pieces written for the War Office earlier in the war.
A personal history of the American Civil War taken from the author's own letters to 'the girl he left behind', who later became his wife. This is not a complete history and does not deal with major events, but is a snapshot of life in the Second New Hampshire Regiment and humanizes the history we study. Haynes went on to have an illustrious career. After the war, he founded a local newspaper, of which he was editor. He was also elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and became clerk to the county Supreme Court. He was president of the New Hampshire Veteran's Association. Haynes served as United States Representative for the state of New Hampshire from 1883-1887. He then moved to the Treasury Department and was instrumental in founding the Internal Revenue Service of the Philippines.
I propose to tell in non-technical and popular language the story of some of the most remarkable episodes in the history of sea power. I shall begin with the first sea-fight of which we have a detailed history—the Battle of Salamis (B.C. 480), the victory by which Themistocles the Athenian proved the soundness of his maxim that "he who commands the sea commands all." I shall end with the last and greatest of naval engagements, the Battle of Tsu-shima, an event that reversed the long experience of victory won by West over East, which began with Salamis more than two thousand years ago. I shall have to tell of British triumphs on the sea from Sluys to Trafalgar; but I shall take instances from the history of other countries also, for it is well that we should remember that the skill, enterprise, and courage of admirals and seamen is no exclusive possession of our own people.
I shall incidentally describe the gradual evolution of the warship from the wooden, oar-driven galleys that fought in the Straits of Salamis to the steel-built, steam-propelled giants that met in battle in the Straits of Tsu-shima. I shall have something to say of old seafaring ways, and much to tell of the brave deeds done by men of many nations. These true stories of the sea will, I trust, have not only the interest that belongs to all records of courage, danger, and adventure, but also some practical lessons of their own. „ (From the Introduction of the Book)
In 1914, at the age of 51, the novelist and poet May Sinclair volunteered to leave the comforts of England to go to the Western Front, joining the Munro Ambulance Corps ministering to wounded Belgian soldiers in Flanders. Her experiences in the Great War, brief and traumatizing as they were, permeated the prose and poetry she wrote after this time. Witness of great human pain and tragedy, Sinclair was in serious danger of her life on multiple occasions. This journal makes no attempt to be anything more than a journal: a lucid, simple, heart-breaking account of war at first hand.
"Although it is still a crude machine—in view of the perfected apparatuswhich is the aim of thoughtful designers—the aeroplane has demonstrated,in a conclusive way, its value as an instrument of war."
The eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were periods of stark contrast between the opulent lifestyle of the rich and the extreme poverty of the peasants throughout the world. In addition, Russia straddled eastern and western cultures, not fitting neatly into either. The church was an important force, and those adhering to traditional eastern religions were peaceful and accustomed to 'doing as they were told'; followers of western thought were more eager for a democratic society. Add an autocratic czar and the conditions were ripe for revolution, corruption and murder. This history traces the stories of the weak Michael, the great Peter and Catherine to Nicholas II, the last of the Romanoffs.
“…I have charged Dame M. Columban to give a detailed account of all that has befallen the Community, since the coming of the Germans to Ypres till our safe arrival at Oulton Abbey. I can therefore certify that all that is in this little book, taken from the notes which several of the nuns had kept, is perfectly true, and only a simple narrative of our own personal experiences of the War.” (From an introductory note by M. Maura, O.S.B., Prioress, April 1915.)
The Abbey of the Irish Dames of Ypres was established in 1665. It was a favorite Abbey for the daughters of Irish nobility and was supported by influential Irish families living in exile. After more than two centuries of Benedictine prayer and spirituality and educating women, the Abbey was destroyed by German bombardment in the early days of World War I. The Abbey was evacuated, aided by The Royal Munster Fusiliers, and established Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland in 1920.
James Green (1864-1948) was a Methodist minister who was a chaplain to Australian troops in the Boer War and in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I. This memoir was published 1917, while the war was on-going. “In spite of necessary suppression, or vagueness of names of localities, my comrades of the Fifty-fifth Battalion, to which I was attached, will recognize many of the incidents described, and I can only hope that reading what the padre has to say may cheer them in some lonely places, or help them to be happy though miserable in some indifferent billets.” (From the Foreword)
Green served with distinction at Gallipoli as well as in several campaigns in western Europe. He developed and maintained all his life a huge respect for the common fighting man. Notes: "Padre" (Latin for father) was how military chaplains of all denominations were addressed and referred to. "Bomb" in infantry terms is what more modern eras term hand grenades. Horseferry Road was the London site of the headquarters for the A.I.F. It was also the site of a recreation center for Australian soldiers; it was founded by Green.
In the American Civil War the Union victory in the ten-month campaign for the city of Petersburg, Virginia (June 1864-March 1865), led directly to the surrender of the Confederacy within two weeks. This 1970 National Park Service booklet tells the story of the campaign. It focuses on the meaning of the campaign and the experience of the soldiers of both sides, with a minimum of references to military units. The listener to this Librivox recording may want to view the printed booklet for excellent maps and revealing photographs.
While most associate the "Great War" with trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, and poison gas, ships played roles in the military at the beginning of the 20th century. Stories of the Ships is a 1919 collection of accounts described in the first person by those who fought battles on the sea during World War I. It gives the listener a more complete account of the conflicts that defined the most costly war in history. Lewis Ransome Freeman (1878 – 1960) was an American explorer, journalist and war correspondent who wrote over twenty books chronicling his many travels, as well as numerous articles. He became a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1917-18. He was a correspondent attached to the Grand Fleet late in the war, and was a staff member for the Inter-Allied Naval Armistice Commission which traveled to Germany in 1918.
A sketch of the second regiment of Connecticut volunteer heavy artillery, originally the Nineteenth Volunteer Infantry, in the Civil War.
Holmes describes his frantic search through Civil War torn landscapes for his wounded son, the future Supreme Court Justice. Originally published in The Atlantic Magazine, 1862. Holmes, Sr. (1809 -1894) was an American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author. He was regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858). He is also recognized as an important medical reformer.
Personal accounts and recollections of soldiers coping with body lice, poisonous gas, rats, and death in the trenches during WWI.
Fort Concho was a U.S. Army post in central Texas from 1867 to 1889. It figured considerably in the Indian Wars, notably against the Comanches. It mainly served to protect frontier settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains, the U.S. mail, and trade routes. This 1957 book, published by the museum at the site of the fort, is the story of its activities.
In 1915 Oscar Hornung, son of the famous author E W Hornung, was killed at Ypres after less than a year as a soldier in Flanders. He was only 20. Two years later E W Hornung volunteered to help run one of the YMCA canteens close behind the front line.
This book is Hornung’s own account of the time he spent in Northern France: first helping in a canteen, then running a library for the enlisted men. He wanted to be near the place where his son died, to meet the young soldiers who were fighting the war, and to make their lives a little better. More than anything, Hornung wanted to believe there was a greater purpose to he war: in his descriptions soldiers are always heroes, the struggles just, and leaders wise and kind.
But whatever his motivations and blind-spots, Hornung brought all his skills as a highly experienced novelist to the task of telling his story. We feel we are there with him while he talks to the soldiers, travels to the front line to serve cocoa and biscuits under fire, and finally sets up a lending library only a couple of miles from No Man’s Land. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a former friend who reported Hornung to the authorities for promoting pacifism) grudgingly admitted that this book contains some of the best descriptions of life on the Western Front.
(The cover shows the western front as it passed trough the town of Arras in 1918 at the time the author would have known it)
An eye-witness account of the fall of Antwerp to the Germans in the opening months of World War I, Mack’s story has passages of extraordinary vividness and immediacy. Flawed by the most treacly sentiment in some places and the most ferocious anti-German invective in others, her account endures as an uncommonly forthright, passionate testimony to those tragic events and the ordinary people who were the true heroes of them. As a forty-something, coquettish war correspondent wrapped in sable furs and speaking French in her native Australian accent, she seems to have inspired amusement in some observers, but her courage in the face of wartime brutality bordered on suicidal effrontery, as she insisted time after time on having a vantage-point in the most dangerous places at the most dangerous times. Perhaps over-generous to the “little” Belgians (who had not long before this been perpetrators of hideous imperial atrocities themselves), she is able to be honest even about those she admires most, pointing out, for example, the appalling number of spies among the Belgian population and the foibles of those who claimed to be its leaders. There are startling moments in this book, riveting details that could only have been recorded by an eyewitness as audacious and authentic as Mack, no matter her sentimental biases.
This 1923 memoir of a World War I soldier (Royal Engineer and hand-to-hand combatant) is a well written much respected first-hand account of the brutal fighting in the last year of the war.
On the gently rolling farm lands surrounding the little town of Gettysburg, Pa., was fought one of the great decisive battles of American history. For 3 days, from July 1 to 3, 1863, a gigantic struggle between 75,000 Confederates and 88,000 Union troops raged about the town and left 51,000 casualties in its wake. Heroic deeds were numerous on both sides, climaxed by the famed Confederate assault on July 3 which has become known throughout the world as Pickett’s Charge. The Union victory gained on these fields ended the last Confederate invasion of the North and marked the beginning of a gradual decline in Southern military power. Here also, a few months after the battle, Abraham Lincoln delivered his classic Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the national cemetery set apart as a burial ground for the soldiers who died in the conflict. This 1954 publication (revised in 1961) is number 9 in the Historical Handbook series put out by the U.S. National Park Service. The author was a World War I veteran, a noted Civil War historian, and chief historian for the Gettysburg National Military Park in the 1950s and 1960s.
Abner Doubleday began the Civil War as a Union officer and aimed the first cannon shot in response to the bombardment opened on Ft. Sumter in 1861. Two years later, after a series of battles (including Antietam, where he was wounded), Doubleday took over a division in the Army of the Potomac's 1st Corps.
These are his memoirs of service in two of the War's great campaigns. At Chancellorsville, a very promising start made by General Hooker against Lee's Confederate forces fell to a defeat when, in Doubleday's estimation, normal and prudent precautions against surprise in the heavily-wooded battlefield were not carried out; he also seemingly apologizes for Hooker's lack of leadership during the battle as a result of his having been stunned by a cannon ball hitting the post against which he was leaning.
After Chancellorsville, Hooker was replaced as Army Commander by General George Meade. Doubleday describes the curious circumstances that led the two opposing armies to meet at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. When Doubleday's superior, General John Reynolds, was killed by a sharpshooter on the first day's battle, he took over the 1st Corps and fought it well against converging Confederate divisions that badly outnumbered him. The Corps was forced by battle losses to retire, but its desperate fight bought the time needed for Union reinforcements to pour into Gettysburg and thus prevent a defeat in detail.
General Howard of the XIth Corps replaced Doubleday as the senior commander on the field, and mistakenly wrote to Meade that 1st Corps had routed after practically no fighting. Thus, when Meade arrived, he removed Doubleday from command of 1st Corps, replacing him with a more junior general from another Corps. The snub would embitter Doubleday against Meade. This book is in part Doubleday's revenge, as he picks apart Meade's indecision after the battle was essentially won, with the repulse of the famous Pickett's Charge. In his view, Meade could have won the war at that moment.
An educated gentleman, Mr Manington has given an insight into the unusual experiences of an Englishman in the French Foreign Legion, such as no ordinary "mercenary" could have done. Most of the narrative deals with Tonquin, and the fighting there against the rebels in their forest fastnesses. Incidentally, in giving an account of his friendship for the native sergeant, Doy-Tho, the author has been able to impart to the pages of the book an Oriental atmosphere that we think will prove attractive to the reader.
Published in 1917, this "little volume of 'Theta’s' letters to his home people" was assembled to provide useful information for young men who might like to become pilots for the Royal Flying Corps. A mixture of conversational letters, poems, and descriptions of flying, the book proves entertaining, even today, despite having been written in training and in active duty during World War I.
The English colonies, holding a great stretch of the Atlantic seaboard, increased in number and power. New France also grew stronger. The steady hostility of the rivals never wavered. There was, indeed, little open warfare as long as the two Crowns remained at peace. From 1660 to 1688, the Stuart rulers of England remained subservient to their cousin the Bourbon King of France and at one with him in religious faith. But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly denounced the new King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a usurper, and attacked the English in America with a savage fury unknown in Europe. From 1690 to 1760 the combatants fought with little more than pauses for renewed preparation, and the conflict ended only when France yielded to England the mastery of her empire in America. It is the story of this struggle, covering a period of seventy years, which is told in the following pages.
This Part 2 of "The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80" discusses the 1878-80 war, which was one of the major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between the United Kingdom and Russia, and also marked one of the worst setbacks inflicted on British power in the region after the consolidation of British Raj by the East India Company.
After years of telling these stories to his grandchildren, Foster was prevailed on to write them down for future generations. Rather than rely on his memory, he conducted research for accuracy. He served as a colonel for the Union Army during the American Civil War and later went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison.
A true tale of the wartime resilience of six Frenchwomen whose country town was invaded by the Germans during World War I.
The First Anglo–Afghan War was fought between British India and Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842. It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between the United Kingdom and Russia, and also marked one of the worst setbacks inflicted on British power in the region after the consolidation of British Raj by the East India Company.
The experiences of American James R. McConnell, while flying with the French Flying Corp at Verdun during World War One. Sgt McConnell was a member of the Layfette Escadrille also called the American Escadrille from 1915 to 1917. McConnell volunteered for Ambulance service in France in 1915. While serving with the Ambulance service he was cited for courage in retrieving wounded soldiers under fire and was awarded the French Croix de Gurre for bravery. He decided to volunteer for service in the French Flying Corps and became a member of the American Escadrelle. A unit formed in the years before the United States became involved in the war made up of American Volunteer pilots.
Charles Quintard (1824-1898) was an Episcopal priest who, in spite of his pro-Union stance, volunteered to be a chaplain in the Confederate army in the American Civil War. A sympathetic, warm, intellectual man loved by soldier and civilian alike, he volunteered because he felt that the soldiers from his local area needed him more than his local parish. Within four months of the end of the war, he was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, an election ratified by the Episcopal Church's General Convention in October. That election is considered a major step in the healing of the divisions in that church and indeed in the larger civil society. Bishop Quintard wrote this memoir in 1896, thirty-one years after the end of the war. The Preface, chapters 1, 15, and 16 were written by the editor, Arthur Howard Noll.
Robert James Manion (1881-1943) was a Canadian doctor who volunteered in the Canadian medical corps during World War I. This book is his memoir of the war. After the war he entered politics and served in several Canadian governments. The listener may note a lack of mention of the United States soldier; this is because the memoir was written before the entry of that country into the war.
Volume 3 of The Life continues the Revolutionary War from the incursion into Jersey in 1778 to its conclusion with the surrender of Lord Cornwallis in 1781 at Yorktown, with emphasis on the role of George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the United States forces.
“…there can be little doubt that the Federal drive on Atlanta, launched in May 1864, was the beginning of the end for the Southern Confederacy…. The Atlanta Campaign had an importance reaching beyond the immediate military and political consequences. It was conducted in a manner that helped establish a new mode of warfare. From beginning to end, it was a railroad campaign, in that a major transportation center was the prize for which the contestants vied, and both sides used rail lines to marshal, shift, and sustain their forces…. and one of the most impressive features of Richard McMurry’s account is the insight—much of it gleaned from unpublished letters and diaries—into the motivations, experiences, and reactions of the participants. The officers and men who endured the heat and the mud of what must have been one of the wettest seasons in the history of Georgia and who lived in the shadow of death day after day for 4 months of as arduous campaigning as occurred during the whole conflict, stand out as flesh and blood human beings.” (Book Foreword by noted historian Bell I. Wiley) “This campaign resulted in the capture of Atlanta by the Unionists, prepared the way for Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” and, in the opinion of many historians, made inevitable the reelection of Abraham Lincoln and the consequent determination of the North to see the war through to final victory rather than accept a compromise with secession and slavery.” (Page 1) The author, Richard M. McMurry, was associate professor of history at Valdosta State College, Valdosta, Georgia. This is a 1972 U.S. National Park Service publication describing one of the most important battles of the American Civil War. Helpful maps enrich the text.
Volume five of John Marshall's biography follows Washington through his second term ending in the election of John Adams and Washington's retirement to Mount Vernon. This narrative continues the careful and intriguing analysis of the subjects of the previous volume as America navagtes with Washington's wise captaincy the complicated and sometimes violent foreign and domestic conflicts of the young, developing nation.
Lord Cochrane was a Napoleonic-era sea captain, whose adventures were the source material for many popular series of naval fiction. He started to write a biography but passed away after completing only two volumes. This work, by Cochrane's secretary and son, completes his "Autobiography of a Seaman". In this volume, Cochrane aids the Greeks against their Ottoman overlords, joins the House of Lords, gets his knighthood back and re-enters the Royal Navy.
George Cary Eggleston's Civil War memoir begins with a separate essay on the living conditions and political opinions of Virginia’s citizenry before secession. The body of the work contains vivid descriptions and accounts of the men and women of the South during the time of the Confederacy. Eggleston praises its war heroes, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jeb Stuart, but is highly critical of Jefferson Davis and of his government’s inefficiencies, red-tape, and favoritism. The book concludes with the war's end and a tribute to the character of the newly freed slaves.
This informative and engaging work, much of which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, enjoyed great popularity throughout the country. Originally published in 1874, it went through four editions by 1905. ( Lee Smalley)
In the American Civil War, The United States Sanitary Commission, staffed by volunteers, may be viewed as a precursor to The Red Cross. It supplemented the medical care of the armed services medical corps. Its doctors, nurses, administrators, go-fers, money, and supplies saved thousands of lives, providing medical care to the wounded and solace to the families of the dead. This memoir of one campaign gives a flavor of the challenges faced, frustrations endured, and medical battles lost and won. Explanatory note: “contraband” refers to a black slave, esp. a fugitive or captured slave
The true story of M. C. Simmons, a Canadian soldier captured by the German Army during the early days of World War I. We read of his sixteen months of imprisonment, his encounters with other captured troops of the other Allied armies and his observations of the nature of his captors and their countrymen. Most compellingly we read of his escape from POW camp, his recapture and punishment, and then the capture and punishment following his second escape attempt, climaxing in his third escape attempt and daring travel through enemy territory against all odds. In McClung's words, "Private Simmons is a close and accurate observer who sees clearly and talks well. He tells a straightforward, unadorned tale, every sentence of which is true, and convincing."