Confederate veterans flocked to the Montana Territory at the end of the Civil War. Seeking new opportunities after enduring the hardships of war, these men and their families made a lasting impact on the region. Their presence was marked across the territory in places like Confederate Gulch and Virginia City. Now meet the fascinating characters who came to Big Sky country after the war, including guerrillas who fought with William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, as well as cavalrymen who rode with Confederate legends General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Colonel John S. Mosby. Author and historian Ken Robison recounts where these soldiers came from, why they fought for the South, what drew them to the Montana Territory and how they helped shape the region.

"Confederate veterans flocked to the Montana Territory at the end of the Civil War. Seeking new opportunities after enduring the hardships of war, these men and their families made a lasting impact on the region. Their presence was marked across the territory in places like Confederate Gulch and Virginia City. Now meet the fascinating characters who came to Big Sky country after the war, including guerrillas who fought with William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, as well as cavalrymen who rode with Confederate legends General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Colonel John S. Mosby. Author and historian Ken Robison recounts where these soldiers came from, why they fought for the South, what drew them to the Montana Territory and how they helped shape the region." -- book cover.

A compelling portrait of how the passions of the Civil War played out among gold miners in the remote mountains of the West. In 1862, gold discoveries brought thousands of miners to camps along Grasshopper Creek—and by 1864, the Federal government had carved the Montana Territory out of the existing Idaho and Dakota Territories. Gold from Montana Territory fueled the Union war effort, yet loyalties were mixed among the miners. In this compelling collection of stories, historian Ken Robison illustrates how Southern sympathizers and Union loyalists, deserters and veterans, freed slaves and former slaveholders living side by side made a volatile and vibrant mix that molded Montana. Discover how fiery personalities like Union Colonel Sidney Edgerton and General Thomas Francis Meagher fought to keep order in the newly formed frontier, while brave Confederate and Union veterans and their hardy families created an enduring legacy that helped shape modern Montana.

From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. . . . 1881: A generation after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America in 1881. But this was a new kind of war, fought on a lawless frontier where the blue and gray battled not only each other but the Apache, the outlaw, the French, and the English. As Confederate General Stonewall Jackson again demonstrated his military expertise, the North struggled to find a leader who could prove his equal. In the Second War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed--and so would history. . .

Withdrawal of the mighty Hudson Bay Company from present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan created a lawless environment with new economic opportunities. A cross-border trading bond arose with growing steamboat mercantile center Fort Benton in Montana Territory. In 1870, Montana traders Johnny Healy and Al Hamilton moved across the Medicine Line and built Fort Whoop-Up. It established the two-hundred-mile Whoop-Up Trail from Fort Benton, through Blackfoot lands, to the Belly River near today's Lethbridge. Over the next decade, the buffalo robe trade flourished with the Blackfoot, as did violence. The turmoil forced the creation of Canada's North West Mounted Police, tasked with closing down the whiskey trade and evicting the Montana traders. Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life this dramatic story.

In this recently unearthed memoir, Civil War veteran James Howard Lowell offers a firsthand account of his brutal journey west on a wagon train attacked by Indian Dog Soldiers. The Boston Yank staggers snow blind through a Laramie Plains blizzard to reach Salt Lake City, where he meets Brigham Young. In Montana, he joins an old forty-niner to work a mining claim, practices "tomahawk jurisprudence" in Fort Benton and builds a mackinaw to head downriver through Deadman Rapids to trade with the Crow and Gros Ventre tribes. Lowell's great-great-granddaughter edits this tale populated with colorful characters, narrow escapes and important historical events, such as the Baker Massacre. It features Lowell's letters to his sweetheart and Civil War correspondence.

During the 1860s, the Missouri River served as a natural highway, through snags and rapids, from St. Louis to Fort Benton for steamboats bringing Yankees and Rebels and their families to the remote Montana territory. The migration transformed the Upper Missouri region from the isolation of the fur trade era to the raucous gold rush days that would keep the region in turmoil for decades. The influx of newcomers involved its share of dramatic episodes, including the explosion of the Chippewa triggered by a drunken crew member, the mystery of the fugitive James-Younger gang and Colonel Everton Conger's journey from capturing John Wilkes Booth to the Montana Supreme Court. Acclaimed historian Ken Robison reveals the thrilling history behind this war-weary wave of migration seeking opportunity on Montana's wild and scenic frontier.

Withdrawal of the mighty Hudson Bay Company from present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan created a lawless environment with new economic opportunities. A cross-border trading bond arose with growing steamboat mercantile center Fort Benton in Montana Territory. In 1870, Montana traders Johnny Healy and Al Hamilton moved across the Medicine Line and built Fort Whoop-Up. It established the two-hundred-mile Whoop-Up Trail from Fort Benton, through Blackfoot lands, to the Belly River near today's Lethbridge. Over the next decade, the buffalo robe trade flourished with the Blackfoot, as did violence. The turmoil forced the creation of Canada's North West Mounted Police, tasked with closing down the whiskey trade and evicting the Montana traders. Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life this dramatic story.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History A dramatic, riveting, and “fresh look at a region typically obscured in accounts of the Civil War. American history buffs will relish this entertaining and eye-opening portrait” (Publishers Weekly). Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict—involving not just the North and South, but also the West. Against the backdrop of this larger series of battles, Nelson introduces nine individuals: John R. Baylor, a Texas legislator who established the Confederate Territory of Arizona; Louisa Hawkins Canby, a Union Army wife who nursed Confederate soldiers back to health in Santa Fe; James Carleton, a professional soldier who engineered campaigns against Navajos and Apaches; Kit Carson, a famous frontiersman who led a regiment of volunteers against the Texans, Navajos, Kiowas, and Comanches; Juanita, a Navajo weaver who resisted Union campaigns against her people; Bill Davidson, a soldier who fought in all of the Confederacy’s major battles in New Mexico; Alonzo Ickis, an Iowa-born gold miner who fought on the side of the Union; John Clark, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s who embraced the Republican vision for the West as New Mexico’s surveyor-general; and Mangas Coloradas, a revered Chiricahua Apache chief who worked to expand Apache territory in Arizona. As we learn how these nine charismatic individuals fought for self-determination and control of the region, we also see the importance of individual actions in the midst of a larger military conflict. Based on letters and diaries, military records and oral histories, and photographs and maps from the time, “this history of invasions, battles, and forced migration shapes the United States to this day—and has never been told so well” (Pulitzer Prize–winning author T.J. Stiles).