Excerpt from History of the 13th Infantry Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers, During the Great Rebellion The regimental narrative is based mainly on the author's private diary - The Life and Sufferings of Captain Sprague. So far as the events came under his personal observation he is quite confident of the essential correctness of the statements but even here, he dares not hope he has escaped all errors. Jotted down at odd moments, in the midst of weary marches, on picket duty, on horseback, in the rain sometimes by the light of blazing buildings, often in presence of hissing bullets, as during our six weeks-at Port Hudson undoubtedly mistaken impressions may have been recorded. Having been present, however, in every battle, skirmish, siege, and march, in which the regiment was engaged, until the nineteenth of September, 1864, when he had the misfortune to charge too far and hold his position too long, and so fell into the enemy's hands, the author fears more that his observations may lack breadth than that they may be wanting in distinctness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

From the time of the American Revolution, most junior officers in the American military attained their positions through election by the volunteer soldiers in their company, a tradition that reflected commitment to democracy even in times of war. By the outset of the Civil War, citizen-officers had fallen under sharp criticism from career military leaders who decried their lack of discipline and efficiency in battle. Andrew S. Bledsoe’s Citizen-Officers explores the role of the volunteer officer corps during the Civil War and the unique leadership challenges they faced when military necessity clashed with the antebellum democratic values of volunteer soldiers. Bledsoe’s innovative evaluation of the lives and experiences of nearly 2,600 Union and Confederate company-grade junior officers from every theater of operations across four years of war reveals the intense pressures placed on these young leaders. Despite their inexperience and sometimes haphazard training in formal military maneuvers and leadership, citizen-officers frequently faced their first battles already in command of a company. These intense and costly encounters forced the independent, civic-minded volunteer soldiers to recognize the need for military hierarchy and to accept their place within it. Thus concepts of American citizenship, republican traditions in American life, and the brutality of combat shaped, and were in turn shaped by, the attitudes and actions of citizen-officers. Through an analysis of wartime writings, post-war reminiscences, company and regimental papers, census records, and demographic data, Citizen-Officers illuminates the centrality of the volunteer officer to the Civil War and to evolving narratives of American identity and military service.

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The familiar story of the Civil War tells of a predominately agricultural South pitted against a rapidly industrializing North. However, Adam Wesley Dean argues that the Republican Party's political ideology was fundamentally agrarian. Believing that small farms owned by families for generations led to a model society, Republicans supported a northern agricultural ideal in opposition to southern plantation agriculture, which destroyed the land's productivity, required constant western expansion, and produced an elite landed gentry hostile to the Union. Dean shows how agrarian republicanism shaped the debate over slavery's expansion, spurred the creation of the Department of Agriculture and the passage of the Homestead Act, and laid the foundation for the development of the earliest nature parks. Spanning the long nineteenth century, Dean's study analyzes the changing debate over land development as it transitioned from focusing on the creation of a virtuous and orderly citizenry to being seen primarily as a "civilizing" mission. By showing Republicans as men and women with backgrounds in small farming, Dean unveils new connections between seemingly separate historical events, linking this era's views of natural and manmade environments with interpretations of slavery and land policy.

Nestled between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia's Shenandoah Valley enjoyed tremendous prosperity before the Civil War. This valuable stretch of land--called the Breadbasket of the Confederacy due to its rich soil and ample harvests--became the source of many conflicts between the Confederate and Union armies. Of the thirteen major battles fought here, none was more influential than the Battle of Cedar Creek. On October 19, 1864, General Philip Sheridan's Union troops finally gained control of the valley, which eliminated the Shenandoah as a supply source for Confederate forces in Virginia, ended the valley's role as a diversionary theater of war and stopped its use as an avenue of invasion into the North. Civil War historian, preservationist, and author Jonathan A. Noyalas explains the battle and how it aided Abraham Lincoln's reelection campaign and defined Sheridan's enduring legacy.