Major Isaac Lynde, like Benedict Arnold, was considered the foremost American traitor of his era. Just prior to the Civil War, Lynde was accused of the unpardonable sin of surrendering -- without a fight -- an entire regiment of United States troops, supposedly ready for battle, to a poorly armed and inferior Texas Confederate militia. This is factually correct. Thereafter, his regiment, the 7th United States Infantry, was allowed to fly the American flag again only after it was bloodied in battle. On July 27, 1861, Major Isaac Lynde abandoned Fort Fillmore, marched his troops to San Augustine Springs and there surrendered without a fight. For over 140 years Lynde has borne the names of coward, traitor, doddering old fool, etc. Could an officer, a West Point graduate, with thirty-four years of honorable service on the frontier, be the person historical accounts describe? Isaac Lynde was never tried for his alleged crimes, or even given a hearing-President Abraham Lincoln and Congress ended Lynde's career without allowing him to speak. Was Isaac Lynde a traitor, or the perfect scapegoat for the battering the Federal armies were taking in the early days of the Civil War?

After the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter in April 1861, North Carolina took steps toward war. Governor John Ellis commandeered Federal forts, raised regiments and enlisted the aid of Mexican War hero and Kinston native Richard C. Gatlin. Under the new Confederacy, Gatlin commanded the Confederate Department of North Carolina as a brigadier general. He was charged with the defense of the Tar Heel State, and his failure to prevent the Union takeover of the coast has been lost in the annals of Civil War history. Join author and historian James L. Gaddis Jr. for an overlooked yet harrowing tale of power, politics, tragedy and war.

A biography and a complete bibliography of New Mexico's leading independent historian.

Following Zebulon Pike’s expeditions in the early nineteenth century, U.S. expansionists focused their gaze on the Southwest. Explorers, traders, settlers, boundary adjudicators, railway surveyors, and the U.S. Army crossed into and through New Mexico, transforming it into a battleground for competing influences determined to control the region. Previous histories have treated the Santa Fe trade, the American occupation under Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, the antebellum Indian Wars, debates over slavery, the Pacific Railway, and the Confederate invasion during the Civil War as separate events in New Mexico. In Coast-to-Coast Empire, William S. Kiser demonstrates instead that these developments were interconnected parts of a process by which the United States effected the political, economic, and ideological transformation of the region. New Mexico was an early proving ground for Manifest Destiny, the belief that U.S. possession of the entire North American continent was inevitable. Kiser shows that the federal government’s military commitment to the territory stemmed from its importance to U.S. expansion. Americans wanted California, but in order to retain possession of it and realize its full economic and geopolitical potential, they needed New Mexico as a connecting thoroughfare in their nation-building project. The use of armed force to realize this claim fundamentally altered New Mexico and the Southwest. Soldiers marched into the territory at the onset of the Mexican-American War and occupied it continuously through the 1890s, leaving an indelible imprint on the region’s social, cultural, political, judicial, and economic systems. By focusing on the activities of a standing army in a civilian setting, Kiser reshapes the history of the Southwest, underlining the role of the military not just in obtaining territory but in retaining it.

Biography of the man who killed Billy the Kid, this thorough and well-written analysis deals effectively with almost every question that has been raised about the controversial life and death of Pat Garrett.

The American Civil War began with a laying down of arms by Union troops at Fort Sumter, and it ended with a series of surrenders, most famously at Appomattox Courthouse. But in the intervening four years, both Union and Confederate forces surrendered en masse on scores of other occasions. Indeed, roughly one out of every four soldiers surrendered at some point during the conflict. In no other American war did surrender happen so frequently. David Silkenat here provides the first comprehensive study of Civil War surrender, focusing on the conflicting social, political, and cultural meanings of the action. Looking at the conflict from the perspective of men who surrendered, Silkenat creates new avenues to understand prisoners of war, fighting by Confederate guerillas, the role of southern Unionists, and the experiences of African American soldiers. The experience of surrender also sheds valuable light on the culture of honor, the experience of combat, and the laws of war.

During the Civil War, the Second Colorado Volunteer Regiment played a vital and often decisive role in the fight for the Union on the Great Plains—and in the westward expansion of the American empire. Christopher M. Rein’s The Second Colorado Cavalry is the first in-depth history of this regiment operating at the nexus of the Civil War and the settlement of the American West. Composed largely of footloose ’59ers who raced west to participate in the gold rush in Colorado, the troopers of the Second Colorado repelled Confederate invasions in New Mexico and Indian Territory before wading into the Burned District along the Kansas border, the bloodiest region of the guerilla war in Missouri. In 1865, the regiment moved back out onto the plains, applying what it had learned to peacekeeping operations along the Santa Fe Trail, thus definitively linking the Civil War and the military conquest of the American West in a single act of continental expansion. Emphasizing the cavalry units, whose mobility proved critical in suppressing both Confederate bushwhackers and Indian raiders, Rein tells the neglected tale of the “fire brigade” of the Trans-Mississippi Theater—a group of men, and a few women, who enabled the most significant environmental shift in the Great Plains’ history: the displacement of Native Americans by Euro-American settlers, the swapping of bison herds for fenced cattle ranges, and the substitution of iron horses for those of flesh and bone. The Second Colorado Cavalry offers us a much-needed history of the “guerilla hunters” who helped suppress violence and keep the peace in contested border regions; it adds nuance and complexity to our understanding of the unlikely “agents of empire” who successfully transformed the Central Plains.

D U A N E is an amateur photographer who still prefers a fi lm camera over a digital one when he takes pictures of American Civil War reenactments. He lives in El Paso with his wife Vinita, and they have six children. He enjoys reading, history and organizing material for a book. He likes to travel, take photos and read about El Paso politics Civil War West is Shaws second book. His fi rst book Duanes World is selling very well.

Though it was far from the front lines of the War Between the States, Williamstown, Vermont, made undeniable contributions to the victory of the United States Army. The proud sons of Patriots fell on the fields of Gettysburg, Antietam and Shiloh, and many gallant soldiers were lost in lesser-known skirmishes. These men fought for honor, for country and at times for money. Many men made the ultimate sacrifice, and others who returned home bore the scars of battle for the rest of their lives. With the support of the Williamstown Historical Society, author Paul Zeller honors the Williamstown soldiers and ordinary citizens who fought to preserve the Union and presents their incredible stories of adventure and bravery.