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A native of Warren County, Iowa, Cyrus F. Boyd served a year and a half as an orderly sergeant with the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry before becoming first lieutenant in Company B of the Thirty-fourth Iowa Infantry. Before his promotion, he was an intermediary between privates and company officers, a position that offered him unique opportunities to observe the attitudes and activities of both the unit leaders and their men. In this diary, the outspoken Boyd frankly expresses his opinions of his comrades and his commanders, candidly depicts camp life, and intricately details the gory events on the battlefield. Although not always pleasant reading, Boyd's journal is a vibrant, honest chronicle of one man's experiences in the bloody conflict. "There is much to learn from and enjoy about this short but rich account. Boyd fully revealed the sordid reality and the tender moments of his army service." -- Earl J. Hess, from his Introduction
Includes Civil War Map and Illustrations Pack - 224 battle plans, campaign maps and detailed analyses of actions spanning the entire period of hostilities. “[One of] the Union side’s most revealing and realistic views of soldier life....The diary is especially important for the light which it throws on such basic matters as the tortuous progression from civilian to veteran, the course of morale, the character of soldier life in a volunteer army, the quality of leadership, the awesomeness of battle, and the brutality of war.”—Bell Irvin Wiley, in the Journal of Southern History A native of Warren County, Iowa, Cyrus F. Boyd served a year and a half as an orderly sergeant with the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry before becoming first Lieutenant in Company B of the Thirty-fourth Iowa Infantry. His diary—expanded in 1896 from a pocket diary he carried on his campaigns from Indianola, Iowa, to Lake Providence, Louisiana—offers a full account of soldiering in the Union army. Before his promotion, Boyd was an intermediary between privates and company officers, a position that offered him unique opportunities to observe the attitudes and activities of both the unit leaders and their men. The outspoken Boyd frankly expresses his opinions of his comrades and his commanders, candidly depicts camp life, and intricately details the gory events on the battlefield. Although not always pleasant reading, The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd is a vibrant, honest chronicle of one man’s experiences in the bloody conflict. The diary has been heavily edited to ensure it can be understood, initially there was little to no punctuation included.
Extracted From The Iowa Journal Of History, V50, No. 2, April, 1952.
A native of Warren County, Iowa, Cyrus F. Boyd served a year and a half as an orderly sergeant with the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry before becoming first lieutenant in Company B of the Thirty-fourth Iowa Infantry. Before his promotion, he was an intermediary between privates and company officers, a position that offered him unique opportunities to observe the attitudes and activities of both the unit leaders and their men. In this diary, the outspoken Boyd frankly expresses his opinions of his comrades and his commanders, candidly depicts camp life, and intricately details the gory events on the battlefield. Although not always pleasant reading, Boyd's journal is a vibrant, honest chronicle of one man's experiences in the bloody conflict. "There is much to learn from and enjoy about this short but rich account. Boyd fully revealed the sordid reality and the tender moments of his army service." -- Earl J. Hess, from his Introduction
An anthology of landmark scholarship on the histories of the common soldier in the U.S. Civil War In 1943, Bell Wiley's groundbreaking book Johnny Reb launched a new area of study: the history of the common soldier in the U.S. Civil War. This anthology brings together landmark scholarship on the subject, from a 19th century account of life as a soldier to contemporary work on women who, disguised as men, joined the army. One of the only available compilations on the subject, The Civil War Soldier answers a wide range of provocative questions: What were the differences between Union and Confederate soldiers? What were soldiers' motivations for joining the army—their "will to combat"? How can we evaluate the psychological impact of military service on individual morale? Is there a basis for comparison between the experiences of Civil War soldiers and those who fought in World War II or Vietnam? How did the experiences of black soldiers in the Union army differ from those of their white comrades? And why were southern soldiers especially drawn to evangelical preaching? Offering a host of diverse perspectives on these issues, The Civil War Soldier is the perfect introduction to the topic, for the student and the Civil War enthusiast alike. Contributors: Michael Barton, Eric T. Dean, David Donald, Drew Gilpin Faust, Joseph Allen Frank, James W. Geary, Joseph T. Glaatthaar, Paddy Griffith, Earl J. Hess, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Perry D. Jamieson, Elizabeth D. Leonard, Gerald F. Linderman, Larry Logue, Pete Maslowski, Carlton McCarthy, James M. McPherson, Grady McWhiney, Reid Mitchell, George A. Reaves, Jr., James I. Robertson, Fred A. Shannon, Maris A. Vinovskis, and Bell Irvin Wiley.
A portrait of a pivotal chapter in the Civil War, “featuring scheming politicians, bumbling generals, and an increasingly disheartened Northern public” (Brooks Simpson, author of Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822–1865). In Mr. Lincoln Goes to War, award-winning historian William Marvel focused on President Abraham Lincoln’s first year in office. In Lincoln’s Darkest Year, he paints a picture of 1862—again relying on recently unearthed primary sources and little-known accounts to offer newfound detail of this tumultuous period. Marvel highlights not just the actions but also the deeper motivations of major figures, including Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, George B. McClellan, Stonewall Jackson, and, most notably, Lincoln himself. As the action darts from the White House to the battlefields and back, the author sheds new light on the hardships endured by everyday citizens and the substantial and sustained public opposition to the war. Combining fluid prose and scholarship with the skills of an investigative historical detective, Marvel unearths the true story of our nation’s greatest crisis.
Civil War scholars have long used soldiers’ diaries and correspondence to flesh out their studies of the conflict’s great officers, regiments, and battles. However, historians have only recently begun to treat the common Civil War soldier’s daily life as a worthwhile topic of discussion in its own right. The View from the Ground reveals the beliefs of ordinary men and women on topics ranging from slavery and racism to faith and identity and represents a significant development in historical scholarship—the use of Civil War soldiers’ personal accounts to address larger questions about America’s past. Aaron Sheehan-Dean opens The View from the Ground by surveying the landscape of research on Union and Confederate soldiers, examining not only the wealth of scholarly inquiry in the 1980s and 1990s but also the numerous questions that remain unexplored. Chandra Manning analyzes the views of white Union soldiers on slavery and their enthusiastic support for emancipation. Jason Phillips uncovers the deep antipathy of Confederate soldiers toward their Union adversaries, and Lisa Laskin explores tensions between soldiers and civilians in the Confederacy that represented a serious threat to the fledgling nation’s survival. Essays by David Rolfs and Kent Dollar examine the nature of religious faith among Civil War combatants. The grim and gruesome realities of warfare—and the horror of killing one’s enemy at close range—profoundly tested the spiritual convictions of the fighting men. Timothy J. Orr, Charles E. Brooks, and Kevin Levin demonstrate that Union and Confederate soldiers maintained their political beliefs both on the battlefield and in the war’s aftermath. Orr details the conflict between Union soldiers and Northern antiwar activists in Pennsylvania, and Brooks examines a struggle between officers and the Fourth Texas Regiment. Levin contextualizes political struggles among Southerners in the 1880s and 1890s as a continuing battle kept alive by memories of, and identities associated with, their wartime experiences. The View from the Ground goes beyond standard histories that discuss soldiers primarily in terms of campaigns and casualties. These essays show that soldiers on both sides were authentic historical actors who willfully steered the course of the Civil War and shaped subsequent public memory of the event.
In an insightful, intimate look at the links between the Civil War soldier and his home and family, Mitchell draws on the letters, diaries, and memoirs of common soldiers to show how mid-19th-century ideas shaped the Union soldier's approach to everything from military discipline to battlefield bravery. Halftone illustrations.
The Union army's overwhelming vote for Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864 has led many Civil War scholars to conclude that the soldiers supported the Republican Party and its effort to abolish slavery. In Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln Jonathan W. White challenges this reigning paradigm in Civil War historiography, arguing instead that the soldier vote in the presidential election of 1864 is not a reliable index of the army's ideological motivation or political sentiment. Although 78 percent of the soldiers' votes were cast for Lincoln, White contends that this was not wholly due to a political or social conversion to the Republican Party. Rather, he argues, historians have ignored mitigating factors such as voter turnout, intimidation at the polls, and how soldiers voted in nonpresidential elections in 1864. While recognizing that many soldiers changed their views on slavery and emancipation during the war, White suggests that a considerable number still rejected the Republican platform, and that many who voted for Lincoln disagreed with his views on slavery. He likewise explains that many northerners considered a vote for the Democratic ticket as treasonous and an admission of defeat. Using previously untapped court-martial records from the National Archives, as well as manuscript collections from across the country, White convincingly revises many commonly held assumptions about the Civil War era and provides a deeper understanding of the Union Army.
Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize Winner of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. It took Grant’s army and Admiral David Porter’s navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender. In this “elegant…enlightening…well-researched and well-told” (Publishers Weekly) work, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city “with probing intelligence and irresistible passion” (Booklist). He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. With Vicksburg “Miller has produced a model work that ties together military and social history” (Civil War Times). Vicksburg solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but ultimately he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war—the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.