California And The Civil War

The remotest place on Earth -- American California -- In the southern orbit -- the national crisis -- Which way California? -- Speaking for the union -- Securing the golden state -- Turmoil in the southwest -- The California column -- The department of New Mexico -- Life in wartime California -- Confederate partisans -- With Connor in Utah -- Californians fight back east -- The sanitary commission -- Aftermath.

A clear analysis of tactics and politics, this thorough account examines the dispute between the United Healthcare Workers (UHW) union in California and its 'parent' organization the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - one of the most important labor conflicts in the United States today. It explores how the UHW rank and file took umbrage with the SEIUs rejection of traditional labor values of union democracy and class struggle and their tactics of wheeling and dealing with top management and politicians. The resulting rift and retaliation from SEIU leadership culminated in the UHW membership being forced to break out and form a brand new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). Timed to coincide with elections in California, this detailed history calls for a reexamination of the ideological and structural underpinnings of todays labor movement and illustrates how a seemingly local conflict speaks to the rights of laborers everywhere to control their own fates.

"California Sabers is the story of the California Hundred and Battalion, the only organized group of Californians to fight in the East during the Civil War. The 500 select men volunteered their enlistment bounty to pay their passage across Panama and on to Massachusetts, where they became the cadre of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry"-- Book jacket, front flap.

Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that was to come. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Americans of all stripes saw the potential for both wealth and power. Among the more calculating were Southern slave owners. By making California a slave state, they could increase the value of their slaves—by 50 percent at least, and maybe much more. They could also gain additional influence in Congress and expand Southern economic clout, abetted by a new transcontinental railroad that would run through the South. Yet, despite their machinations, California entered the union as a free state. Disillusioned Southerners would agitate for even more slave territory, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and, ultimately, to the Civil War itself.

Bull Run, Gettysburg, Appomattox. For Americans, these battlegrounds, all located in the eastern United States, will forever be associated with the Civil War. But few realize that the Civil War was also fought far to the west of these sites. The westernmost battle of the war took place in the remote deserts of the future state of Arizona. In this first book-length account of the Civil War in Arizona, Andrew E. Masich offers both a lively narrative history of the all-but-forgotten California Column in wartime Arizona and a rare compilation of letters written by the volunteer soldiers who served in the U.S. Army from 1861 to 1866. Enriched by Masich’s meticulous annotation, these letters provide firsthand testimony of the grueling desert conditions the soldiers endured as they fought on many fronts. Southwest Book Award Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book of the Year Pima County Public Library NYMAS Civil War Book Award New York Military Affairs Symposium