Defend This Old Town

Defend This Old Town is a riveting war epic of local scale and human dimensions. Taking its title from the cry raised in Williamsburg as the Federal army approached in 1862, Carol Dubbs's narrative sweeps us into the lives of residents of this small historic city from the secession of Virginia in 1861 to Lee's surrender four years later. Williamsburg's Civil War ordeal has never before been told in such depth. Located midway on the only land route between Richmond and the Union-held Fort Monroe, on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg hosted Confederate troops for the first year of war while defensive earthworks were built across the area. After the Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862 -- a bloody clash neither side sought but each claimed as victor -- Union forces began an occupation of the town that lasted with only short interruptions until the end of the war. Those residents who had not fled remained to stubbornly defend their homes. Dubbs scripts a compelling chronicle of these events, interweaving quotes from diaries, letters, memoirs, and military memoranda to bring immediacy to her subject. Balancing the grim experiences of combat, shortages, tending the dead and wounded, the college's burning, restive servants, typhoid breakout, and isolation from the rest of the Confederacy are some lighter interludes: the Union marshal who arrived with his saddlebags packed with shoes and dresses to win the good opinion of the town's females; the first taste of freedom for blacks; and the issuance of travel passes -- including one to an especially sharp-tongued matron, with the order never to return. Maps, period photographs, order of battle, and a bibliography complete this substantial, comprehensive, and entertaining work. Defend This Old Town is certain to engage anyone who enjoys good history.

America's second oldest higher education institution experienced the full violence of the Civil War, with a wartime destiny of destruction compounded by its strategic location in Virginia's Tidewater region between Union and Confederate lines. This book describes the fate of the College and also explores in-depth the war service of the College's students, faculty, and alumni, ranging from little-known individuals to historically prominent figures such as Winfield Scott, John Tyler, and John J. Crittenden. The College's many contributions to the Civil War and its role in shaping pre- and post-war higher education in the South are fully revealed.

With a swiftly moving narrative style and perceptive analysis, The Sword of Lincoln is destined to become the modern account of the army that was so central to the history of the Civil War.

"If President Lincoln could have unmade a general, perhaps he would have started with Samuel Peter "Sourdough" Heintzelman, whose early military successes were overshadowed by a prickly disposition and repeated Union defeats during the Civil War." "By the time his friend Robert E. Lee left Arlington to lead a Rebel army against the bluecoats, Heintzelman had already seen duty in Mexico, established Fort Yuma in California in 1850, mined for silver in Arizona, and ably led U.S. forces on the Texas-Mexico border during the 1859-60 Cortina War. During the Civil War, he was in the forefront of the fighting at First Bull Run and the disastrous 1862 Peninsula Campaign. He commanded the III Corps of the Army of the Potomac at the siege of Yorktown and in the ferocious fighting at Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Oak Grove, Savage's Station, Glendale, and Malvern Hill. Although he aspired to succeed Gen. George B. McClellan, he was relieved of his command after his troops were badly mauled at Second Bull Run. After demonstrating his inability to guard the southern approaches to Washington, D.C., from Virginia guerillas, he spent the latter part of the war administering prison camps in the Midwest, keeping a watchful eye on Copperhead subversives, and quarreling with more than one disgruntled governor. In early Reconstruction Texas, Heintzelman struggled with the conflict between former Secessionists and Radical Republicans."--BOOK JACKET.

Though the origins of asylums can be traced to Europe, the systematic segregation of the mentally ill into specialized institutions occurred in the United States only after 1800, just as the struggle to end slavery took hold. In this book, Wendy Gonaver examines the relationship between these two historical developments, showing how slavery and ideas about race shaped early mental health treatment in the United States, especially in the South. She reveals these connections through the histories of two asylums in Virginia: the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Williamsburg, the first in the nation; and the Central Lunatic Asylum in Petersburg, the first created specifically for African Americans. Eastern Lunatic Asylum was the only institution to accept both slaves and free blacks as patients and to employ slaves as attendants. Drawing from these institutions' untapped archives, Gonaver reveals how slavery influenced ideas about patient liberty, about the proper relationship between caregiver and patient, about what constituted healthy religious belief and unhealthy fanaticism, and about gender. This early form of psychiatric care acted as a precursor to public health policy for generations, and Gonaver's book fills an important gap in the historiography of mental health and race in the nineteenth century.

On 26 August 1346, near the village of Crécy in northern France, Edward III’s outnumbered English army confronted the French forces of Philip VI and won one of the most remarkable battles of the Hundred Years War. Edward’s victory had a major impact on the course of the conflict, and it ranks alongside Poitiers and Agincourt as a landmark in the history of medieval warfare. And now, thanks to this detailed, highly illustrated guide, visitors can explore the battlefield for themselves and retrace the entire course of the Crécy campaign. Peter Hoskins and Richard Barber set Edward’s victory within the context of the Hundred Years War and provide a graphic account of the battle. They include practical information to guide the motorist, cyclist and walker as well as descriptions of buildings, sites and monuments surviving from the period. The book is a mine of fascinating historical information, and it is based on the most recent scholarship and research. It will be an essential travelling companion for readers who are interested in medieval history and warfare.

From January to July of 1862, the armies and navies of the Union and Confederacy conducted an incredibly complex and remarkably diverse range of operations in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Under the direction of leaders like Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, George McClellan, Joseph E. Johnston, John Rodgers, Robert E. Lee, Franklin Buchanan, Irvin McDowell, and Louis M. Goldsborough, men of the Union and Confederate armed forces marched over mountains and through shallow valleys, maneuvered on and along great tidal rivers, bridged and waded their tributaries, battled malarial swamps, dug trenches and constructed fortifications, and advanced and retreated in search of operational and tactical advantage. In the course of these operations, the North demonstrated it had learned quite a bit from its setbacks of 1861 and was able to achieve significant operational and tactical success on both land and sea. This enabled Union arms to bring a considerable portion of Virginia under Federal control—in some cases temporarily and in others permanently. Indeed, at points during the spring and early summer of 1862, it appeared the North just might succeed in bringing about the defeat of the rebellion before the year was out. A sweeping study of the operations on land and sea, From the Mountains to the Bay is the only modern scholarly work that looks at the operations that took place in Virginia in early 1862, from the Romney Campaign that opened the year to the naval engagement between the Monitor and Merrimac to the movements and engagements fought by Union and Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley, on the York-James Peninsula, and in northern Virginia, as a single, comprehensive campaign. Rafuse draws from extensive research in primary sources to provide a fast-paced, complete account of operations throughout Virginia, while also incorporating findings of recent scholarship on the factors that shaped these campaigns. The work provides invaluable insights into the factors and individuals who shaped these operations, how they influenced the course of the war, the relationships between political leaders and men in uniform, and how all these factors affected the development and execution of strategy, operations, and tactics.