American & Military History

[ 11/14/05: essentially complete
2421 pages of print; 64 photos, 155 maps — 169 webpages  ]

Gen. Robert E. Lee (USMA, 1829) is an outstanding example of the American character at its best, and remains in many ways the quintessential American historical figure: the first item on this site was a complete transcription of the 2400‑page 4‑volume life of him, R. E. Lee, by Douglas S. Freeman, still today viewed as definitive, that won its author the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

(Only the index remains to complete. When I finish that, I expect to shift gears and continue the site with Sherman's letters.)

[ primary source:
175 + xii pages of print, 1 photo — 9 webpages ]

Place of honor also to whom honor is due: George Rogers Clark's Memoir is one of the best books on my site, a fascinating record of the American Revolutionary War campaign that gave us the Northwest Territory without which our history would have taken a vastly different and less happy turn. A key primary source written by the victorious commander himself, it not only gives an interesting picture of conditions on the western frontier at the time of the birth of the Republic, but also of a special forces operation on a shoestring budget with minimal support; and most of all, a good look inside the mind of the campaign's military chief, who succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of civilian populations, and did so by relying on the intrinsic advantages in being an American. This is all of such topical interest in our own time that I hope it's required reading for the professional American Soldier, and any who would lead them.

[ about 550 pages of print, including 1 complete book;
8 maps, 15 other illustrations — 25 webpages ]

Much less honorable a man, but nearly as important in the early history of the republic, Major-General James Wilkinson had something to do with just about everything on the American frontier, from the abortive invasion of Canada in the War of 1812 to the Spanish intrigues in Kentucky and Louisiana, to the first stirrings of Texan independence. Since very little of it was aboveboard it all affords room for wide-ranging disagreement among historians. Onsite, a complete biography of him, two diametrically opposed but equally detailed treatments of his activities, and several smaller articles: a collection to which I'll likely continue to add; loathsome as he was, he's a fascinating character.

[ 38 pages of print ]

"James Wilson and the Constitution": this paper — the first biography of one of the greatest of American Founding Fathers, who for various reasons is still very much overlooked today — was the opening address in the official series of events (1906) known as the James Wilson Memorial, in which his remains were removed from his first burial place and transported to honored reburial in Philadelphia.

[ primary source:
80 typescript pages, 1 engraving — 6 webpages  ]

A far lesser figure in our history, William Hyde (1818‑1874) was nonetheless a participant in one of the great pioneer sagas that made this country what we are. His Private Journal records his early days in upstate New York and his conversion to Mormonism, his trek across the continent as a sergeant in the Mormon Battalion of the U. S. Army (which takes up half the work), his missionary endeavors in Australia, and the end of his life, spent building the State of Utah. An interesting account of one of the world's great military marches, it also throws some light on the uneasy and shifting accommodation between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the United States government.

[ 315 pages of print
— 20 webpages, with 24 photos ]

One of the earliest real wars fought on the soil of the United States was also the bloodiest of our history in terms of the casualty rate; and in some respects similar to the Twin Towers War we are now fighting. King Philip's War by George Ellis and John Morris is a serviceable account of it.

[ 9/11/10: over 4000 pages of print
— 153 webpages, 59 photos, 13 maps, 120 engravings ]

In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, causing several breaks in the levees that defend the city against high waters and a consequent flood disaster unprecedented in any large American city. The event prompted me to put onsite a selection of historical documents on Louisiana. Much of it is about New Orleans — including two entire books on the history of the city — but the site also includes a complete transcription of Gayarré's four-volume History of Louisiana, a book on the Republic of West Florida, and other material. [Some primary sources]

[ 2/5/12: 1346 pages of print
— 73 webpages, 62 photos, 7 maps, 28 other illustrations ]

History of North Carolina includes Connor's The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods (1584‑1783), Boyd's The Federal Period (1783‑1860), and a dozen or so journal articles on the history of the State, mostly of the colonial and Revolutionary period.

[ 12/17/07: 538 pages of print
— 106 webpages, 88 photos, 3 maps, 3 engravings ]

Since I live in Chicago, I'm developing a small site on the History of Illinois. The first installments: Illinois in 1818, a very good book by Solon J. Buck on the state's pioneer history, its land and its economy, its pathway to statehood; and — by no means as good a book, but sketching a richly anecdotal picture of the 19c here — John Drury's Old Illinois Houses.

[ 617 pages of print
— 20 webpages ]

Modern Americans tend to forget that not all the colonies were English! The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, by John Fiske, is a very readable yet nicely comprehensive account of its subject.

[ 303 pages of print
— 11 webpages; unillustrated ]

Herbert E. Bolton's The Spanish Borderlands presents the history of Spanish exploration and colonization of the territories within the present boundaries of United States, which are viewed as defensive border marches protecting Mexico, the far more important possession from Spain's standpoint.

[ 11/17/07: 229 pages of print
— 11 webpages; unillustrated ]

Washington and His Colleagues is a fairly straightforward account by Henry Jones Ford of the two-term presidency of George Washington: the United States were new then, and so was everything about their government; and yet they had to face Arab piracy, the destabilizing designs of France — and the rights of the several States, which the author, a Hamiltonian, seems to put in the same bag as the other two.

[ 245 pages of print
— 15 webpages, with 3 maps ]

Arthur Preston Whitaker's book, The Spanish-American Frontier: 1783‑1795, subtitled The Westward Movement and the Spanish Retreat in the Mississippi Valley, is a clear, readable, detailed exposition of its subject, from the backwoods of Kentucky and the stillborn state of Franklin to Natchez and New Orleans and diplomatic manoeuvres in European capitals.

[ 292 pages of print
— 13 webpages; unillustrated ]

Pioneers of the Old Southwest by novelist Constance Lindsay Skinner lays out the establishment of Tennessee and Kentucky, from the 17c and 18c colonial migrations to the "Back Country" of North Carolina to the time of Daniel Boone's death in Missouri in 1820. The early settlements, the Indian wars, the Revolutionary War battle of King's Mountain, the French and Spanish intrigue, and the State of Franklin are engagingly and often very clearly covered.

[ 8/1/08: 286 pages of print
— 14 webpages; unillustrated ]

Dwight Lowell Dumond's The Secession Movement, 1860‑1861 details how the North and South pulled apart. It's far more complex than is presented in school texts, which after all are designed as propaganda. Everyone had a share in the blame, with the bulk of it going to intransigent Northern moralism and its accompanying taste for coercion.

[ primary source: 375 pages of print
— 39 webpages; 32 photos ]

The Life of Woodrow Wilson written by his Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, provides a clear if eulogistic and rather summary account of the President's life, and a somewhat more compelling insight into his character.

[ 1/20/12: 4 complete books, and other material,
over 800 pages of print
— 63 webpages, 1 map, 17 illustrations ]

The History of Iowa is represented onsite by Iowa As It Is in 1856, a contemporary handbook and promotional book for immigrants to the new State; Albert Miller Lea's classic Notes on the Wisconsin Territory (1836: a description of Iowa, in fact); Richman's survey history of the State thru the late 19c; a small autobiographical booklet by a pioneer of the 1830s and 1840s; plus items on the Indian Agency in Wapello County, on Dutch, Polish and Mormon settlements, and the Iowa-Missouri boundary dispute. [Some primary sources]

[ 6/16/09: 150 pages of print
— 34 webpages, 22 photos ]

My pages on The History of Kentucky don't yet include a general history of the Commonwealth, but instead, several partial and very diverse aspects of that history treated in detail: the life of the early‑19c pioneer Fr. Charles Nerinckx, founder of many Catholic churches in central Kentucky; the history of the coal mining towns of Jenkins and Seco in the southeast corner of the state; the Kentucky intrigues of James Wilkinson; and the Marked Rock of Manchester.

[ 8/22/10: 151 pages of print
— 8 webpages, 2 engravings ]

A small section on The History of Florida has items on Jesuits killed by Indians in the 16c, the Spanish siege of Pensacola in 1783, and Dade's Massacre of 1835 that opened the Second Seminole War. [A book on The Republic of West Florida is also included under Louisiana, above.]

[ 8/24/10: about 45 pages of print
— 3 webpages ]

A small section on The History of Georgia has articles on early colonization and land schemes, her boundary disputes with Florida and North Carolina, etc.; and links include other Georgia material elsewhere onsite.

[ 7/29/10: about 105 pages of print
— 6 webpages ]

A small section on The History of Missouri includes an account of its early Catholic history, and articles on the founding of New Madrid and the State's disputed boundary with Iowa.

[ 10/17/11: 30 pages of print
— 2 webpages ]

A small section on The History of Nebraska includes an article attempting to locate the vexed kingdom of Quivira, and another on Mormon settlements in the Missouri Valley.

[ 9/21/10: 45 webpages ]

An orientation page to The History of Tennessee gathers various items elsewhere onsite: the Journal of Gov. John Sevier, articles on early pioneers Richard Henderson and John Montgomery, several chapters on the history of Holston, Watauga and the State of Franklin, and more. [Some primary sources]

[ 7/28/10: about 40 pages of print
— 6 webpages ]

A small section on The History of Texas includes the official Mexican report of 1828 on the Texas-Louisiana boundary, articles on the battle of Resaca de la Palma (1846) and the Mexican raid of 1875 on Corpus Christi, as well as links to other material onsite.

[ 3/13/11: about 20 pages of print
— 1 webpage ]

An orientation page to The History of Utah includes the Memorial of the Legislative Assembly of the Proposed State of Deseret; and points to the Utah sections of William Hyde's diary, already linked above. [Some primary sources]

[ 7/22/10: 82 pages of print
— 7 webpages ]

A small section on The History of Wisconsin includes several articles on Dutch immigration in the mid‑19c, and a small item on the Black Hawk War.

[ 266 pages of print, 68 photos, 1 drawing, 1 map
— 22 webpages ]

The Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror is a lurid piece of rip-off journalism about the 1906 earthquake. It's poorly written, prurient, and disorganized: but it was churned out within a few weeks of the event with a shrewd eye to what the public wanted to read, and contains eyewitness accounts and many photographs. Verdict: worth reading, if only to get an insight into the impact of the quake at the time.

[ primary source: 71 pages of print, — 8 webpages ]

When some of the citizens of Baltimore, including the editors of an important newspaper and several generals with impeccable Revolutionary War credentials, protested the recently declared War of 1812, others, feeling themselves to be better patriots, went on a murderous rampage: the Great Baltimore Riot of 1812 became an ever-topical example of how not to face pacifism. Here is the report of it in a contemporaneous pamphlet.

[ 1 webpage, 19 pages of print ]

Buried in the 20th Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry — at the time, an office of the Federal Government — can be found a curious and not altogether irrelevant article titled The United States Government's Importation of Camels: A Historical Sketch: recounting the Army's acquisition and testing of the humpèd beasts as pack animals.

[ primary source: 1 webpage ]

In wartime, secrecy and silence are paramount. In 1943, a four-page pamphlet was issued by Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, to all American troops overseas reminding them of that. It includes interesting information on the management of communications to and from war zones: U. S. War Department Pamphlet No. 21‑1.

[ primary source: 1 webpage ]

The first battle of the September 11 War was a tactical draw, but a strategic victory for the United States: although United Flight 93 was crashed into the farmland of Pennsylvania, the amazing resources of American technology and communications served to mobilize our first heroes of the war, who prevented our enemies from doing incalculably worse damage with that plane. Something that looks like a U. S. Government transcript — heavily redacted — is available here, among many other places online.

[ 10/1/10: 4 books, 1159 pages of print,
— 73 webpages, 93 photos, 12 maps, 30 engravings ]

In the 19c and the early 20c, the United States were welded together in large part by railroads, the invention of which came providentially at just the time needed for spanning their territory. Trains and rail are a magnificent technological achievement; but my American Railroad History subsite will focus more particularly on how the web of steel and wood contributed to the building of a nation.

[ 9/11/09: 619 pages of print, 1 engraving, 1 photo
presented in 37 webpages ]

My American Catholic History subsite will look at the contributions of the Roman Catholic Church to American history, and in particular to the development of the frontier. For now, the bulk of the site is devoted to a book on a pioneer priest of Kentucky; more is on its way.

[ 2/6/12: 144 articles;
2285 pages of print, 37 photos, 4 maps, 24 other images ]

American History Notes is a growing collection of articles from various journals in U. S. history and related fields. Since copyright law restricts me to rather older material, the history doesn't go much past World War I; which doesn't stop these papers from being interesting. [Some primary sources]

[ 11/22/11: 2366 pages of print
— 2186 webpages; 38 illustrations ]

Various items on the history of the Military Academy itself are accessible from an orientation page on The History of West Point. They include three book-length histories of West Point (by Roswell Park, 1840; by William Godson, 1934; by Elizabeth Waugh, 1944); an important address by Gen. Francis Henney Smith, 1879; the farewell speech of Gen. Douglas MacArthur to the Corps, 1962; over 2000 entries from Cullum's Biographical Register (including 57 complete class rosters); and other material.

[ some 5,000 pages of print in over 200 webpages;
with 46 drawings, 19 photos, 12 plans & diagrams, 4 maps ]

Talk of fighting the last war! How about the wars of 2000 years ago? Yet, though we are in another world technologically, the basics haven't changed, and Roman Military History still has lessons for today's Soldier. The student will find here a collection of many different kinds of resources, including the texts of Roman historians, encyclopedic articles on many facets of ancient warfare, a photosampler of Roman defensive works, and other material.

If, unfamiliar with the Romans, you wonder just how relevant they might be, here is Duty, Honor, Country in the 2c A.D.:

[ 16 webpages: 775 print pages;
123 lithogravures or photos and 3 maps ]

The Rulers of the South — Sicily • Calabria • Malta is a history of Southern Italy from prehistory down to the sixteenth century; though only a few battles are dealt with in tactical detail, it is primarily military history, offering an excellent readable overview faithfully based on the old sources.