Originally published in 1988, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed marks a significant advance in the social history of the American Civil War—an approach exemplified and extended in Ash’s later work
Charles Darwin is a towering figure in the history of science, who changed the direction of modern thought by establishing the basis of evolutionary biology. With a Foreword by Sir David Attenborough, this is a fascinating insight into Darwin's life as he first directly addressed the issues of humanity's place in nature, and the consequences of his ideas for religious belief. Incorporating previously unpublished material, this volume includes letters written by Darwin, and also those written to him by friends and scientific colleagues world-wide, by critics who tried to stamp out his ideas, and admirers who helped them to spread. They take up the story of Darwin's life in 1860, in the immediate aftermath of the publication of On the Origin of Species, and carry it through one of the most intense and productive decades of his career, to the eve of publication of Descent of Man in 1871.
Kentucky occupied an unusual position with regard to slavery during the Civil War as well as after. Since the state never seceded, the emancipation proclamation did not free the majority of Kentucky's
This book examines social, political, and cultural conflicts opened by the abolition of slavery and the fashioning of wage relations in the era of the American Civil War. It offers a new, close look at the origins, goals, and tactics of popular political clubs created by emancipated workers in the countryside of one of the Deep South's oldest plantation states. The Work of Reconstruction draws on a rich documentary record that allowed ex-slaves to express in their own words and behavior the aspirations and goals that underlay their efforts. Not satisfied to render freed men and women as objects of theoretical inquiry, this book vividly recovers the concrete practices and language in which ex-slaves achieved freedom and the expectations that they had of liberty.
On the 150th anniversary of the capsizing of Britain's low-freeboard yet fully-masted ironclad HMS Captain, this widely researched, intensive analysis of the great 'turret vs. broadside' debate sheds new light on how the most well-funded and professional navy in the world at the height of its power could nevertheless build an 'inherently unstable' capital ship.Utilizing an impressive array of government reports, contemporary periodicals, and unpublished personal papers, this definitive study crucially provides for the first time both a long-term and international context. The 1860s was a pivotal decade in the evolution of British national identity as well as warship design, nor were these two elements mutually exclusive. 1860 began gloriously with the launch of Britain's first ocean-going ironclad, HMS Warrior, but 1870 ended badly with the Captain. Along the way, British public and political faith in the supremacy of the Royal Navy was not reaffirmed as some histories suggest, but wav
“Groce offers a gracefully written, impressively researched narrative account of the experience of East Tennessee Confederates during the Civil War era. His analysis raises provocative questions about
