Civil War Regiments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Parshall
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Regular Army ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
Prime Source

The regiment was the essential “building block” of Civil War armies. Assigned by states, most volunteer regiments were organized based on soldiers’ home residence and reflective of those local communities. Each branch of the army—infantry, artillery, and cavalry—formed into regiments with varying numbers of companies and overall strength. There were regular army regiments and units specially designated for African American troops. As the war dragged on, regimental strengths diminished dramatically. The Confederate Army tried to refill older units with conscripts and new recruits, while the Union created new regiments to replace depleted ones and later consolidated smaller ones. Neither side was entirely successful in restoring regiments to full authorized strength. Nonetheless, the regiment was more than a mode of organization—it was the prime source of identity and pride for volunteers and later veterans. While armies, divisions, and brigades were crucial to winning battles, and companies forged tight bonds of loyalty, it was the regiment to which most soldiers claimed a personal allegiance. Famed regiments like the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment, the 1st Texas Infantry Regiment, and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment cited their battle honors and high casualty numbers as proof of their fighting prowess. After the war ended, veterans produced hundreds of regimental histories, recounting their battle service and seeking to claim a place in history. Although many historians dismiss these accounts as worthless for serious scholarly research, regimental histories offer rich firsthand accounts of the conflict. They also offer a vehicle for narrating the war in a form well familiar to the soldiers who experienced it.

Kentucky Rebel Town

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Penn
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Newspaper Editor ◽  
Secession Crisis ◽  
The Town ◽  
Union Soldiers ◽  
The Way ◽  
State Representatives

This is a detailed Civil War study of a Kentucky Blue Grass town and county. This extensive research of Cynthiana and Harrison County reveals the area’s divisive sectional animosities and personalities. As the title suggests, Cynthiana was widely perceived to be a Rebel stronghold when the secession crisis erupted. The county’s state representatives, Lucius Desha and W. W. Cleary, were among Kentucky’s pro-secession supporters during neutrality, and Desha was arrested for treason when accused of recruiting for the Confederate army. Belief that the town was a den of Southern sympathizers was further supported when Union soldiers arrested and imprisoned for disloyal activities about sixty citizens, including several county officials and newspaper editor. Countering these secession activities were Home Guards and Union supporters, such as attorney W. W. Trimble. John Hunt Morgan’s raids in Kentucky resulted in the First and Second Battles of Cynthiana, which the author carefully researched and enhanced by new battlefield maps. Readers will learn of the central role of the county in the Union military defenses of the Kentucky Central Railroad corridor. The book also describes from both the soldiers’ and citizens’ viewpoints the Confederate army march through the county on the way to threaten Cincinnati in 1862. It also describes the recruiting activities of Union and Confederate supporters, and the controversial African American enrollments.

“In Fact, We Do Not Have a Regular Army Yet…” A Letter of the Commander of Kiev Region Armed Forces General A.M. Dragomirov to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of South Russia General A.I. Denikin. 12 (25) December 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 245-264
Author(s):  
Andrey Ganin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
The South ◽  
Moral Improvement ◽  
Policy And Strategy ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Regular Army ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Commander In Chief

The document published is a letter from the commander of the Kiev Region General Abram M. Dragomirov to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia General Anton I. Denikin of December, 1919. The source covers the events of the Civil War in Ukraine and the views of the leadership of the White Movement in the South of Russia on a number of issues of policy and strategy in Ukraine. The letter was found in the Hoover Archives of Stanford University in the USA in the collection of Lieutenant General Pavel A. Kusonsky. The document refers to the period when the white armies of the South of Russia after the bright success of the summer-autumn “March on Moscow” in 1919 were stopped by the Red Army and were forced to retreat. On the pages of the letter, Dragomirov describes in detail the depressing picture of the collapse of the white camp in the South of Russia and talks about how to improve the situation. Dragomirov saw the reasons for the failure of the White Movement such as, first of all, the lack of regular troops, the weakness of the officers, the lack of discipline and, as a consequence, the looting and pogroms. In this regard, Dragomirov was particularly concerned about the issue of moral improvement of the army. Part of the letter is devoted to the issues of the civil administration in the territories occupied by the White Army. Dragomirov offers both rational and frankly utopian measures. However, the thoughts of one of the closest Denikin’s companions about the reasons what had happened are interesting for understanding the essence of the Civil War and the worldview of the leadership of the anti-Bolshevik Camp.

scholarly journals Wealth, Slave Ownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Hall ◽  
Connor Huff ◽  
Shiro Kuriwaki
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Free Ride ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Personal Wealth ◽  
The One

How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War? On the one hand, wealthy southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer southerners and avoid fighting; on the other hand, wealthy southerners were disproportionately slaveowners, and thus had more at stake in the outcome of the war. We assemble a dataset on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederacy, and show that slaveowners were more likely to fight than non-slaveowners. We then exploit a randomized land lottery held in 1832 in Georgia. Households of lottery winners owned more slaves in 1850 and were more likely to have sons who fought in the Confederate Army. We conclude that slaveownership, in contrast to some other kinds of wealth, compelled southerners to fight despite free-rider incentives because it raised their stakes in the war’s outcome.

Being a Father and a Soldier in the Civil War, 1861–1865

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Jürgen Martschukat
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Culture ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
Citizen Soldiers ◽  
The One ◽  
White Womanhood

The fifth chapter depicts the conflicting demands addressed to young men as family fathers on the one hand and as citizen-soldiers on the other hand. It discusses the Civil War and its effects on fathers, mothers, and family life through close readings of the diary and letters of Confederate soldier John C. West, who saw himself as fighting this war for his family and his country. While West was scared to death by the bloody battles and the fierce fighting of the Civil War, he nevertheless romanticized the war as a struggle for southern family life and patriarchal masculinity in his diary and letters. He portrayed his service in the Confederate Army as fulfilment of his masculinity in the name of white womanhood, southern culture, and family life, a message he sought to send to his wife and, in particular, to his four-year-old son back home.

The Tide of Preparation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Ewing
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Political Opportunities

This chapter shows how, during a period of limited political opportunities, in which African American activism was fraught with danger, Garveyites had built a massive political movement committed to modest aims at home, but premised on the notion that members were involved, in the words of a Garveyite from Tennessee, in a “world movement…which is now felt throbbing in every corner of the globe.” Here, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) takes center stage, Garveyites continued to nurture alliances across the African diaspora and throughout the “colored” world, and they continued to imagine their often mundane local politics against the backdrop of world anticolonialism. By framing their political aims internationally, and by projecting their radical demands for African liberation forward into an undefined future, Garveyites sustained vibrant local communities of political activism amidst the decline of the national UNIA and the constraints of Jim Crow America.

Generations

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-71
Author(s):  
Lisa Woolfork
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
African American Authors ◽  
Black Life ◽  
A Site ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
American Authors

This essay explores the ways in which African American authors of that era reclaim the slave past as a site of memory for a nation eager to forget. Lucille Clifton’s Generations (1976), Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada (1976), and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) are the chapter’s main focus. These works resist the tide of historical amnesia and “lost cause” mythology that would minimize or relegate the enslaved to mere props in the larger Civil War drama of rupture and reconciliation. By centering the stories of the enslaved as ancestral foundations of post-civil rights black life, these authors promote a model for historical memory and genealogy that elevates black resilience.

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