The Bravest of the Brave

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Senior Officer ◽  
The Social ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Camp Life ◽  
The Military ◽  
Insight Into

Born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1837, Stephen Dodson Ramseur rose meteorically through the military ranks. Graduating from West Point in 1860, he joined the Confederate army as a captain, and, by the time of his death near the end of the war at the Battle of Cedar Creek, had attained the rank of major general in the Army of Northern Virginia. Ramseur excelled in every assignment and was involved as a senior officer in many of the war's most important conflicts east of the Appalachians. His letters—over 180 of which are collected and transcribed here—provide his incisive observations on these military events, and, at the same time, offer a rare insight into the personal opinions of a high-ranking Civil War officer. Correspondence by Civil War figures is often strictly professional. But in Ramseur's personal letters to his wife, Nellie, and best friend, David Schenk, this book candidly expresses beliefs about the social, military, and political issues of the day. It also shares vivid accounts of battle and daily camp life, providing colorful details on soldiering during the war.

The Defeated of the Greek Civil War: From Fighters to Political Refugees in the Cold War

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostis Karpozilos
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Political Refugees ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Refugee Experience ◽  
The Military

In the fall of 1949, after the end of the Greek Civil War, the bulk of the defeated Greek Communist (KKE) fighters were covertly transported from Albania to Soviet Uzbekistan. This article addresses the covert relocation project, organized by the Soviet Communist Party, and the social engineering program intended to create a prototype Greek People’s Democracy in Tashkent. Drawing on Soviet and Greek Communist Party records, the article raises three major issues: first, the contingencies of postwar transition in the Balkans and the precarious status of the Albanian regime; second, the international Communist response to the military defeat of the KKE in 1949 and the competing visions of the Greek, Soviet, and Albanian parties regarding the future of the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG); third, the intentions of the KKE to establish military bases in Albania and the party’s ensuing effort to transform the agrarian fighters of the DAG into revolutionary cadres for a future victorious repatriation in Greece. Drawing these elements together, the article elucidates the relocation operation of 1949, positions the Greek political refugee experience within the postwar “battle of refugees,” and challenges the widespread historiographical assumption that the KKE immediately abandoned the prospect of a renewed armed confrontation.

First in Flight: Desertion as Politics in the North Carolina Confederate Army

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Giuffre
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Small Farmers ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The North ◽  
North Carolinians ◽  
Small Scale Farmers

In place of open mutiny, [powerless groups] prefer desertion. . . . They make use of implicit understandings and informal networks. . . . When such stratagems are abandoned in favor of more quixotic action, it is usually a sign of great desperation.Scott (1985: xvi)At the beginning of the Civil War, few suspected how brutal and bloody the conflict would prove to be. During the first months of the war, thousands of men and boys from North Carolina rushed to enlist. As deaths from disease and battle mounted dramatically, soldiers who had agreed to serve for one, two, or three years found themselves legally compelled to stay even after their enlistment was up, and those who had stayed home enlisted reluctantly under the threat of the draft (Wright 1978). Detained in the Confederate army often by threat of imprisonment or even death (ibid.), obliged to fight for a cause that appeared increasingly to be contrary to their own interests (Bardolph 1964), watching as the wealthy plantation owners resigned their commissions and bowed out (Tatum 1934), thousands of soldiers took up one strategy of resistance to the war: desertion. Of the 120,000 North Carolinians who enlisted to fight in the Confederate army, an estimated 12,000 deserted before the war was over. This study will test the hypothesis that desertion was a form of resistance to the war by a relatively powerless group, the small farmers. The central focus of this article will be the predictors of desertion. Of the estimated 10% of the Confederate soldiers from North Carolina who deserted from the army, the majority were small-scale farmers who had long opposed the wealthy elites on a variety of issues.

scholarly journals The Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly as a Left-Democratic Alternative to the Communists and the Whites in the Civil War

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Shubin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Private Property ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Revolution

The Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was an option in the Civil War that was essentially distinct from both the Soviet and the White alternatives. Komuch differed from the Soviet and the White authorities, as it was characterised by a combination of advanced socioeconomic policy and a dogmatically principled commitment to parliamentary democracy. In the event of the military victory of such a power, the success of the social democratic model was not guaranteed (as the history of Europe during the interwar period demonstrated), but Russia’s chances of moving along a path that combined a social state and democratic institutions would have increased markedly. While criticising, and in many respects rightly so, the military policy of the Bolsheviks, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had to partially restore market capitalist relations. Their successful development was possible with the cooperation of the government and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie demanded the dismantlement of “socialist conquests”, which Komuch was not going to do – both for ideological reasons and because the capitalist economy had begun to disintegrate during World War I and the Revolution. Komuch’s path involved the combination of a market economy (not necessarily just capitalist), state regulation, and broad social rights. After the Bolshevik promises, the workers and peasants took it quite calmly, fearing the possible cancellation of the social gains of the Revolution and expressing dissatisfaction with violations of promised civil rights. But the bourgeoisie, convinced of the “inconsistency” of dismantling institutions that infringed on the right of private property, stood in sharp opposition to Komuch, betting on its opponents in the anti-Soviet camp. At the same time, Komuch did not have time to build a state system for monitoring compliance with social rights and had to rely on the activity of trade unions, which, due to their social function, were critical of the government – in this case, Komuch. Komuch followed the law regulating the socialisation of land adopted by the Constituent Assembly and proposed a relatively successful version of regulating the food supply for the cities. Initially, the people’s army created by Komuch was also successful (enjoying support from the Czechoslovak Corps). However, Komuch faced a blockade by the Provisional Siberian Government. It was the opposition of more right-wing forces in the rear that predetermined the defeat of the Komuch alternative.

Gentlemanly Price-Fixing and Its Limits: Collusion and Competition in the U.S. Explosives Industry during the Civil War Era

2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Agency Problems ◽  
Black Powder ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Commercial Markets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

During the Civil War era, when the U.S. explosives industry was already dominated by a handful of firms, the leading manufacturers of black powder tried repeatedly–with mixed success–to fix prices in commercial and military markets. Their surviving correspondence reveals some of the dynamics of oligopolistic collusion and competition. In commercial markets, price-fixing by leading explosives makers was undermined not only by competition from small powder manufacturers but also by rivalry among their own selling agents. The same agency problems that made price-fixing more difficult, however, may have actually made it easier for manufacturers to sustain the social foundations of cooperation by allowing them to blame the failures of their agreements on forces outside their control. Maintaining cooperative relations over the long run proved useful to manufacturers in wartime military markets, in which price agreements were easier to sustain. But during the Civil War, the leading powder producers found that even successful collusion in the military supply business did not guarantee high profits, because government bureaus could prove to be demanding consumers.

scholarly journals Adichie’s Thematic Construction of a Post-Colonial Nigerian Nation-State in Two Excerpts from Her Purple Hibiscus: An Experiential Meaning Scrutiny

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Daniel T. Yokossi ◽  
Léonard A. Koussouhon
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
World View ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Verbal Processes ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Experiential Meaning

Abstract This article digs into Adichie’s world view of the post-colonial Nigeria via her use of the English language in two extracts culled from her Purple Hibiscus. To go into details, the study examines how Adichie makes use of particular types of transitivity patterns to weave into her text her thematic construction of Nigeria after independence. To this end, the Experiential Meaning has been used as a theoretical lens given that the exploration of the transitivity properties in/of a text can provide a full insight into how the writer encodes his/her experience of the world therein as advocated by Systemic Functional Linguistics scholars like Halliday (1971/1976), and his followers Hassan (1985/1989), Eggins (2004), and Matthiessen (2004/2006). As a matter of fact, the study offers a linguistic analysis of the selected extracts, a summary of the findings, and the ensuing interpretation. Actually, the interpretation of the findings has revealed that Adichie has encoded tremendous meanings through her outstanding use of such process types as material, mental and verbal processes. The distribution of these key processes in the analyzed extracts per participant has also highlighted both some of the author's key characters and to what extent these latter ones embody her perceptions of the social, religious and political issues that she artistically tries to castigate in her novel under examination. The study ultimately opens up to further explorations embracing such other fields of the Systemic Functional Linguistics as the interpersonal and textual meanings.

Disorder and Discipline

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan W. Keating
Keyword(s):  
Political Issues ◽  
Military Justice ◽  
Citizen Soldiers ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Mass Organization ◽  
The Military ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter supports the broader argument against relying on an ethnic-specific narrative to analyze Irish American service. The politics and discipline within these regiments reflected the realities of the mass organization of men into citizen soldiers. Understanding military justice in Irish regiments shows how these units operated on the day-to-day basis. This focus allows the experiences of these soldiers to be contextualized as part of the broader war effort. Their experiences in maneuvering the systems of rank and military courts transcends ethnicity and yields fascinating insight into how these men behaved under wartime conditions. All three regiments in this study suffered, to some degree, from disorder. But this was typical within the larger context of the military justice, especially where circumstances promoted such behavior. Volunteers often understood their relationships with fellow soldiers personally rather than within the context of the broader social or political issues of the period.

Civil War in El Salvador

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Amelia Hoover Green
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Military ◽  
Demographic Difference ◽  
The Social ◽  
Resource Wealth ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Salvadoran Civil War ◽  
State Force ◽  
The Military

This chapter examines the social, political, and economic factors underlying the Salvadoran civil war, and the development of the organizations that ultimately contested the war. The military government's intense, disproportionate repression of even moderate reformers both accelerated progress toward war and served as a tactic of war. Similarly, the histories, and prehistories, of both state and rebel organizations informed their strategies and tactics in conflict. El Salvador's civil war featured well-organized, ideologically sophisticated Communist rebels, who sought control of the state, rather than resource wealth, secession, or ethnic domination. Facing them was a generally inept and brutal state force, which ultimately required vast amounts of assistance from the United States—military and otherwise—to avoid losing the war outright. Yet there was little demographic difference between the fighting forces, in terms of age, education, ethnicity, or other factors. The chapter then looks at some broad, structural similarities and differences between El Salvador's war and others.

The Chancellorsville Campaign

2021 ◽  
pp. 375-390
Author(s):  
Christian B. Keller
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
The South ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Army Of The Potomac ◽  
Joseph Hooker

The Chancellorsville Campaign of early May 1863 was one of the most strategic military operations in any theater of the American Civil War. Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker and his powerful Army of the Potomac were miraculously defeated by the outnumbered Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under the leadership of Gen. Robert E. Lee and Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. In a daring flank march and attack, the Rebels crushed the federal Eleventh Corps on May 2 and over the next several days hammered the rest of Hooker’s army back across the Rappahannock River. Northern morale sank, Copperheads gained momentum, and German Americans, feeling the sting of nativism, began to question their role in the Union. The initiative in the East once again passed to the South, creating conditions for what became the Pennsylvania Campaign. But Jackson, wounded accidentally by his own men, died, destroying the fragile command team Lee had carefully built over the previous year. His loss was a turning point in the war.

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