More FW catalogs (Part 3)

Oklahoma:

• Californio Lancers: The 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry in the Far West, 1863–1866 by Tom Prezelski.

This is the first full history of the unit, which was composed "largely of Californio Hispanic volunteers from the “Cow Counties” of Southern California and the Central Coast." An important regional policeman, the 1st Battalion "pursued bandits, fought an Indian insurrection in northern California, garrisoned Confederate-leaning southern California, patrolled desert trails, guarded the border, and attempted to control the Chiricahua Apaches in southern Arizona."

Texas A&M:

• Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War by Mark K. Ragan.

Ragan's book traces the two year history of the Singer Secret Service Corps, the brainchild of Texas businessman and inventor Edgar Collins Singer. Backed by the Confederate government, the Corps developed submarines, contact mines, and other devices for the war effort.

• The Archaeology of Engagement: Conflict and Revolution in the United States edited by Dana Lee Pertermann & Holly Kathryn Norton and Echoes of Glory: Historical Military Sites Across Texas by Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley.

Going from the descriptions only, Civil War content is unknown for both but I thought I'd mention them anyway.

North Texas:

• Against the Grain: Colonel Henry M. Lazelle and the U.S. Army by James Carson.

Lazelle seems to have had a chequered career. Captured in Texas at the outbreak of the Civil War and held by the Confederates for over a year, he was paroled and in late 1863 led the 16th New York Cavalry for twelve months before resigning to serve in other capacities. "In charge of the official records of the Civil War in Washington, he was accused of falsifying records, exonerated, but dismissed short of tour. As Commandant of Cadets at West Point, he was a key figure during the infamous court martial of Johnson Whittaker, one of West Point’s first African American cadets. Again, he was relieved of duty after a bureaucratic battle with the Academy’s Superintendent."

Alabama:

• Civil War Alabama by Christopher Lyle McIlwain, Sr.

"Providing a fresh and insightful synthesis of military events, economic factors such as inflation and shortages, politics and elections, the pivotal role of the legal profession, and the influence of the press, McIlwain’s Civil War Alabama illuminates the fissiparous state of white, antebellum Alabamians divided by class, geography, financial interests, and political loyalties." Wow, 'fissiparous'. I'll have to use that someday.

Southern Illinois:

• Villainous Compounds: Chemical Weapons and the American Civil War by Guy R. Hasegawa.

Hasegawa "describes the potential weapons, the people behind the concepts, and the evolution of some chemical weapon concepts into armaments employed in future wars."

• The Tennessee Campaign of 1864 ed. by Steven E. Woodworth & Charles D Grear.

The next volume in SIUP's fine Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland series, the book's essays "explore the campaign’s battlefield action, including how Major General Andrew J. Smith’s three aggressive divisions of the Army of Tennessee became the most successful Federal unit at Nashville, how vastly outnumbered Union troops held the Allatoona Pass, why Hood failed at Spring Hill and how the event has been perceived, and why so many of the Army of Tennessee’s officer corps died at the Battle of Franklin, ... . An exciting inclusion is the diary of Confederate major general Patrick R. Cleburne, which covers the first phase of the campaign. Essays on the strained relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and George H. Thomas and on Thomas’s approach to warfare reveal much about the personalities involved, and chapters about civilians in the campaign’s path and those miles away show how the war affected people not involved in the fighting. An innovative case study of the fighting at Franklin investigates the emotional and psychological impact of killing on the battlefield, and other implications of the campaign include how the courageous actions of the U.S. Colored Troops at Nashville made a lasting impact on the African American community and how preservation efforts met with differing results at Franklin and Nashville." The Cleburne diary discovery and publication is a interesting development mentioned here before (see comments).

• Lincoln, the Law, and Presidential Leadership ed. by Charles M. Hubbard.

The essays collected in the volume look at "civil liberties during wartime; presidential pardons; the loyalty (or treason) of government employees; Lincoln’s political ideology and its influence on his approach to citizenship; Lincoln’s defense of the Constitution, the Union, and popular government; constitutional restraints on Lincoln as he dealt with slavery and emancipation; and how Lincoln’s image has been used in presidential rhetoric."

• Lincoln and the Immigrant by Jason H. Silverman.

Silverman "investigates Lincoln’s evolving personal, professional, and political relationship with the wide variety of immigrant groups he encountered throughout his life, revealing that Lincoln related to the immigrant in a manner few of his contemporaries would or could emulate." The book also discusses Lincoln's cultivation of immigrant support for the war and their own influences on his policy making.