Central Kansas Library System

In the fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln looked to be anything but destined for greatness. Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, Lincoln was wallowing in the depths of despair following his loss to Stephen Douglas in the 1858 senatorial campaign and was taking stock in his life. The author takes us on a journey with Abraham Lincoln from the last weeks of 1858 until the end of May in 1860, on the road to his unlikely Republication presidential nomination. ...

A history of America's military on horseback. For three thousand years, the horse soldier has played a key role in both war fighting and in peace keeping all over the world, not only as a highly mobile strike force in battle but also as an instrument of reconnaissance and occupation, exploration, and irregular warfare. The American tradition of the mounted warrior is a proud one. But in the first days of our revolution, it looked as if George Washington...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, is an American icon. To many, he is a symbol of values, sacrifice and determination. Modern notions of nationalism, liberty, and constitution all owe their debt to Lincoln, as does the unity of the American states. And yet, in his own day, Lincoln was also reviled by many as a traitor, tarnished by his associations with the wrong kind...

Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American...

Visit a Louisiana landmark that tells a big piece of the American story. Fort Jesup was founded two centuries ago, a bulwark on the youthful nation's western frontier. During its long run as a military post, it was visited by over one thousand soldiers and officers, many of whom would make a lasting impact on American history. The long list of luminaries includes Presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant, over forty officers who would become...

Walt Whitman was already famous for Leaves of Grass when he journeyed to Washington at the height of the Civil War to find his brother George, a Union officer wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Eventually, Whitman would serve as a volunteer "hospital missionary"-making more than six hundred hospital visits and serving over eighty thousand sick and wounded soldiers in the next three years. With the 1865 publication of Drum-Taps, Whitman became...

A native of Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was born into slavery but-through acts of remarkable courage and determination-became the first African American hero of the Civil War and one of the most influential African American politicians in South Carolina history. In this largely political biography of Smalls's inspirational story, Edward A. Miller, Jr., traces the triumphs and setbacks of the celebrated U.S. congressman and advocate of...

"Ross' Texas Brigade: The Texas Rangers & Cavalry In The Civil War" by Victor M. Rose is a history of the famous Texas Brigade of cavalry, made up of the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 27th cavalry regiments, commanded by General Laurence Sullivan Ross. The Ross Brigade was named after Ross, its 3rd commander, who indelibly stamped his identity on the unit. Victor Rose served in the Ross Brigade until his capture in 1864, so he gives a first-hand account of one...

The American Civil War is often called the first "modern war." Sandwiched between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, it spawned a host of "firsts" and is considered a precursor to the larger and more deadly 20th century wars. Confederate Gen. James Longstreet made overlooked but profound modern contributions to the art of war. Retired Lt. Col. Harold M. Knudsen explains what Longstreet did and how he did it in James Longstreet and the American Civil...

Will Emily find the courage to make one final bid for love and freedom?When the Union navy fires on Charleston, Emily must flee to Ella Wood-and to a father who has never forgiven her for attending the Maryland Institute against his will. There, she grapples with Jack's secret plans for the plantation and his final admonition that she carry them to fruition. But as a woman under the authority of her father, evoking even the slightest change may prove...