It announced standards of conduct in wartime--concerning torture, prisoners of war, civilians, spies, and slaves--that shaped the course of the Civil War. By the twentieth century, Lincoln's code would be incorporated into the Geneva Conventions and form the basis of a new international law of war.In this deeply original book, John Fabian Witt tells the fascinating history of the laws of war and its eminent cast of characters--Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Lincoln--as they crafted the articles that would change the course of world history. Witt's engrossing exploration of the dilemmas at the heart of the laws of war is a prehistory of our own era. Lincoln's Code reveals that the heated controversies of twenty-first-century warfare have roots going back to the beginnings of American history. It is a compelling story of ideals under pressure and a landmark contribution to our understanding of the American experience.

    Buckley, Jr.—traces Abraham Lincoln's ambitious climb from provincial upstart to political powerhouse and calls for a renewal of the Lincoln ethic of relentless striving.Revered today across the political spectrum, Abraham Lincoln believed in a small but active government in a nation defined by aspiration. Fired by an indomitable ambition from a young age, the man who would be immortalized as the "railsplitter" never wanted to earn his living with an ax. He educated himself in a frontier environment characterized by mind-numbing labor and then turned his back on that world. All his life, he preached a gospel of work and discipline toward the all-important ends of self-improvement and individual advancement. As a Whig and then a Republican, he worked to smash the rural backwardness in which he was raised and the Southern plantation economy that depended on human bondage.Both were unacceptably stultifying of human potential. In short, Lincoln lived the American Dream and succeeded in opening a way to it for others. He saw in the nation's founding documents the unchanging foundation of an endlessly dynamic society. He embraced the market and the amazing transportation and communications revolutions beginning to take hold. He helped give birth to the modern industrial economy that arose before the Civil War and that took off after it.His vision of an upwardly mobile society that rewards and supports individual striving was wondrously realized. Now it is under threat. Economic stagnation and social breakdown are undermining mobility and the American way. To meet these challenges, Rich Lowry draws us back to the lessons of Lincoln. It is imperative, he argues, to preserve a fluid economy and the bourgeois virtues that make it possible for individuals to thrive within it.

    Twelve years in the making, the publication of Rhett Butler’s People marks a major and historic cultural event. Through the storytelling mastery of award-winning writer Donald McCaig, the life and times of the dashing Rhett Butler unfolds. Through Rhett’s eyes we meet the people who shaped his larger than life personality as it sprang from Margaret Mitchell’s unforgettable pages: Langston Butler, Rhett’s unyielding father; Rosemary his steadfast sister; Tunis Bonneau, Rhett’s best friend and a onetime slave; Belle Watling, the woman for whom Rhett cared long before he met Scarlett O’Hara at Twelve Oaks Plantation, on the fateful eve of the Civil War. Of course there is Scarlett. Katie Scarlett O’Hara, the headstrong, passionate woman whose life is inextricably entwined with Rhett’s: more like him than she cares to admit; more in love with him than she’ll ever know…Brought to vivid and authentic life by the hand of a master, Rhett Butler’s People fulfills the dreams of those whose imaginations have been indelibly marked by Gone With The Wind.

    Lee was greeted with critical acclaim when it was first published in 1935. Stephen Vincent Benet said, "There is a monument - and a fine one - to Robert E. Lee at Lexington. But this one, I think, will last as long." This reissue of Richard Harwell's abridgement fulfills Benet's prophecy, chronicling all the major aspects and highlights of the general's military career, from his stunning accomplishments in the Mexican War to the humbling surrender to Appomattox.More than just a military leader, Lee embodied all the conflicts of his time. The son of a Revolutionary War hero and related by marriage to George Washington, he was the product of young America's elite. When Abraham Lincoln offered him command of the United States Army, however, he chose to lead the Confederate ranks, convinced that his first loyalty lay with his native Virginia. Although a member of the planter class, he felt that slavery was "a moral and political evil." Aloof and somber, he nevertheless continually inspired his men by his deep concern for their personal welfare.Freeman's achievement is the full portrait of a great American - a distinguished, scholarly, yet eminently readable classic that has linked Freeman to Lee as irrevocably as Boswell to Dr. Johnson.

    This began an insurgency that changed the course of American history: for the next few years white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grant's support for the emergent structures of black political power. Redemption is the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875.

    Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes -- as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy -- and the staggering sacrifices he made for his ideals-fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism. Vividly re-creating the world in which Brown and his compatriots lived with a combination of scrupulous original research, new perspectives, and a sensitive historical imagination, Patriotic Treason narrates the dramatic life of the first U.S. citizen committed to absolute racial equality. Here are his friendships (Brown lived, worked, ate, and fought alongside African Americans, in defiance of the culture around him), his family (he turned his twenty children by two wives into a dedicated militia), and his ideals (inspired by the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule, he collaborated with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Harriet Tubman to overthrow slavery). Evan Carton captures the complex, tragic, and provocative story of Brown the committed abolitionist, Brown the tender yet demanding and often absent father and husband, and Brown the radical American patriot who attacked the American state in the name of American principles. Through new research into archives, attention to overlooked family letters, and reinterpretation of documents and events, Carton essentially reveals a missing link in American history. A wrenching family saga, Patriotic Treason positions John Brown at the heart of our most profound and enduring national debates. As definitions of patriotism and treason are fiercely contested, as some criticize religious extremism while others mourn religion's decline, and as race relations in America remain unresolved, John Brown's story speaks to us as never before, reminding us that one courageous individual can change the course of history.

    For 292 days, the war's final drama was played out over the fate of this once gracious Southern town, the last bulwark of the Confederacy. The book covers the 11-month siege of Petersburg.

    But the story of his rise to greatness is as complex as it is compelling. In this superb biography, the highly regarded Oxford University historian Richard Carwardine examines Lincoln both in his dramatic political journey and in his nation-shaping White House years. Through his groundbreaking research, Carwardine probes the sources of Lincoln’s moral and political philosophy. We see how, while pursuing office, Lincoln drew strength from public opinion and the machinery of his party. We see him, as a wartime president, recognizing the limits as well as the possibilities of power, and the necessity of looking for support beyond his own administration. We see how he turned to the churches, to their humanitarian agencies, and to the volunteer Union Army for allies in his struggle to end slavery.In illuminating the political talents that went hand in hand with large and serious moral purpose, Carwardine gives us a fresh, important portrait of the incomparable Abraham Lincoln.

     They terrorized the towns and countryside across the West, robbing banks, committing murders, holding up stage coaches and stealing from helpless citizens. The story of these infamous villains begins with the outbreak of the American Civil War when the Younger brothers signed up for the Confederacy to fight in Quantrill’s vicious band of guerrillas. Buel takes the reader through the actions undertaken by the group as they fought for the South in quick lightning strikes against the armies of the North, developing tactics that would come in useful in their later lives. After the end of the war Buel explains how the gang slipped effortlessly from guerrilla warfare to bank robberies, evading capture and killing opponents. They could not evade lawmen and vigilantes forever, Buel explains in vivid detail the gang’s eventual demise. The Border Outlaws is essential reading for anyone interested in the American Civil War and the actions of Quantrill’s raiders as well as outlaws of the Old West. The authority of this work is explain by Paul Iselin Wellman in A Dynasty of Western Outlaws: “This may be the first of the books published about the James and Younger outlaws … Buel had no illusions about them. He names names and quotes dates. At times he includes contemporary newspaper accounts. At others he cites correspondence of the outlaws themselves, to relatives or friends, and in some instances to himself.” “It is the best source material we have.” Outlaws on Horseback, Harry Sinclair Drago James W. Buel was a journalist, based initially in Kansas City and later in St. Louis. He wrote over fifty books during his lifetime on the wilds of Africa and the American West. The Border Outlaws was first published in 1881. He died in San Diego, California, in 1920.

    As hostile debates raged over how to protect their new hard-won freedoms, two men formed an improbable partnership that would launch the fledgling United States: George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.Washington and Hamilton chronicles the unlikely collaboration between these two conflicting characters at the heart of our national narrative: Washington, the indispensable general devoted to classical virtues, and Hamilton, an ambitious officer and lawyer eager for fame of the noblest kind.Working together, they laid the groundwork for the institutions that govern the United States to this day and protected each other from bitter attacks from Jefferson and Madison, who considered their policies a betrayal of the republican ideals they had fought for.Yet while Washington and Hamilton's different personalities often led to fruitful collaboration, their conflicting ideals also tested the boundaries of their relationship—and threatened the future of the new republic.From the rumblings of the American Revolution through the fractious Constitutional Convention and America's turbulent first years, this captivating history reveals the stunning impact of this unlikely duo that set the United States on the path to becoming a superpower.

    Lee, he was a meteor shining from a clouded sky; and to Braxton Bragg, he was an officer ever alive to a success. He was Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, one of the greatest of all Confederate field commanders.An Irishman by birth, Cleburne emigrated to the United States in 1849 at the age of 21. He achieved only modest success in the peacetime South, but rose rapidly in the wartime army to become the Confederacy's finest division commander. He was admired by peers and subordinates alike for his leadership, loyalty, honesty, and fearlessness in the face of enemy fire. The valor of his command was so inspirational that his unit alone was allowed to carry its own distinctive battle flag.In Stonewall of the West, Craig Symonds offers the first full-scale critical biography of this compelling figure. He explores all the sources of Cleburne's commitment to the Southern cause, his growth as a combat leader from Shiloh to Chickamauga, and his emergence as one of the Confederacy's most effective field commanders at Missionary Ridge, Ringgold Gap, and Pickett's Mill. In addition, Symonds unravels the mystery of Spring Hill and recounts Cleburne's dramatic and untimely death (at the age of 36) at Franklin, Tennessee, where he charged the enemy line on foot after having two horses shot from under him.Symonds also explores Cleburne's role in the complicated personal politics of the Army of Tennessee, as well as his astonishing proposal that the decimated Confederate ranks be filled by ending slavery and arming blacks against the Union.Symonds' definitive and immensely readable narrative casts new light on Cleburne, on the Army of Tennessee, and on the Civil War in the West. It finally and firmly establishes Cleburne's rightful place in the pantheon of Southern military heroes.

    

    Henry Kyd Douglas devoted himself to the Southern cause, fighting its battles and enduring its defeats, and during and shortly after the Civil War, Douglas set down his experiences of great men and great days. In simple, resonant prose written wholly firsthand from notes and diaries made on the battlefield, he covered the full emotional spectrum of a soldier's life. I Rode with Stonewall is one of the most remarkable stories to come out of any war.

    His courage was remarkable, as was the way he defied his handicap. The film Reach for the Sky brought Bader’s life into cinemas, and Robert Jackson's classic biography was the first to document his life. After a lonely childhood Bader’s early reputation as a sportsman and a daredevil made him popular with his contemporaries. But he was also an irritation to his superiors, a pattern which continued throughout his life, and hid an academic ability which won him a scholarship to St Edward’s School and a cadetship at the elite RAF College in Cranwell. After his accident, Bader was determined to rejoin the RAF. As a pilot, he was an tactical innovator, a man who confronted the methods of other pilots. When he was a Prisoner of War, Bader’s antagonism toward his guards, and his political pronouncements in later life, sometimes provoked his colleagues, but never lost him their lasting respect and admiration. After retiring from the RAF he combined a full-time job with Shell with all the demands of being a celebrity; his inspiration to the disabled gained him many accolades and finally a knighthood.Both aggressive and charming, Bader’s outward personality was famous. Robert Jackson describes the evolution of that forceful character, and the motivation behind his remarkable achievements. ‘Its style and structure make it readily accessible and, like your favourite armchair, it is easy to relax into at the end of a busy day.’ Frank BurnsRobert Jackson has been a full-time author since 1969, specializing in aviation and military history. A retired member of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, he has flown a wide variety of aircraft, ranging from jets to gliders. A prolific author, he has written both fiction and non-fictionEndeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    For much of his life he was driven by two demons: a powerful sex drive and an intense, almost pathological love for the Queen Mother…” From humble beginnings as a shopkeeper’s son in Coventry to ‘Page of the Backstairs’ at Clarence House, William Tallon, or ‘Backstairs Billy’ as he came to be known, entered royal service at the age of fifteen. Over the next fifty years, he became one of the most notorious and flamboyant characters ever to have graced the royal household - the one servant the Queen Mother just could not do without. While others came and went, he remained by her side, becoming one of her most trusted friends and confidants. The fascinating life story of the man who spent more than half a century working for one of the world’s most elusive institutions, Backstairs Billy provides a rare glimpse of what the royals really get up to behind closed doors…