Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we continue to explore SIU Press's military history books for Memorial Day.
This week, we’ll explore another excellent group of titles from that list. Renowned for his skill, courage, and indomitably during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant is considered a model for outstanding American generalship. However, unlike most of his fellow officers, Grant came from humble Midwestern beginnings and experienced a number of professional failures before rising to military prominence. America’s Hardscrabble General: Ulysses S. Grant, from Farm Boy to Shiloh, by Jack Hurst, gives a detailed account of Grant’s early years to explore how his modest start and experiences in the Mexican War foreshadowed his greatest military triumphs.
In a bold departure from previous scholarship, Duty beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870–1920, by Le’Trice D. Donaldson, locates the often overlooked era between the Civil War and the end of World War I as the beginning of black soldiers’ involvement in the long struggle for civil rights.
The provocative study Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War, by George S. Burkhardt, proves the existence of a de facto Confederate policy of giving no quarter to captured Black combatants during the Civil War—killing them instead of treating them as prisoners of war.
Learn more about these books and more this week on Inside The Blanket Fort.