The Three-Cornered War
The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West
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- R$ 57,90
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- R$ 57,90
Descrição da editora
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History
A dramatic, riveting, and “fresh look at a region typically obscured in accounts of the Civil War. American history buffs will relish this entertaining and eye-opening portrait” (Publishers Weekly).
Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict—involving not just the North and South, but also the West.
Against the backdrop of this larger series of battles, Nelson introduces nine individuals: John R. Baylor, a Texas legislator who established the Confederate Territory of Arizona; Louisa Hawkins Canby, a Union Army wife who nursed Confederate soldiers back to health in Santa Fe; James Carleton, a professional soldier who engineered campaigns against Navajos and Apaches; Kit Carson, a famous frontiersman who led a regiment of volunteers against the Texans, Navajos, Kiowas, and Comanches; Juanita, a Navajo weaver who resisted Union campaigns against her people; Bill Davidson, a soldier who fought in all of the Confederacy’s major battles in New Mexico; Alonzo Ickis, an Iowa-born gold miner who fought on the side of the Union; John Clark, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s who embraced the Republican vision for the West as New Mexico’s surveyor-general; and Mangas Coloradas, a revered Chiricahua Apache chief who worked to expand Apache territory in Arizona.
As we learn how these nine charismatic individuals fought for self-determination and control of the region, we also see the importance of individual actions in the midst of a larger military conflict. Based on letters and diaries, military records and oral histories, and photographs and maps from the time, “this history of invasions, battles, and forced migration shapes the United States to this day—and has never been told so well” (Pulitzer Prize–winning author T.J. Stiles).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Nelson (Ruin Nation) documents the Civil War as it unfolded in the American West in this brisk and well-sourced narrative. Contending that the federal government's war aims included both the emancipation of slaves and the elimination of indigenous tribes, Nelson weaves a large cast of supporting characters into the stories of nine individuals representing the Union, the Confederacy, and Native Americans in the fight for control of New Mexico Territory. The book's main players include U.S. Army Col. James Henry Carleton; Louisa Canby, whose husband commanded Union forces in Santa Fe; Confederate officer John Robert Baylor; and Chiricahua Apache chief Mangas Coloradas. Beginning in July 1861, when Baylor's regiment occupied Mesilla, N.Mex., and declared it the capital of the slave-holding territory of Arizona, Nelson details the skirmishes and full-scale battles that pitted her characters against each other. From Canby tending to wounded soldiers in Confederate-occupied Sante Fe to the July 1862 capture of Tucson by Carleton's California Column and escalating clashes between Apache warriors and Union troops, Nelson effectively blends military history with a fresh look at a region typically obscured in accounts of the Civil War. American history buffs will relish this entertaining and eye-opening portrait.
