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For a better future, study the past.
Library Additions June 2023 (1)
We will start June 2023 off with a couple of new additions to the library. Both of these books were purchased by me and are not provided by a publisher or distributor.
Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning writer Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. Who are London’s outcast dead and why is David Bowie their guardian angel? What is the remarkable truth about Phoebe Hessel, who disguised herself as a man to fight alongside her sweetheart, and went on to live in the reigns of five monarchs? Why is a Bristol cemetery the perfect wedding venue for goths?
All of these sorrowful mysteries – and many more – are answered in A Tomb with A View, a book for anyone who has ever wandered through a field of crooked headstones and wondered about the lives and deaths of those who lie beneath.
So push open the rusting gate, push back the ivy, and take a look inside.
Waters, Zack C. A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerrillas in East and South Florida, 1986-1865. Macon: Mercer University Press. 2023. ISBN 9780881468816. 259 pages, index, bibliography, foot notes, b/w photos. $39.00.
Modern historians have consistently treated Florida as a military backwater. Despite that assessment, Rebel guerrillas blocked repeated Union attempts to establish a stronghold in the Florida’s interior. After the “abandonment” of Florida by the Confederate government, in early 1862, Gov. John Milton organized guerrilla units to protect the state’s citizens. These irregular companies kept Union forces largely confined to a few coastal outposts (St. Augustine, Fernandina, and Ft. Myers), though the state’s citizens suffered greatly from the depredations of Unionist units.
After the Federals capture of Vicksburg, the South’s only significant source of beef were the vast herds in Florida. It fell to the state’s Rebel partisans to protect the state’s interior, thereby keeping open routes for the delivery of longhorns to the South’s major armies. Skirmishes and battles raged throughout Florida, but the flow of beef cattle halted only after Appomattox.
I do receive a very generous “thank you” in the acknowledgements but those of you who know me understand I have purchased this book for my Florida Civil War library without hesitation. Zack is an excellent historian and this is a book covering an important part of the Florida Civil War history.
