Theater of a Separate War

The Civil War West of the Mississippi River, 1861–1865

Thomas W. Cutrer

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781469666211
• eBook ISBN: 9781469666280
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia della guerra civile americana

Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the Trans-Mississippi Theater was site of major clashes from the war's earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater's distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Has It Come So Soon As This? Secession and Confederate Statehood
• 2. I Will Gladly Give My Life for a Victory: Kansas and Missouri, June–December 1861
• 3. The Wolf Is Come: War in the Indian Nation, 1861–1862
• 4. The Only Man in the Army That Was Whipped: The Pea Ridge Campaign, February 1862
• 5. Charge ’em! Damn ’em, Charge, Charge, Charge! The Struggle for the Southwest, July 1861–July 1862
• 6. We Are Men and Braves: Indian Warfare in the Far West
• 7. No Feeling of Mercy or Kindness: The Prairie Grove Campaign, March 1862–January 1863
• 8. Hold Out Till Help Arrived or Until All Dead: The Capture of Arkansas Post, 9–11 January 1863
• 9. Texas Must Take Her Chances: Coastal Defense and the Battle of Galveston, April 1861–January 1863
• 10. All New England Men and of the Best Material: The Federal Occupation of South Louisiana, April 1862–April 1863
• 11. Cannot You Do Something to Operate against Them on Your Side of the River! Milliken’s Bend and the Campaign for Vicksburg, Spring 1863
• 12. Courage and Desperation Rarely Equaled: The Rebel Assault on Helena, 4 July 1863
• 13. Much Unmerited Loss and Suffering: Quantrill’s Lawrence Raid and the War on the Missouri-Kansas Border, August–September 1863
• 14. Drive Him Routed from Our Soil: The Little Rock Campaign, July–October 1863
• 15. More Remarkable Than Thermopylae: Texas Coastal Defense and the Battle of Sabine Pass, January 1863–June 1865
• 16. Our Troops Should Occupy and Hold at Least a Portion of Texas: Banks’s Overland Campaign, July–November 1863
• 17. The Land of Coyotes, Tarantulas, Fandangos, Horn-Toads, and Jack-Rabbits: Banks’s Texas Campaign, October 1863–August 1864
• 18. No Nobler Death: The Indian Territory, July 1863–February 1865
• 19. We Must Fight Them and Whip Them: Banks’s Drive toward Shreveport, November 1863–April 1864
• 20. I Am Going to Fight Banks If He Has a Million of Men! The Battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, 8–9 April 1864
• 21. A Brisk and Brilliant Six Weeks’ Campaign: Steele’s Camden Expedition and Banks’s Retreat from Pleasant Hill, April and May 1864
• 22. Destroy Property and Recruit Men: Price’s Missouri Raid, August–November 1864
• 23. Let Come What Will, We’ll Fight the Yankees Alone: Confederate Collapse in the Trans-Mississippi
• Conclusion: A Sort of Botany Bay
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index