Books about Quartermaster from Amazon.com

By 1860 the South ranked high among the developed countries of the world in per capita income and life expectancy and in the number of railroad miles, telegraph lines, and institutions of higher learning Only the major European powers and the North had more cotton and woolen spindles.

This book examines the Confederate military's program to govern this prosperous industrial base by a quartermaster system. By commandeering more than half the South's produced goods for the military, the quartermaster general, in a drift toward socialism, appropriated hundreds of mills and controlled the flow of southern factory commodities.

The most controversial of the quartermasters general was Colonel Abraham Charles Myers. His iron hand set the controls of southern manufacturing throughout the war. His capable successor, Brigadier General Alexander R. Lawton, conducted the first census of Confederate resources, established the plan of production and distribution, and organized the Bureau of Foreign Supplies in a strategy for importing parts, machinery, goods, and military uniforms.

While the Confederacy mobilized its mills for military purposes, the Union systematically planned their destruction. The Union blockade ended the effectiveness of importing goods, and under the Union army's General Order 100 Confederate industry was crushed. The great antebellum manufacturing boom was over.

Scarcity and impoverishment in the postbellum South brought manufacturers to the forefront of southern political and ideological leadership. Allied for the cause of southern development were former Confederate generals, newspaper editors, educators, and President Andrew Johnson himself, an investor in a southern cotton mill.

Against this postwar mania to rebuild, this book tests old assumptions about southern industrial re-emergence. It discloses, even before the beginnings of Radical Reconstruction, that plans for a New South with an urban, industrialized society had been established on the old foundations and on an ideology asserting that only science, technology, and engineering could restore the region.

Within this philosophical mold, Henry Grady, one of the New South's great reformers, led the way for southern manufacturing. By the beginning of the First World War half the nation's spindles lay within the former Confed-eracy, home of a new boom in manufacturing and the land of America's staple crop, cotton.

Harold S. Wilson is an associate professor of history at Old Dominion University. He is the author of McClure's Magazine and the Muckrakers and of articles published in African American Studies, The Historian, the Journal of Confederate History, and Alabama Review. Learn more about the author at http://members.cox.net/haroldwilson/..
Price: $12.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book recounts the history and activities of the Denbigh, one of the Civil War's most successful blockade runners A new introduction by J. Barto Arnold III (which includes a lengthy appendix) reviews recent archival and archaeological research and highlights the blockade runner's place in the Confederacy's complex and ultimately insoluble problem of obtaining manufactured items from abroad. Originally published by University of Texas Press in 1964..
Price: $25.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Follow the steps of a World War II Soldier… from training in the U.S., to criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean to avoid enemy detection, to his final destination a half a world away in Iran.

The author, Zane Wood, gives vivid accounts of "Army Life" not ordinarily revealed. The antics in the soldiers' barracks to frightening encounters with Russian Soldiers.

The Military Truck Maintenance is an awesome and complex operation. Zane gives incredible details of how the entire fleet of Army Vehicles is maintained on a daily basis.

What do guys do on their time off in a city in a foreign land? This book tells all.

The author writes in a down-to-earth fashion of his life. From birth in a sod house, to life growing up on the wind-swept plans of Nebraska, to a horrible and deadly car accident that changed the course of his life. Zane invites you to listen in on his "homey" and exciting Voyage With The U.S. Quartermaster..
Price: $12.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Captain Simon Perkins Jr. and his fellow quartermasters helped make the Union's victory possible by providing the Federal army with clothing and camp equipment, livestock and forage, wagon and railroad transportation, offices, warehouses, and hospitals, despite bad weather, unserviceable railroads, and lack of transportation. "The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail." examines Perkins's responsibilities, the difficult situations he encountered and overcame, and the successes he achieved as part of a team of determined and dependable supply officers, whose duties were critical to successful Union military operations. During his service with the Army of the Ohio, the Army of the Cumberland, and the Department of the North, Perkins held key assignments in Tennessee and Alabama, directed wagon trains during the Kentucky campaign, and managed railroad transportation and quarters in Nashville during the Chattanooga campaign. As the army's businessman, he handled labor problems, paid thousands of bills, and managed properties throughout the embattled country. Perkins produced and preserved thousands of documents and was an effective, resourceful, and honest quartermaster who often anticipated and met the army's needs. Author Lenette S. Taylor uses these primary sources, discovered in 1990, and, along with archival and government documents, examines the scope and complexity of supply operations in the field. Perkins's story offers a new understanding of Civil War logistics and will make an important contribution to Civil War literature..
Price: $23.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]