Historian of land warfare with a research emphasis on the evolution of tactical theory and praxis in the Americas and Europe across the long nineteenth century (1789-1914); past work has explored political culture in the antebellum United States, the intellectual origins of Reconstruction, and the social order of the volunteer U.S. Army during the American Civil War. Currently, I am writing my second book, a comparative assessment of perilously shortsighted interwar military development within the German (1918-1941) and U.S. (1973-2003) armies while completing final edits on my first, a study of tactical evolution within W. T. Sherman's Fifteenth Army Corps during the American Civil War.
This study examines the organic emergence and evolution of discernible patterns in the tactical b... more This study examines the organic emergence and evolution of discernible patterns in the tactical behavior of Major General William T. Sherman's Fifteenth Army Corps of the Army of the Tennessee across its first year operating within the western theater of the American Civil War. It analyzes the ways in which specific experiences and patterns of meaning-making within the corps's regiments and batteries led to the emergence of a distinctive corps-level "tactical culture." This concept, introduced for the first time within the dissertation, is defined as a collection of shared, historically-derived, normative ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and habitual behaviors that inform a subordinate military command's particular approach to the prosecution of its assigned objectives on or off the battlefield. The dissertation employs the research methodologies of "new military history" to inform an older "traditional" historiography in an effort to frame what...
Historians have identified an antebellum Republican "critique of the South" outlining t... more Historians have identified an antebellum Republican "critique of the South" outlining the detrimental effects of slavery on white Southern society and the vital importance of "reconstructing" the white South in the image of the free labor agrarian North following the eventual collapse of slavery. The efforts to follow through with this transformation have historiographically been relegated to the efforts of radical Republicans to reconstruct the ex-Confederacy between 1863 and 1877. This paper argues that Republican strategies and efforts to "reconstruct" the white South were evident during the late antebellum period (1848-1861) applied to the southern counties of Illinois, inhabited chiefly by Southern "poor white" migrants. These efforts to dispel the "Egyptian darkness" of southern Illinois can be seen as an early laboratory of Republican reconstruction strategies.
This study examines the organic emergence and evolution of discernible patterns in the tactical b... more This study examines the organic emergence and evolution of discernible patterns in the tactical behavior of Major General William T. Sherman's Fifteenth Army Corps of the Army of the Tennessee across its first year operating within the western theater of the American Civil War. It analyzes the ways in which specific experiences and patterns of meaning-making within the corps's regiments and batteries led to the emergence of a distinctive corps-level "tactical culture." This concept, introduced for the first time within the dissertation, is defined as a collection of shared, historically-derived, normative ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and habitual behaviors that inform a subordinate military command's particular approach to the prosecution of its assigned objectives on or off the battlefield. The dissertation employs the research methodologies of "new military history" to inform an older "traditional" historiography in an effort to frame what...
Historians have identified an antebellum Republican "critique of the South" outlining t... more Historians have identified an antebellum Republican "critique of the South" outlining the detrimental effects of slavery on white Southern society and the vital importance of "reconstructing" the white South in the image of the free labor agrarian North following the eventual collapse of slavery. The efforts to follow through with this transformation have historiographically been relegated to the efforts of radical Republicans to reconstruct the ex-Confederacy between 1863 and 1877. This paper argues that Republican strategies and efforts to "reconstruct" the white South were evident during the late antebellum period (1848-1861) applied to the southern counties of Illinois, inhabited chiefly by Southern "poor white" migrants. These efforts to dispel the "Egyptian darkness" of southern Illinois can be seen as an early laboratory of Republican reconstruction strategies.
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