Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
36
result(s) for
"McNeese, Tim"
Sort by:
Reconstruction : life after the Civil War
Explores the reconstruction period after the Civil War, including the controversial actions in government that occurred during this time.
Book
Time in the Wilderness
Most Americans familiar with General John J. \"Black Jack\" Pershing know him as the commander of American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during the latter days of World War I. But Pershing was in his late fifties by then. Pershing's military career began in 1886, with his graduation from West Point and his first assignments in the American West as a horsebound cavalry officer during the final days of Apache resistance in the Southwest, where Arizona and New Mexico still represented a frontier of blue-clad soldiers, Native Americans, cowboys, rustlers, and miners. But the Southwest was just the beginning of Pershing's West. He would see assignments over the years in the Dakotas, during the Ghost Dance uprising and the battle of Wounded Knee; a posting at Montana's Fort Assiniboine; and, following his years in Asia, a return to the West with a posting at the Presidio in San Francisco and a prolonged assignment on the Mexican-American border in El Paso, which led to his command of the Punitive Expedition, tasked with riding deep into Northern Mexico to capture the pistolero Pancho Villa. During those thirty years from West Point to the Western Front, Pershing had a colorful and varied military career, including action during the Spanish-American War and lengthy service in the Philippines. Both were new versions of the American frontier abroad, even as the frontier days of the American West were closing. All of Pershing's experiences in the American West prepared him for his ultimate assignment as the top American commander during the Great War. If the American frontier and, more broadly, the American West provided a cauldron in which Americans tested themselves during the nineteenth century, they did the same for John Pershing. His story was a historical Western.
eBook
Causes of the Civil War : the differences between the North and South
Examines the sectional rivalries that surfaced in the early 19th century and intensified in the decades leading up to the war.
Book
Cadets, 1882–87
Just traveling by train to West Point proved an adventure unlike any Pershing had ever experienced. Growing up in Laclede, he had never traveled at length and had not seen much of the country. He saw wonderful things as he traveled east. He spent time walking around Chicago and New York City and rode on horse-drawn streetcars and atop omnibuses. For the young man who had grown up in the rough country of the rural Midwest, Lake Michigan seemed endless, and the buildings in New York loomed to the sky. He saw the Brooklyn Bridge still under construction and people
Book Chapter
Cavalry, 1887–90
Following his successful installation of the heliographic system, Pershing fell into a fairly regular routine of activity at Fort Bayard. In a letter he penned on March 9, 1887, he noted that routine: “With General Courts, Garrison Courts, morning and evening stables, drills, recitations in tactics, and Boards of Survey-( arrange with a view to climax) my time is quite well occupied.”¹ Through most of the winter months at Bayard, Pershing read and studied often while also engaging in “horsemanship, troop drills, tactical training, and other outdoor work.”² Days often began with mounting guard, and evenings included dress parade, which
Book Chapter
Childhood, 1860–73
During the Great War, the sprawling worldwide conflict that provided the backdrop for the culminating years of John J. Pershing’s lengthy military career, the general of the army penned a letter to a comrade that included the following philosophical musings: “Strange things do happen in the world. Is it not fortunate that none of us knows what is going to happen to him?”¹ He understood how the ultimate plan for one’s life depends on not simply one’s self but also others who may well have laid a groundwork on which the next generation stands. Pershing knew that before he could
Book Chapter
Cuba, 1898
As the battleship uss Maine sailed into Havana Harbor on the morning of January 25, 1898, Charles D. Sigsbee, the ship’s captain, sent a relieved telegram to his naval superiors in Washington dc informing them his ship and crew “had quietly arrived, 11 a.m. today; no demonstrations so far.”¹ Captain Sigsbee was certainly aware he and his crew of 360 sailors and officers had sailed into a potentially dangerous situation. Although the U.S. Navy officially referred to the arrival of the Maine as a goodwill visit to the Spanish colonial island of Cuba, the very presence of the U.S. battleship
Book Chapter
Courtship, 1903–9
Four-year cycles had often repeated themselves during the years of Pershing’s adulthood to date. He spent four years as a cadet at West Point, four as a cavalry officer in New Mexico, four as a military instructor at the University of Nebraska, and, recently, nearly four years in the Philippines. Now he had four months to enjoy between leaving the islands and heading to his next posting. With his health compromised by malaria, he was granted three months’ leave. The voyage took a month with the returning captain arriving in San Francisco on board the Pacific Mail steamer Siberia. Just
Book Chapter
Chase, 1916–17
By 1915 the Carrancistas defeated Pancho Villa, and President Wilson chose to recognize Venustiano Carranza as the legitimate leader, the “first chief” of Mexico. With a relatively stable base of political power, Carranza’s troops managed to gradually gain limited control over northern Mexico at the expense of Villa’s men. Soon, the Mexican pistolero realized he was losing both the political and the military fight in his own backyard. But Villa was not yet a completely spent cartridge. He remained in the north, in Chihuahua, where he served as a thorn in Carranza’s side. In need of revenue and in response
Book Chapter
Colony, 1898–1903
John Pershing entered the Spanish-American War with a new rank, that of brevet captain, and he exited the conflict with yet another—technically. Through multiple recommendations, including one from Brig. Gen. Leonard Wood, the regular army commander of the Rough Riders, Pershing was put forward for another promotion. The chain of recommendations ended at President McKinley’s desk, who wrote at the bottom of a letter he received from Wood that mentioned Pershing: “Appoint to a Major, if there is a vacancy.” In August 1898 he was brevetted a major of volunteers.¹
That same month, Pershing and the Tenth Cavalry shipped
Book Chapter