Ron Chepesiuk

J. Edward Lee

Although modern authors continually produce important studies of the War Between the States, the firsthand accounts of those who were in the conflict remain the most valuable tools for understanding. This collection of letters and diaries provides glimpses into the lives of a diverse group of South Carolinians. Among the seventeen accounts are the voices of women, including a Confederate spy; of officers like Captain Obidiah Hardin, who left his beloved Palmetto State to fight and die in Virginia before the war was even a year old; and of common men, like German immigrant Augustus Franks, whose love for his adopted state compelled him to staunchly defend the Confederacy. Collected from the archives of Winthrop University, these remarkable documents give voices and faces to the war as it affected South Carolina and her citizens.

The Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries

South Carolina in the Civil War

When writing about the Vietnam War, most scholars focus on the 1960s. But in this hard-hitting analysis, eminent historian Dr. J. Edward Lee focuses instead on the key period of 1945 to 1954, the first decade of America's Vietnam War experience. He suggests that as the Cold War commenced in 1945, America failed to remember our nation's own revolutionary experience and the importance of independence and self-determination, missing an opportunity to build a positive relationship with Ho Chi Minh when we aided the return of French colonialism instead of working with him to achieve his country's independence from imperialist France. A must-read for university classes studying the 20th century, veterans groups, and anyone interested in the gritty history of the Vietnam War.

America In Vietnam, 1945-1954

The First Mistake

H.C. “Toby”  Haynsworth

South Vietnam fell because of events occurring thousands of miles away from the battlefields--in China, the Soviet Union, Latin America, the Middle East, and Washington's corridors of power, along protest lines, and around America's dinner tables. These other wars being fought by American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford profoundly impacted what happened in Vietnam. This work examines those other conflicts and the political, social, and economic factors involved with them that distracted and crippled the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and led to the eventual abandonment of the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese regime. Nixon entered office with the goal of bringing the world together, but saw that goal ruined by the 1973 war in the Middle East, preoccupations with China and the Soviet Union, a weak economy, Watergate, and his disgraceful exit from the White House. Ford's presidency was tainted almost from the beginning because of the pardon he granted to Nixon, but the American public, tired of war and concerned about the economy, was ready to hear that the war had come to an end. An argument is presented that the war could have been won if the "other wars" had been fought by presidents willing to honor the American commitment to its allies in South Vietnam.

Nixon, Ford and the Abandonment of South Vietnam

Presents seventeen personal accounts of the Civil War.

J. Edward Lee

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