Overview
""California Sabers"" is the story of the California Hundred and Battalion, a group of five hundred select Californians who were the only organized group of Californians to fight in the East during the Civil war. Volunteering their enlistment bounty to pay their passage across Panama then on to Massachusetts, they became the cadre of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry. From mid 1863 to July 1864, the Second Massachussets, led by Charles Russell Lowell of Boston, fought a bloody guerilla war with John S. Mosby, the confederacy's ""Grey Ghost"", in Northern Virginia. In July 1864 the regiment became part of Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah and in the fall of 1864 they played a major role in the decisive battles of Winchester, Toms Run and Cedar Creek. In early 1865 the regiment was in the column that marched across Virigina destroying the vital railroad and canal that carried supplies from the Shenandoah Valley to the beseiged Army of Northern Virginia. In late March 1865, the Second Massachusetts was in the forefront of the battles at Dinwiddie Courthouse and Five Forks, the two actions that finally broke the stalement at Petersburg and forced Lee to retreat to the west. In the ensuing chase the regiment was the part of the cavalry spearhead that finally blocked Lee's army at Appomattox Courthouse. This work, based on extensive research, includes several unpublished letters and diaries from archives in California and Massachusetts. This is the first comprehensive history of this relatively unknown group and should be of great interest to Civil War enthusiasts and historians.
Full Product Details
Author: R. James McLean
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 3.10cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.776kg
ISBN: 9780253337863
ISBN 10: 0253337860
Pages: 360
Publication Date: 22 December 2000
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Awaiting stock
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Author Information
A descendent of a pioneer family that came to San Francisco in 1848, McLean graduated from the University of California in 1956. During his service in the Korean War, he became interested in the Civil War when a Navy Librarian suggested he read Bruce Catton's trilogy on the Army of the Potomac. McLean started collecting volumes of the Official Records and any other books he could find relating to the Civil War. When his brother, the family genealogist, told him they had a great-great uncle who fought in the Civil War, he discovered the California Battalion and Hundred in the Official Records. In 1993 he retired to devote more time to the writing of the history of the Battalion and Hundred. This book is a culmination of this twenty-year effort.
