LSU Press publishes Civil War titles

LSU Press has published several new titles just in time for the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War.

Wallace Hettle, professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa, re-examines Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall Jackson in “Inventing Stonewall Jackson: A Civil War Hero in History and Memory.” Jackson died midway through the war and much of his life has been told through friends, relatives, newspaper accounts and a rags-to-riches biography. Hettle attempts to break through the myths to paint a more realistic account.

University of Virginia Professor Brian D. McKnight also tries to discern fact from fiction in the life of Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson, who was executed for murdering 53 loyal citizens of Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War, in “Confederate Outlaw: Champ Ferguson and the Civil War in Appalachia.” Ferguson became a folk hero to Southerners and was used to create the composite role of Clint Eastwood in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.”

The Civil War brought on an onslaught of ingenuity by Southerners and H. Jackson Knight details these Confederate creations, everything from “combined knapsack and tent” to improvement on firearms, in “Confederate Invention: The Story of the Confederate States Patent Office and Its Inventors.”

Stretching ahead a few years is Rachel L. Emanuel and Alexander P. Tureaud Jr.’s biography of civil rights activist and attorney A.P. Tureaud, who fought desegregation for years in Louisiana. “A More Noble Cause: A.P. Tureaud and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Louisiana, A Personal Biography,” examines Tureaud’s 40-plus years working toward equal pay for Louisiana teachers, desegregating public accommodations and buses, voting rights and working with others to overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson, which ended segregation on a national level. Emanuel is director of publications and electronic media at Southern University Law Center and Alexander Tureaud Jr. a retired school administrator.