Key Command examines Grant’s tenure at his first district command from both military and administrative perspectives. T. K. Kionka has written the first book-length study of the district, exploring the town’s Civil War legacy while shedding new light on Grant, the war in the West, and other important Union generals such as Logan and McClernand. From this command post, Grant led troops to the first great Union victories at Belmont, Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson, and Kionka explores their role in Grant’s military evolution while highlighting the contributions of civilian volunteers through first-person accounts.

Nineteenth-century Cairo was home to an unruly, ethnically diverse population, and Kionka interweaves the story of Grant’s military campaign with a social history of the town, describing the men and women associated with the Cairo camps who played significant roles in Grant’s command. Grant’s victories not only sealed his own reputation, but they also brought unprecedented wealth to a town that before the war had failed to develop under two different land companies. Kionka’s work tells how local entrepreneurs made money supplying Grant’s troops and how unscrupulous speculators poured into Cairo as Grant coped with dissension, supply shortages, and refugees. It also examines the prewar movement to create a new state out of southern Illinois and its implications both for Cairo and for Union strategy.

About the Author: T. K. Kionka is an independent scholar based in Fairview Heights, Illinois.

Key Command: Ulysses S. Grant’s District of Cairo (978-0-8262-1655-7, $39.95 cloth) is available at local bookstores or directly from the University of Missouri Press. Individuals placing orders should include $4.00 shipping and handling for the first book and $1.00 for each additional book.

For more information on this title, for excerpt possibilities, or to interview the author, please contact Beth Chandler at chandlerb@umsystem.edu or by phone at (573) 882-9672.