From Colonies to Countries in the North Caribbean: Military Engineers in the Development of Cities and Territories (2016)
Edited by Pedro Luengo-Gutiérrez and Gene Allen Smith

This volume brings together eight essays that address the result of a research project involving a group of international scholars. It explores a little-discussed, yet interesting phenomenon in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico region how military engineers reshaped the physical landscape for imperial reasons and, in doing so, laid the foundations for broader colonial development. Moreover, this transnational scenario reveals how military construction reached beyond cross-borders themes and histories from the age of imperialism. For this reason, this volume underlines the key role of military engineers on other fields, from railroad design to environmental intervention, through cartographical works, and in diplomacy, all the while overcoming the traditional perspective of military engineers as being only builders of structures for war.
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The Slaves' Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812 (2013)
by Gene Allen Smith

Images of American slavery conjure up cotton plantations and African American slaves locked in bondage until the Civil War. Yet early on in the nineteenth century the state of slavery was very different, and the political vicissitudes of the young nation offered diverse possibilities to slaves. In the century’s first two decades, the nation waged war against Britain, Spain, and various Indian tribes. Slaves played a role in the military operations, and the different sides viewed them as a potential source of manpower. While surprising numbers did assist the Americans, the wars created opportunities for slaves to find freedom among the Redcoats, the Spaniards, or the Indians. Author Gene Smith draws on a decade of original research and his curatorial work at the Fort Worth Museum in this fascinating and original narrative history. The way the young nation responded sealed the fate of slaves for the next half century until the Civil War. This drama sheds light on an extraordinary yet little known chapter in the dark saga of American history.
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Nexus of Empire: Negotiation Loyalty and Identify in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s-1820s (2011)
by Gene Allen Smith and Sylvia L. Hilton

Between 1760 and 1820, many groups in North America grappled with differences of identity, nationality, and loyalty tested by revolutionary challenges.

Nexus of Empire turns the focus on the people who inhabited one of the continent’s most dynamic borderlands--the Gulf of Mexico region--where nations and empires competed for increasingly important strategic and commercial advantages. The essays in this collection examine the personal experiences of men and women, Native Americans, European colonists, free people of color, and slaves, analyzing the ways in which these individuals defined and redefined themselves amid a world of competing loyalties.

This volume humanizes the promise and perils of living, working, and fighting in a region experiencing constant political upheaval and economic uncertainties. It offers intriguing glimpses into a fast-changing world in which individuals' attitudes and actions reveal the convoluted balancing acts of identities that characterized this population and this era.
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A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans (2004)
by Robert Atchison, edited by Gene Allen Smith

Edited with an introduction and conclusion by Professor Gene A. Smith of Texas Christian University, A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans offers readers a glimpse of the bygone Age of Sail. Rampant warfare raged across Europe and the Americas in the early 19th century.  Napoleon schemed for world domination, colonized nations rose up in revolt, and Britain and the United States met, for the final time, as battlefield opponents.  During this epoch hundreds of thousands lost their lives in the struggles to redraw the boundaries of the world map.  Most left no personal imprint on history.   Robert Aitchison, a young Scottish naval officer who dodged alligators, shipwreck, and musket shot all before his twentieth birthday, could well have become another nameless casualty of war.  But Aitchison survived to memorialize his youthful adventures in the Mediterranean, off the coast of New England, and on the plains of Chalmette.  A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans invites readers to join Aitchison at sea.
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Thomas Ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny (Library of Naval Biography) (2000)
by Gene Allen Smith

Thomas ap Catesby Jones was one of the most controversial officers in the U.S. Navy during the first half of the nineteenth century. A fascinating representative of a period of tumultuous change for both the navy and the country, he was a firebrand with a desire for reform and willingness to experiment. This biography explores his colorful career that spanned five decades and places it within the context of his changing times, as the navy moved into an age of iron and steam and a young nation struggled for recognition. It is the story of a complex figure known for his mistaken seizure of Monterey, California, in 1842 when the United States and Mexico were not formally at war. At the time Jones seemed to have created a national crisis, yet that episode, like Jones himself, was more complicated and had far greater ramifications than appeared on the surface. Historian Gene Smith's enlightening study not only chronicles important events in Jones's life but also explores how they helped shape the character and backbone of the navy during its formative years. He describes Jones's early career fighting smugglers, pirates, slave traders, and the British, evaluates his actions in the Battle of New Orleans, explains how he carried the stars and stripes to Hawaii in the 1820s, and how he helped incorporate California into the United States.
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Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida (1999)
by Arsène Lacarrière Latour, edited by Gene Allen Smith

Widely regarded as the best eyewitness account of the Battle of New Orleans, Arsène Lacarrière Latour’s Historical Memoir records first-hand the dramatic events of the climactic military campaign of the War of 1812. This revised and expanded edition includes a substantial new biographical introduction based on a group of manuscripts relating to the battle recently acquired from Latour's descendants in France. Only months after the battle ended, Latour, who was General Andrew Jackson's principal army engineer, began interviewing witnesses and key participants in order to create a comprehensive record based on first-hand accounts. The work's most significant value derives from these accounts---of numerous individuals who participated in a crucial moment in history of the United States---reproduced in the book's appendix. As the first full-length treatment of the New Orleans campaign, the book also offers perceptive analysis of battle preparations, terrain, and strategy by the man who designed many of the American defenses. Latour provides a record which will never be replaced.
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Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821 (1997; reprint 2004)
by Frank L. Owsley and Gene Allen Smith

The first two decades of the 19th century found many Americans eager to move away from the crowded eastern seaboard and into new areas where their goals of landownership might be realized. Such movement was encouraged by Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe- collectively known as the Jeffersonians- who believed that the country's destiny was to have total control over the entire North American continent. Migration patterns during this time changed the country considerably and included the roots of the slavery controversy that ultimately led to the Civil War. By the end of the period, although expansionists had not succeeded in moving into British Canada, they had obtained command of large areas from the Spanish South and Southwest, including acreage previously controlled by Native Americans.

Utilizing memoirs, diaries, biographies, newspapers, and vast amounts of both foreign and domestic correspondence, Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., and Gene A. Smith reveal an insider's view of the filibusters and expansionists, the colorful- if not sometimes nefarious- characters on the front line of the United States's land grab. Owsley and Smith describe in detail the actions and characters involving both the successful and the unsuccessful efforts to expand the United States during this period - as well as the outspoken opposition to expansion, found primarily among the Federalists in the Northeast.
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Iron and Heavy Guns: Duel between the Monitor and the Merrimac (1998)
by Gene Allen Smith

March 1862. The Union ironclad warship, Monitor, with its two eleven inch Dahlgren smoothbores in a unique revolving turret assembly, leaves New York City under tow to serve blockade duty off the coast of North Carolina. Meanwhile, the Confederate ironclad Virginia (formerly the wooden frigate Merrimac) is raising havoc with Union blockaders in Hampton Roads. The inevitable showdown takes place on March 9th. For more than four hours the two ironclads battle furiously at close range. The Merrimac finally withdraws and returns to Norfolk to protect the river approaches to Richmond, leaving the Monitor in control of the Roads and in position to protect the Union blockaders. In May, the Merrimac is destroyed by its own crew to prevent capture; in December, the Monitor sinks in a storm off Cape Hatteras while under tow from Hampton Roads to North Carolina waters. An exciting account of two ships that changed naval warfare forever!
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"For the Purposes of Defense": The Politics of the Jeffersonian Gunboat Program (1998)
by Gene Allen Smith

Thomas Jefferson is generally considered to be a pacificist, yet he was not. Instead, he carefully considered war to be an instrument for protecting the young United States. In this book, historian Gene Allen Smith examines Jefferson's much derided brown water gunboat program, concluding that the president wanted to use the craft within a sophisticated system of defense, Jefferson nonetheless, wanted to ensure the United States did not become embroiled in a war that might jeopardize the country's independence.
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