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In 1844 the USS Yorktown sailed from New York, as part of the U.S. Navy's newly established African Squadron, to interdict slave ships leaving the African coast. Aboard the sloop of war, Master's Mate John C. Lawrence, an educated New Yorker in his early twenties, kept a private journal describing what happened during the extraordinary two-year voyage and his reactions ...

Here is a compelling portrait of the other side of war—hose who must wait at home, uncertain what the Fates will decide—and Elizabeth Shaw knows this side of war all too well. She waited first for one husband, VanOstrand Perkins, who was killed in battle in the Pacific, and then another, James Shaw, who ultimately survived. This is a story ...