This interesting, witty, and accomplished family had two American presidents in their lineage, and one of the correspondents was Lincoln's ambassador to England. With America's future in doubt, three men of the Adams family exchanged letters about everything from politics to generals to emancipation to gossip about the rich and powerful. Boston-born and Harvard-educated, their letters are brilliant. Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of John Adams) was Lincoln's minister to the Court of St. James. His son, Henry, was his secretary in London. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. hated being a lawyer and joined the Union Army as a private. He distinguished himself at the battles of Secessionville, South Mountain, Antietam, and the Gettysburg Campaign and he was eventually brevetted a brigadier general. All the while, these remarkable men, who knew everyone, carried on an extraordinary correspondence about the war. You won't likely find a more interesting set of viewpoints from the battlefield and from London all in one two-volume set. Charles Jr. writes of his interactions with Grant, Meade, Hooker, Burnside, Butler and more. Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers, tablets, and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

    James Sprunt served as purser aboard the blockade runner Lilian when just a teenager during the American Civil War. During those years he became inimately acquainted with the daring men and fast ships that challenged the might of the Union navy and its blockade of North Carolina and Cape Fear ports. There were Captains John Newland Maffitt, John Wilkinson, and Joseph Fry. Jim Billy Craig and others piloted the sleek steamers carrying the lifeblood of the Confederacy into the port at Wilmington with steady hands. Characters like Thomas Taylor, Daisy Lamb and the rebel spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow all played their parts in the drama that took place off the Cape Fear between 1861 and 1865. There were the men and ships of the U.S. Navy: Porter and Lee, Cushing and Braine, and all of the enlisted sailors and marines who stood watch on fog-slicked decks, trying to plug a bottle with two openings. Too often they were unsuccessful, but if they could close the Cape Fear and the rest of the North Carolina coast, they just might end a long and costly war. These are their stories, told by a man who saw it all happen first-hand.