Harry Pfanz, a former historian at Gettysburg National Military Park, has written a definitive account of the second day's brutal combat. He begins by introducing the men and units that were to do battle, analyzing the strategic intentions of Lee and Meade as commanders of the opposing armies, and describing the concentration of forces in the area around Gettysburg. He then examines the development of tactical plans and the deployment of troops for the approaching battle. But the emphasis is on the fighting itself. Pfanz provides a thorough account of the Confederates' smashing assaults -- at Devil's Den and Litle Round Top, through the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard, and against the Union center at Cemetery Ridge. He also details the Union defense that eventually succeeded in beating back these assaults, depriving Lee's gallant army of victory.Pfanz analyzes decisions and events that have sparked debate for more than a century. In particular he discusses factors underlying the Meade-Sickles controversy and the questions about Longstreet's delay in attacking the Union left. The narrative is also enhanced by thirteen superb maps, more than eighty illustrations, brief portraits of the leading commanders, and observations on artillery, weapons, and tactics that will be of help even to knowledgeable readers. Gettysburg--The Second Day is certain to become a Civil War classic. What makes the work so authoritative is Pfanz' mastery of the Gettysburg literature and his unparalleled knowledge of the ground on which the fighting occurred. His sources include the Official Records, regimental histories and personal reminiscences from soldiers North and South, personal papers and diaries, newspaper files, and last -- but assuredly not least -- the Gettysburg battlefield. Pfanz's career in the National Park Service included a ten-year assignment as a park historian at Gettysburg. Without doubt, he knows the terrain of the battle as well as he knows the battle itself.

    HC: Doubleday.

    Drawing extensively on newly unearthed documents, this work provides a gripping battle-by-battle assessment of Hill's role in Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and other battles. 8 pages of photographs.

    Terry L. Jones offers a colorful, highly readable account of this notorious group of soldiers renowned not only for their drunkenness and disorderly behavior in camp but for their bravery in battle. It was this infantry that held back the initial Federal onslaught at First Manassas, made possible General Stonewall Jackson's famed Valley Campaign, contained the Union breakthrough at Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle, and led Lee's last offensive actions at Fort Stedman and Appomattox.Despite all their vices, Lee's Tigers emerged from the Civil War with one of the most respected military records of any group of southern soldiers. According to Jones, the unsavory reputation of the Tigers was well earned, for Louisiana probably had a higher percentage of criminals, drunkards, and deserters in its commands than any other Confederate state. The author spices his narrative with well-chosen anecdotes-among them an account of one of the stormiest train rides in military history. While on their way to Virginia, the enlisted men of Coppens' Battalion uncoupled their officers' car from the rest of the train and proceeded to partake of their favorite beverages. Upon arriving in Montgomery, the battalion embarked upon a drunken spree of harassment, vandalism, and robbery. Meanwhile, having commandeered another locomotive, the officers arrived and sprang from their train with drawn revolvers to put a stop to the disorder. The charge of the Light Brigade, one witness recalled, was surpassed by these irate Creoles.Lee's Tigers is the first study to utilize letters, diaries, and muster rolls to provide a detailed account of the origins, enrollments, casualties, and desertion rates of these soldiers. Jones supplies the first major work to focus solely on Louisiana's infantry in Lee's army throughout the course of the war. Civil War buffs and scholars alike will find Lee's Tigers a valuable addition to their libraries.

    The text is a blend of documentary sources and terrain descriptions, combining official reports and observations of the commanding officers.

    In War So Terrible authors James Lee McDonough and James Pickett Jones have written an extensive, highly readable new history, focusing our attention on the pivotal and fascinating events that led tot he downfall of the "Gate City" and eventually to the Confederacy itself. Throughout, their narrative is evenhanded in its view of the participants of both sides, yet never fails to look to the final outcome as the consequence of all. An Epilogue offers some intriguing insights into the writing of Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell and into the research she undertook in her version of the event that turned the tides of one of the most devastating wars yet fought by man.

    An examination of Lincoln's assassination and the events that preceded it.

    Articles, engravings, and maps from Harper's Magazine issues of the 1860s make up a profile of the Civil War, from the firing on Fort Sumter to Lincoln's assassination.

    Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and many lesser commanders. But while the tarnish on such statues has done nothing to color the reputation of those great leaders, there remains one Confederate commander whose tarnished image has nothing to do with bronze monuments. Nowhere in the South does a memorial stand to Lee's intimate friend and second-in-command James Longstreet.In Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant, William Garrett Piston examines the life of James Longstreet and explains how a man so revered during the course of the war could fall from grace so swiftly and completely. Unlike other generals in gray whose deeds are familiar to southerners and northerners alike, Longstreet has the image not of a hero but of an incompetent who lost the Battle of Gettysburg and, by extension, the war itself. Piston's reappraisal of the general's military record establishes Longstreet as an energetic corps commander with an unsurpassed ability to direct troops in combat, as a trustworthy subordinate willing to place the war effort above personal ambition. He made mistakes, but Piston shows that he did not commit the grave errors at Gettysburg and elsewhere of which he was so often accused after the war.In discussing Longstreet's postwar fate, Piston analyzes the literature and public events of the time to show how the southern people, in reaction to defeat, evolved an image of themselves which bore little resemblance to reality. As a product of the Georgia backwoods, Longstreet failed to meet the popular cavalier image embodied by Lee, Stuart, and other Confederate heroes. When he joined the Republican party during Reconstruction, Longstreet forfeited his wartime reputation and quickly became a convenient target for those anxious to explain how a "superior people" could have lost the war. His new role as the villain of the Lost Cause was solidified by his own postwar writings. Embittered by years of social ostracism resulting from his Republican affiliation, resentful of the orchestrated deification of Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet exaggerated his own accomplishments and displayed a vanity that further alienated an already offended southern populace.Beneath the layers of invective and vilification remains a general whose military record has been badly maligned. Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant explains how this reputation developed--how James Longstreet became, in the years after Appomattox, the scapegoat for the South's defeat, a Judas for the new religion of the Lost Cause.

    An extensive description of the charge, the complete roster of Gen. George Pickett's Division, a consolidated casualty report, as well as many other significant details that have been painstakingly researched by the Gettysburg park historian of 25 years.

    Included are William Clark, Stephen H. Long, William S. Harney, James Henry Carleton, Philip H. Sheridan, George Armstrong Custer, George Crook, John G. Bourke, Benjamin H. Grierson, Ranald S. Mackenzie, William B. Hazen, Nelson A. Miles, Frank D. Baldwin, and Charles King.

    Assembled from regimental histories as well as diaries, letters, and memoirs from men of both Union and Confederate armies, this is a stirring account of the final and decisive Shenandoah Valley campaign.

    At age 21, he escaped from slavery and created a new life for himself as a free man. Intelligent and charismatic, Douglass became the leading voice against slavery in the 1800s. There is no way a nation can call itself free and accept slavery, he said. The McKissacks' lively, easy-to-read text highlights the importance of this internationally known author and orator.

    Devices of a lesser navy, these surface cruisers prowled the coastal seas to engage and interrupt vital commerce of their better-equipped, more powerful adversary. The C.S.S. Florida, in just two cruises before her capture, inflicted significant damage to Union cargo and ships, estimated at more than USD 4,000,000. The Florida struggled from the beginning. It had to be financed by a break-away government and built by a neutral Britain, remain supplied by small, out-of-the-way ports of call, and continue on the high seas as a threat to American shipping. Union warships hunting for the Florida caused repeated damage, but the wit and courage of her captains, John Maffitt and Charles Morris, kept her supplied and sound enough to severely weaken American coastal trade. In fact, the U.S. merchant marine fleet was so compromised by its losses to the Confederate raiders and the ensuing high cost of war risk insurance that it never fully recovered its place of prominence. In terms of damage to the economy of the United States, the cruisers were more effective than any other military investment made by the Confederacy. First published in 1965, this new printing offers a popular book in paperback format for the first time.

    s/t: A Historian's Journey to the American Civil War

    Their role in carrying out Reconstruction in Texas was especially difficult because the state had a large voting majority of white former Confederates. The army was essential to the enforcement of loyalist policies and, more controversially, to the electoral success of the Republican party. How the military tried to achieve these ends varied over three major periods corresponding to the tenure of three chief officers: Generals Philip H. Sheridan, Charles Griffin, and Joseph J. Reynolds. Internal rivalries, the ability (or inability) to work with citizens, relations with state political leaders, and Texan hostility toward central authority all figured into the army's performance of its task. William Richter has mined much unused material in developing this uniquely thorough study of the military in Texas. Moving beyond the good-guy, bad-guy stereotypes, he demonstrates that the army was more competent and important than traditional Reconstruction history has taught. In spite of minimal numbers, the army exercised great political influence and left a legacy--and a reaction to that legacy--that largely shaped the post-Reconstruction constitution and party structure of the state and that "provided a convenient excuse for the denial of justice and equality to blacks without forcing whites to face up to the racism which made these goals unpalatable."