This is a history of the largest and bloodiest campaign of the American Civil War - one in which a quarter of a million men fought, and one in four died.

    Though he barely escaped expulsion from West Point, John Bell Hood quickly rose through the ranks of the Confederate army. With bold leadership in the battles of Gaines’ Mill and Antietam, Hood won favor with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. But his fortunes in war took a tragic turn when he assumed command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.   After the fall of Atlanta, Hood marched his troops north in an attempt to draw Union army general William T. Sherman from his devastating “March to the Sea.” But the ploy proved ruinous for the South. While Sherman was undeterred from his scorched-earth campaign, Hood and his troops charged headlong into catastrophe.   In this compelling account, Wiley Sword illustrates the poor command decisions and reckless pride that made a disaster of the Army of Tennessee’s final campaign. From Spring Hill, where they squandered an early advantage, Hood and his troops launched an ill-fated attack on the neighboring town of Franklin. The disastrous battle came to be known as the “Gettysburg of the West.” But worse was to come as Hood pressed on to Nashville, where his battered troops suffered the worst defeat of the entire war.   Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award for best work of nonfiction about the Civil War, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah chronicles the destruction of the South’s second largest army. “Narrated with brisk attention to the nuances of strategy—and with measured solemnity over the waste of life in war,” it is a groundbreaking work of scholarship told with authority and compassion (Kirkus Reviews).

    One can easily say that the definitive work on Joshua Chamberlain has now been done.--James Robertson, Richmond Times-Dispatch"An example of history as it should be written. The author combines exhaustive research with an engaging prose style to produce a compelling narrative which will interest scholars and Civil War buffs alike.--Journal of Military History"A solid biography. . . . It does full justice to an astonishing life.--Library Journal This remarkable biography traces the life and times of Joshua L. Chamberlain, the professor-turned-soldier who led the Twentieth Maine Regiment to glory at Gettysburg, earned a battlefield promotion to brigadier general from Ulysses S. Grant at Petersburg, and was wounded six times during the course of the Civil War. Chosen to accept the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Chamberlain endeared himself to succeeding generations with his unforgettable salutation of Robert E. Lee's vanquished army. After the war, he went on to serve four terms as governor of his home state of Maine and later became president of Bowdoin College. He wrote prolifically about the war, including The Passing of the Armies, a classic account of the final campaign of the Army of the Potomac.

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    For two hours, Yankees and Rebels mingle, with some of the latter even assisting the former in their grisly work. Newspapers are exchanged. Northern coffee is swapped for Southern tobacco. Yanks crowd around two Rebel generals, soliciting and obtaining autographs.As they part, a Confederate calls to a Yankee, "I hope to miss you, Yank, if I happen to shoot in your direction." "May I, never hit you Johnny if we fight again," comes the reply.The reprieve is short. A couple of months, dozens of battles, and more than 30,000 casualties later, the North takes Atlanta.One of the most dramatic and decisive episodes of the Civil War, the Atlanta Campaign was a military operation carried out on a grand scale across a spectacular landscape that pitted some of the war's best (and worst) general against each other.In Decision in the West, Albert Castel provides the first detailed history of the Campaign published since Jacob D. Cox's version appeared in 1882. Unlike Cox, who was a general in Sherman's army, Castel provides an objective perspective and a comprehensive account based on primary and secondary sources that have become available in the past 110 years.Castel gives a full and balanced treatment to the operations of both the Union and Confederate armies from the perspective of the common soldiers as well as the top generals. He offers new accounts and analyses of many of the major events of the campaign, and, in the process, corrects many long-standing myths, misconceptions, and mistakes. In particular, he challenges the standard view of Sherman's performance.Written in present tense to give a sense of immediacy and greater realism, Decision in the West demonstrates more definitively than any previous book how the capture of Atlanta by Sherman's army occurred and why it assured Northern victory in the Civil War.

    It began with an audaciously planned stroke by Union general Joe Hooker as he sent his army across the Rappahannock River and around Robert E. Lee's lines. It ended with that same army fleeing back in near total disarray -- and Hooker's reputation in ruins.This splendid account of Chancellorsville -- the first in more than 35 years -- explains Lee's most brilliant victory even as it places the battle within the larger canvas of the Civil War. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand sources, it creates a novelistic chronicle of tactics and characters while it retraces every thrust and parry of the two armies and the fateful decisions of their commanders, from Hooker's glaring display of moral weakness to the inspired risk-taking of Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who was mortally wounded by friendly fire. At once impassioned and gracefully balanced, Chancellorsville 1863 is a grand achievement in Civil War history.

    This study of the battle is based on research in archives from Connecticut to California and includes a pioneering study of the terrain of the sprawling battlefield, as well as an examination of soldiers' personal experiences, the use of Native American troops, and the role of Pea Ridge in regional folklore.

    Powerful images and vivid narrative are combined in a unique catalog of Civil War artifacts, tactical maps and other battle accouterments.

    There has always been a profound interest in the subject, and specifically of Blacks' participation in and reactions to the war and the war's outcome. Almost 200,000 African-American soldiers fought for the Union in the Civil War. Although most were illiterate ex-slaves, several thousand were well educated, free black men from the northern states. The 129 letters in this collection were written by black soldiers in the Union army during the Civil War to black and abolitionist newspapers. They provide a unique expression of the black voice that was meant for a public forum. The letters tell of the men's experiences, their fears, and their hopes. They describe in detail their army days--the excitement of combat and the drudgery of digging trenches. Some letters give vivid descriptions of battle; others protest racism; still others call eloquently for civil rights. Many describe their conviction that they are fighting not only to free the slaves but to earn equal rights as citizens. These letters give an extraordinary picture of the war and also reveal the bright expectations, hopes, and ultimately the demands that black soldiers had for the future--for themselves and for their race. As first-person documents of the Civil War, the letters are strong statements of the American dream of justice and equality, and of the human spirit.

    In this volume the author addresses the period of the cavalry’s decisive conquest of the Indians and the securing of the western frontier, the Spanish-American War and the glory of “Teddy Roosevelt’s boys,” and the years when the thunder of the Great War in Europe was echoing ominously across the Atlantic to America. Each era made its demands upon the horse soldier and his mount, and the author shows how the government dressed, armed, and supplied them to meet those demands. Volume III, like the earlier volumes, is lavishly illustrated with two color plates and 168 black-and-white drawing, meticulously detailed. This book and the two earlier volumes in the series are indispensable reference works for researchers and historians of America’s military past.

    George Edgar Turner writes: "It began to appear that important railroad junction points were to become major military objec-tives." Victory Rode the Rails portrays the decisive military advantage enjoyed by the side that controlled the railroads. Turner was a retired lawyer and insurance executive when his book was first published in 1953.It "remains the best introduction to the subject of railroads and military operations during the Civil War," says Gary Gallagher in presenting this book to a new audience.

    There is the bloody grinding-down of Confederate resolve, as the Union Army burns Atlanta, Sherman marches to the sea, Lee fails at Gettysburg, and the slow death grip between two great armies in the Battle of the Wilderness winds down into Appomattox. As these events take center stage, Nevins never forgets the importance of the economic build-up of the North, and the ways the exigencies of war served to create a new concept and new techniques of organization.

    (Best Books for Young Adult Readers )

    "I know of none since the "Iliad" that rivals it either in drama or in pathos...." "The Blue and The Gray" tells that story, the epic of the first great modern conflict. In so doing, it raises issues still of urgent concern in many lands today: What unifies a diverse nation? What justifies the formation of a new one? What sustains democracy and law in the range of the guns? What peace can follow the loss of 600,000 lives?Six chapters cover the conflict chronologically. Key characters in the saga are examined in biographical sketches throughout the volume, and a picture-and-text portfolio on a major social or technological theme accompanies each chapter. The book features color illustrations by National Geographic photographer Sam Abell and text by Thomas B. Allen, formerly a Society staff editor and a specialist in military studies. A judicious selection of historical photographs, specially commissioned new maps, and maps from the Civil War era enrich the pages.While tracing the drama of the battlefield, "The Blue and The Gray" lets the reader meet individuals of the 1860s -- on both sides of the front lines. Their own words, eloquent or earthy, funny or pitiful or noble, express the ideals they lived by and died for as family members fought one another and the war toll became the highest in American history.With accompanying guidebook and map supplement, this volume is designed to show and explain why, in Robert Penn Warren's words, "The Civil War is, for the Americanimagination, the great single event in our history," and why, in the opinion of Abraham Lincoln, it would affect "hope to the world for all future time."

    But until now, the ten days prior to that event have remained in relative obscurity. In Before Antietem, John Michael Priest offers the first book-length, tactical exploration of the Maryland campaign and the Battles of South Mountain, describing the decisive events leading up to the famous battle and elevating them from mere footnote status to a matter of military record. Chronicling Robert E. Lee's turnabout from defensive maneuvres to full scale Confederate invasion into Maryland, Priest demonstrates how this tactical change brought about a series of engagements near Sharpsburg, Maryland that came to be known as The Battle of South Mountain in which the Federal and Confederate forces struggled fiercely over Union territory. It was here that George B. McClellan, the new Northern commander, led his Army of the Potomac to its first victory over Lee in a furious action that produced one of the war's few successful bayonet charges. Written from the perspective of the front line combatants (and civilian observers), the book recounts the Confederate invasion and the Federal pursuit into Sharpsburg that set the stage for Antietam. From September 5-15, a total of twenty-five skirmishes and three pitched battles were fought. Priest provides graphic descriptions of the terrible conditions surrounding these events and so thoroughly enters into the common soldier's viewpoint that military history quickly gives way to gritty realism. He vividly shows that, had Robert E. Lee not been bested at the gaps along South Mountain, there would have been no Antietam. Lee's decision to make a stand along Antietam Creek was a point of pride--he had never been whipped before and would not return to Virginia defeated. That decision was a fateful one, since the sparring and fighting drove him into an untenable position that became his downfall. Priest's revealing narrative establishes that, at this stage of the Civil War, the Federal cavalry was better equipped and just as well trained as the Confederate cavalry thereby settling a point of debate among historians. Scholars and Civil War buffs alike will applaud the efforts of John Michael Priest in bringing us the means to view those devastating encounters from a true military perspective.

    . . The book's strength . . . is in the author's examination of the way the monument has become a powerful symbol of freedom and civil rights in our country. . . .--School Library Journal. Black-and-white photos.