Lee's radical decision to divide his small army - a violation of basic military rules - sending Stonewall Jackson on his famous march around the Union army flank. Jackson's death - accidentally shot by one of his own soldiers - is one of the many fascinating stories included in this definitive account of the battle of Chancellorsville.

    The Civil War Memoirs of Private William McCarter, 116 Pennsylvania Infantry William McCarter, a 21-year-old Irish immigrant, was present at the storming of Marye's Heights at the battle of Fredericksburg and left behind observations of several prominent Union personalities as well as daily life in the Army of the Potomac.

    Four years later, another flag was raised in its place while the city burned below. A thirteen-year-old girl compared the stars and stripes to "so many bloody gashes." This richly detailed, absorbing book brings to life the years in which Richmond was the symbol of Southern independence and the theater for a drama as splendid, sordid, and tragic as the war itself. Drawing on an array of archival sources, Ashes of Glory portrays Richmond's passion through the voices of soldiers and statesmen, preachers and prostitutes, slaves and slavers. Masterfully orchestrated and finely rendered, the result is a passionate and compelling work of social history."Furguson is a lively writer with an eye for the apt quotation and the telling incident...He brings to life a diverse cast of characters."--Newsday"Succeeds to a remarkable extent...Furguson brings war-torn Richmond to life."--Baltimore Sun

    McPherson is acclaimed as one of the finest historians writing today and a preeminent commentator on the Civil War. Battle Cry of Freedom, his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of that conflict, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called history writingof the highest order. Now, in Drawn With the Sword, McPherson offers a series of thoughtful and engaging essays on some of the most enduring questions of the Civil War, written in the masterful prose that has become his trademark.Filled with fresh interpretations, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Drawn With the Sword explores such questions as why the North won and why the South lost (emphasizing the role of contingency in the Northern victory), whether Southern or Northern aggression began the war, and whoreally freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln or the slaves themselves. McPherson offers memorable portraits of the great leaders who people the landscape of the Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant, struggling to write his memoirs with the same courage and determination that marked his successes on thebattlefield; Robert E. Lee, a brilliant general and a true gentleman, yet still a product of his time and place; and Abraham Lincoln, the leader and orator whose mythical figure still looms large over our cultural landscape. And McPherson discusses often-ignored issues such as the development of theCivil War into a modern total war against both soldiers and civilians, and the international impact of the American Civil War in advancing the cause of republicanism and democracy in countries from Brazil and Cuba to France and England. Of special interest is the final essay, entitled What's theMatter With History?, a trenchant critique of the field of history today, which McPherson describes here as more and more about less and less. He writes that professional historians have abandoned narrative history written for the greater audience of educated general readers in favor ofimpenetrable tomes on minor historical details which serve only to edify other academics, thus leaving the historical education of the general public to films and television programs such as Glory and Ken Burns's PBS documentary The Civil War.Each essay in Drawn With the Sword reveals McPherson's own profound knowledge of the Civil War and of the controversies among historians, presenting all sides in clear and lucid prose and concluding with his own measured and eloquent opinions. Readers will rejoice that McPherson has once againproven by example that history can be both accurate and interesting, informative and well-written. Mark Twain wrote that the Civil War wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations. In Drawn With the Sword, McPherson gracefully and brilliantly illuminates this momentous conflict.

    Diaries, letters, journals, media reports and more. Beautifully and dramatically illustrated.

    During the battle two Federal brigades, those of General John Gibbon and General Abner Doubleday, struggled to a tactical draw with Stonewall Jackson's divisions under Richard Ewell and William Taliaferro. Fought near Groveton, Virginia on August 28, 1862, and lasting but three hours, the conflict at Brawner Farm had a tremendous impact on the outcome of the Second Manassas Campaign. Special attention is focused on Gibbon's brigade, soon to be called the Iron Brigade, and the Wisconsin and Indiana soldiers he commanded. The text is supplemented by five maps and forty-five photographs, many never before published.

    

    Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman prepared their inexperienced troops for a massive offensive by an equally green Confederate army in April 1862, the outcome of the Civil War was still very much in doubt. For two of the most chaotic and ravaging days of the War, the Union forces counterattacked and fended off the Rebels. Losses were great--more than 20,000 casualties out of 100,000 Union and Confederate troops. But out of the struggle, Grant and Sherman forged their own union that would be a major factor in the Union Army's final victory. For the Confederates, Shiloh was a devastating disappointment. By the time the siege was over, they had lost both the battle and one of their ablest commanders, Albert Sidney Johnston.Eyewitness accounts by battle participants make these guides an invaluable resource for travelers and nontravelers who want a greater understanding of five of the most devastating yet influential years in our nation's history. Explicit directions to points of interest and maps--illustrating the action and showing the detail of troop position, roads, rivers, elevations, and tree lines as they were 130 years ago--help bring the battles to life. In the field, these guides can be used to recreate each battle's setting and proportions, giving the reader a sense of the tension and fear each soldier must have felt as he faced his enemy.

    More than 150 photos and drawings.

    As Grant moved toward Vicksburg, the Lincoln administration needed to know more about what was happening in the remote western theater. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton dispatched a respected newspaperman, Charles A. Dana, ostensibly to straighten out payroll matters but actually to observe Grant and the situation in the army and report back daily. Dana became “the government’s eyes at the front.” Recollections of the Civil War, drawing largely on his reports and originally published in 1898, is a classic to rank with Grant’s Personal Memoirs. Dana’s candid assessment of Grant, other officers, and campaign operations carried weight with Lincoln and Stanton and undoubtedly influenced the course of the war. In these pages, Dana is with Grant and General Sherman throughout the siege of Vicksburg, riding into the city “at the side of the conqueror.” Later he is with Grant at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. He is with General Rosecrans at Chickamauga; he watches General Sheridan’s troops scale Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga; he walks through the ruins of Richmond; he attends Lincoln on his deathbed. Finally, he sees Jefferson Davis in chains at Fortress Monroe.

    Previously understood only as a rear guard action on the way to Richmond and overshadowed by the events of the Seven Days, it was in fact a savage two days' engagement which at its height involved more than 20,000 troops in combat. This is the first full length book to treat the battle in all its strategic importance. The authors draw heavily on original sources to reconstruct the action and to highlight the stories of military and civilian participants in the battle and its aftermath. That original material offers new insights into events associated with the Battle of Williamsburg. An extensive appendix describes the location of the battlefield and includes descriptions of key sites which still exist.

    Guides the reader through the development of the Lee legend, from the heroic imagery of the Lost Cause to the more critical assessments of Lee.

    Diaries, letters, journals, media reports and more. Beautifully and dramatically illustrated.18 books are contained within this volume series (Voices of the Civil War)

    This groundbreaking work includes the most accurate account ever written of the 1863 Lawrence, Kansas massacre (the greatest atrocity of the Civil War), when Quantrill and 450 raiders torched the Unionist town and executed roughly 200 unarmed, unresisting men and teenage boys. It also details the postwar outlaw careers of those who rode with him — Frank and Jesse James, and Cole Younger. No other history so fully penetrates the myth of a cardboard-cutout psychopath to expose Quantrill in all his brutality and human complexity.

    This collection of carefully selected memoirs, diaries, letters, and reminiscences of ordinary Northerners and Southerners who experienced the war as soldiers or civilians brings to life the conflict in culture, principles, attitudes, hopes, courage, and suffering of both sides. Woodworth, a Civil War historian, has selected a wide variety of moving first person accounts, each of which tells a story of a life as well as the attitudes of ordinary people and the real conditions of war and homefront. Woodworth presents the war in the words of those who lived it.Contrasting selections will help the reader to see the war through the eyes of Northerners and Southerners as: soldiers prepare for war; women's lives change after the men go to war; soldiers on both sides experience the difficulties of camp life; sweethearts (the half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln and her Confederate fiance) exchange heartfelt letters; a husband's letters and his wife's diary recount their love, his death in battle, and her deep loss, countered by her faith; soldiers and civilians recount the carnage of the war's devastating battles; and people on both sides reflect on the outcome of the war and its consequences to their way of life. The accounts contrast the writers' attitudes toward Northern and Southern society, the principles for which those societies stood, and the religious significance of the war. These accounts and the narrative discussion of the difference in culture will help readers to understand the Civil War as a conflict of cultures. Telling the story of the war as personal history makes the experience of the Civil War come alive for readers.