Best of
Civil-War

1940

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command


Douglas Southall Freeman - 1940
    A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee.The Confederacy won resounding victories throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties. Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who commanded—among them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell—developed as leaders and men. Lee's Lieutenants follows these men to the costly battle at Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the South's declining military might, and finally to the collapse of Lee's command and his formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation. Accessible at last in a one-volume edition abridged by noted Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears, Lee's Lieutenants is essential reading for all Civil War buffs, students of war, and admirers of the historian's art as practiced at its very highest level.

I Rode With Stonewall: Being Chiefly The War Experiences of the Youngest Member of Jackson's Staff from John Brown's Raid to the Hanging of Mrs. Surratt


Henry Kyd Douglas - 1940
    Henry Kyd Douglas devoted himself to the Southern cause, fighting its battles and enduring its defeats, and during and shortly after the Civil War, Douglas set down his experiences of great men and great days. In simple, resonant prose written wholly firsthand from notes and diaries made on the battlefield, he covered the full emotional spectrum of a soldier's life. I Rode with Stonewall is one of the most remarkable stories to come out of any war.

The War for the Union: The Improvised War, 1861-62


Allan Nevins - 1940
    An account of the first year of the war that studies the transformation of a nation.

Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis


David Morris Potter - 1940
    David M. Potter revolted against the prevailing southern argument that Lincoln deliberately provoked the South into war to bring a violent end to slavery, arguing instead that the new president followed the least aggressive course available to him in dealing with the secession crisis.Based on a painstaking examination of the writings and statements of both the northern principal players in the crisis and other, lesser-known Republicans who revealed the sentiment of the party's rank and file, this groundbreaking study details the Republicans' attitudes to the threat of secession, their reaction to the actual withdrawal of the southern states, and their faith that the Union could be restored without violence. Daniel W. Crofts provides a new Introduction, setting Potter's account in the context of contemporary literature.In An Earlier Form, This Study Was Submitted As A Doctoral Dissertation At Yale [1940]

Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War: Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement


David W. Petegorsky - 1940
    This pioneering study of Winstanley and the Digger movement offers a challenging analysis of the English Revolution and of the political ideas to which it gave rise.