Anyone who heard these diaries excerpted on the PBS-TV series The Civil War will recognize his accounts of those campaigns, which remain outstanding for their clarity and detail. Most of all, Rhodes's words reveal the motivation of a common Yankee foot soldier, an otherwise ordinary young man who endured the rigors of combat and exhausting marches, short rations, fear, and homesickness for a salary of $13 a month and the satisfaction of giving "all for the union."

    Known as "the Gibraltar of the South," Fort Fisher was the largest, most formidable coastal fortification in the Confederacy, by late 1864 protecting its lone remaining seaport-Wilmington, North Carolina. Gragg's powerful, fast-paced narrative recounts the military actions, politicking, and personality clashes involved in this unprecedented land and sea battle. It vividly describes the greatest naval bombardment of the war and shows how the fort's capture in January 1865 hastened the South's surrender three months later. In his foreword, historian Edward G. Longacre surveys Gragg's work in the context of Civil War history and literature, citing Confederate Goliath as "the finest book-length account of a significant but largely forgotten episode in our nation's most critical conflict."

    She hated Jesse Cameron with a fierce passion. But she was a widow now, and he was the enemy at her door, come with weapons of fire to melt her icy heart ...HIS TRAITOR'S TOUCH IGNITED RAGING PASSIONSHe wore a Yankee uniform with inimitable Southern style, as true to the Union cause as he was treasonous to his rebel roots. Even as war engulfed them all, he would find his greatest adversary in the beauty who'd branded him a traitor, the woman he was born to possess.

    This stunning volume provides a focus rarely seen in Civil War documentation.

    Though the Franklin battlefied has not been preserved, a few key homes and sites have survived and are open to the public.

    He distinguished himself in every battle in which he participated, from Ball's Bluff until the Battle of the Wilderness, where he died in command of his regiment. Fallen Leaves is a collection of Abbott's wartime letters to his family and friends, the majority published here for the first time. Robert Garth Scott's introduction contains a biographical sketch of Abbott that offers the most complete account of his life to date and, in his epilogue, recounts the details of Abbott's final battle and death. Also published with the letters are more than 30 photographs, many of them showing members of the 20th Massachusetts. Abbott's letters convey an immediacy which gives readers a sense of being part of an inner circle of friends and relatives. This quality lends itself to fresh and compelling reading for Civil War scholars, buffs, and general readers alike.

    She was the first to forsake the bayou culture for the heady night life of New Orleans, and she was destined to love the one man who could never truly be hers;ZOE -- convent bred and forced to marry a rich planter, she watched her mother rise to the heights of Creole society, then chose a very different kind of happiness for herself.From the backwater bayou to the high life of New Orleans and the elegance of Mississippi River plantations, BAYOU is cotton and the War of 1812, sugar cane and the War Between the States, moonshine and World War I. But above all, it is the story of four remarkable women whose passions drove them to forge a way of life that will never been seen again.

    1832. A young country grinds toward civil war, and one man torn between two worlds will transform many lives in his struggle for identity and power. Dorian Trozen has his slave mother's unconquerable pride and will, his father's white skin and cunning. Educated in secret by his father's wife, loved by two mothers, white and black, he is bound to the plantation, never to see the world he knows through his precious books. And when his two lives clash in an inevitable moment of violence, he wins his beloved freedom... and plunges headlong into a deep well of rage.From brutal bondage to fugitive flight for a crime he didn't commit, Dorian has made the bitter choice to follow the fortunes of the South. With battle lines drawn between North and South, black and white, he is the man who will cross them all... with only his life and his soul to lose.

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

    A Biography of General Daniel Edgar Sickles.By W.A.Swanberg.

    180 photographs and 20 maps.

    For two years, the 3,000 inhabitants of this prosperous frontier community had managed to escape the Civil War which raged in the East. At Quantrill's command, the horrors of that war were brought directly into their homes. The attack began at dawn. When it was over, more than 150 townsmen were dead and most of the settlement burned to the ground.In Bloody Dawn, Thomas Goodrich considers why this remote settlement was signaled out to receive such brutal treatment. He also describes the retribution that soon followed, which in many ways surpassed the significance of the Lawrence Massacre itself. The story that unfolds reveals an event unlike anything our nation has experienced before or since.

    Holt, a successful country doctor in the upstate village of Newport, New York, accepted the position of assistant surgeon in the 121st New York Volunteer Army in August 1862. At age 42 when he was commissioned, he was the oldest member of the staff. But his experience served him well, as his regiment participated in nearly all the major campaigns in the eastern theater of the war--Crampton's Gap before Antietam, Fredericksburg, Salem Church, the Mine Run campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, and Appomattox.In A Surgeon's Civil War, the educated and articulate Holt describes camp life, army politics, and the medical difficulties that he and his colleagues experienced. His reminiscences and letters provide an insider's look at medicine as practiced on the battlefield and offer occasional glimpses of the efficacy of Surgeon General William A. Hammond's reforms as they affected Holt's regiment. He also comments on other subjects, including slavery and national events. Holt served until October 17, 1864 when ill health forced him to resign.

    At age 86 she led a successful battle to integrate the restaurants of Washington, D.C. This was one more link in a lifelong chain of fights and firsts for this outspoken African-American woman. She was one of the first black women in the United States to earn a college degree, the first to be appointed to a school board, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and a founder of the NAACP. The McKissacks show how her untiring efforts helped set a new course for blacks and women in the United States.

    his book is not the story of the commanders, but rather shows in intimate detail what the war in the western theater was like for the enlisted men. Daniel argues that the unity of the Army of Tennessee--unlike that of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia--can be understood only by viewing the army from the bottom up rather than the top down.The western army had neither strong leadership nor battlefield victories to sustain it, yet it maintained its cohesiveness. The glue that kept the men in the ranks included fear of punishment, a well-timed religious revival that stressed commitment and sacrifice, and a sense of comradeship developed through the common experience of serving under losing generals.The soldiers here tell the story in their own rich words, for Daniel quotes from an impressive variety of sources, drawing upon his reading of the letters and diaries of more than 350 soldiers as well as scores of postwar memoirs. They write about rations, ordnance, medical care, punishments, the hardships of extensive campaigning, morale, and battle. While eastern and western soldiers were more alike than different, Daniel says, there were certain subtle variances. Western troops were less disciplined, a bit rougher, and less troubled by class divisions than their eastern counterparts. Daniel concludes that shared suffering and a belief in the ability to overcome adversity bonded the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee into a resilient fighting force.

    Constitution on which it was modeled and examines closely the innovations the delegates brought to the document.

     Like the Roman God Janus, he had two faces: considered cold, aloof, petty, obstinate and vindictive, he was also witty, intelligent, affectionate, impervious to fear and loyal to a fault. Raised in Mississippi, at his brother’s behest he entered West Point and began the first of two Army careers; in the 1850s he would be named Secretary of War by Franklin Pierce. A staunch defender of slavery, Davis was an unusual owner: he encouraged them to learn new skills, administer their own justice and provided them with a comfortable living. Yet Davis did not fully comprehend human nature. To him his logic was irrefutable, and he was never able to see how his remarks, while not necessarily ill-meant, might cause offence. However, his life was plagued by sickness and grief. In addition to his own health issues his first wife died tragically young, as did four of his six children with his second. A complex portrait of a complex man, William C. Davis’ endeavour methodically explores the life of the leader of the Lost Cause and how the man was made. Praise for Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour “The fullest and best biography yet written, a work that will remain a standard authoritative account of the life of the Confederate President.” — David Herbert Donald, New York Times Book Review “A dispassionate, well-researched, and skillful biography of a complex and controversial figure.” — Kirkus Reviews William C. Davis is an American historian and former Professor of History who specialises in the Civil War and Southern States. A prolific writer, he has written or edited more than forty works on the subject and is four-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award.