As Robertson notes in his preface to Stonewall Jackson, this study "is not a biography of a great general; it is the life of an extraordinary man who became a great general...The intent here is to see life as Jackson saw it, to hear his words, to read his thoughts, to walk beside him and know more than he knew at a given time and place".

    It shines a spotlight and shares new details about the admiral's leadership of the mission to recapture the port of New Orleans from the Confederacy - a campaign historians consider one of the most daring in military history.Farragut is perhaps best known for his order to “Damn the torpedoes.... Full speed ahead." during the Battle of Mobile Bay, which has become a touchstone and rallying cry for the United States Navy.A sweeping and riveting telling of Farragut's career and campaigns, Lincoln's Admiral offers fascinating insights into the strategy and decisions of one of the greatest military leaders on the Civil War - and of all time.

    Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that. Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as warprogresses -- not hold true in the Civil War?It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout theconflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of theAmerican Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--the best Government ever made--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard, one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace. Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I shouldbe willing to make the sacrifice, one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, I still love my country.McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left forthe first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades letsthese soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war.Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called history writing of the highest order. For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers'own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.

    The outcome of this offensive--the only coordinated Confederate attempt to carry the conflict to the enemy--was disastrous. The results at Antietam and in Kentucky are well known; the third offensive, the northern Mississippi campaign, led to the devastating and little-studied defeats at Iuka and Corinth, defeats that would open the way for Grant's attack on Vicksburg. Peter Cozzens presents here the first book-length study of these two complex and vicious battles. Drawing on extensive primary research, he details the tactical stories of Iuka--where nearly one-third of those engaged fell--and Corinth--fought under brutally oppressive conditions--analyzing troop movements down to the regimental level. He also provides compelling portraits of Generals Grant, Rosecrans, Van Dorn, and Price, exposing the ways in which their clashing ambitions and antipathies affected the outcome of the campaign. Finally, he draws out the larger, strategic implications of the battles of Iuka and Corinth, exploring their impact on the fate of the northern Mississippi campaign, and by extension, the fate of the Confederacy.During the late summer of 1862, Confederate forces attempted a three-pronged strategic advance into the North. The outcome of this offensive--the only coordinated Confederate attempt to carry the conflict to the enemy--was disastrous. The results at Antietam and in Kentucky are well known; the third offensive, the northern Mississippi campaign, led to the devastating and little-studied defeats at Iuka and Corinth, defeats that would open the way for Grant's attack on Vicksburg. Peter Cozzens details the tactical stories of Iuka and Corinth, analyzing troop movements down to the regimental level and providing compelling portraits of Generals Grant, Rosecrans, Van Dorn, and Price. He also draws out the larger, strategic implications of the battles, exploring their impact on the fate of the northern Mississippi campaign, and by extension, the fate of the Confederacy.

    Lee, he was a meteor shining from a clouded sky; and to Braxton Bragg, he was an officer ever alive to a success. He was Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, one of the greatest of all Confederate field commanders.An Irishman by birth, Cleburne emigrated to the United States in 1849 at the age of 21. He achieved only modest success in the peacetime South, but rose rapidly in the wartime army to become the Confederacy's finest division commander. He was admired by peers and subordinates alike for his leadership, loyalty, honesty, and fearlessness in the face of enemy fire. The valor of his command was so inspirational that his unit alone was allowed to carry its own distinctive battle flag.In Stonewall of the West, Craig Symonds offers the first full-scale critical biography of this compelling figure. He explores all the sources of Cleburne's commitment to the Southern cause, his growth as a combat leader from Shiloh to Chickamauga, and his emergence as one of the Confederacy's most effective field commanders at Missionary Ridge, Ringgold Gap, and Pickett's Mill. In addition, Symonds unravels the mystery of Spring Hill and recounts Cleburne's dramatic and untimely death (at the age of 36) at Franklin, Tennessee, where he charged the enemy line on foot after having two horses shot from under him.Symonds also explores Cleburne's role in the complicated personal politics of the Army of Tennessee, as well as his astonishing proposal that the decimated Confederate ranks be filled by ending slavery and arming blacks against the Union.Symonds' definitive and immensely readable narrative casts new light on Cleburne, on the Army of Tennessee, and on the Civil War in the West. It finally and firmly establishes Cleburne's rightful place in the pantheon of Southern military heroes.

    Most accounts of the grand assault focus on General Robert E. Lee’s reasons for making the charge, its preparation, organization, and ultimate failure. Author David Shultz, however, in “Double Canister at Ten Yards”: The Federal Artillery and the Repulse of Pickett’s Charge, July 3, 1863, focuses his examination on how and why the Union long-arm beat back the Confederate foot soldiers.After two days of heavy fighting on July 1 and 2, 1863, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Maj. General George G. Meade, correctly surmised General Lee would remain on the offensive on July 3 and strike the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. Meade informed Maj. Gen. Winfield Hancock, whose infantry lined the ridge, that his sector would bear the brunt on the morrow and to prepare accordingly. Meade also warned to his capable chief of artillery, Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, and tasked him with preparing his guns to deal with the approaching assault.Shultz, who has studied Gettysburg for decades and walked every yard of its hallowed ground, uses official reports, letters, diaries, and other accounts to meticulously explain how Hunt and his officers and men worked tirelessly that night and well into July 3 to organize a lethal package of orchestrated destruction to greet Lee’s vaunted infantry in an effort that would be hailed by many historians as “The High Water Mark of the Confederacy.” The war witnessed many large scale assaults and artillery bombardments, but no example of defensive gunnery was more destructive than the ring of direct frontal and full-flank enfilading fire Hunt’s batteries unleashed upon Lee’s assaulting columns. The iron rain broke and drove back the massed attack within a short time, leaving a fraction of the attacking force to cross the Emmitsburg Road to scale the deadly Ridge.“Double Canister at Ten Yards” will change the way you look at Pickett’s Charge, and leave you wondering yet again why an officer as experienced and gifted as General Lee ordered it in the first place.

    Rare period photographs and a guided tour section enhance this enlightening and entertaining book.

    Oates tells the story of the coming of the American Civil War through the voices, and from the viewpoints, of 13 principal players in the drama, including Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Nat Turner, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. This unique approach shows the crucial role that perception of events played in the sectional hostilities that bore the United States irreversibly into civil war. In writing the monologues, Oates draws on the actual words of Ills speakers and simulates how they would describe the crucial events in which they were the principal actors or witnesses. All the events and themes in the monologues adhere to historical record.The result is an exciting history that brings the personalities and events of the coming of the American Civil War vividly to life.

    It also features accounts of the defence of the Sugar Loaf Line and of the operations of Federal warships on the Cape Fear River.

    Includes tips for using today's reproduction fabrics and suggestions for achieving a period look.

    Like its predecessor, this tour of historic sites on the Gettysburg battlefield and surrounding area offers both a glimpse into the past as well as modern views of each photographic site and includes more previously unpubished views of the field..

    For twenty-five years after the president's death William Herndon, his law partner, conducted interviews with and solicited letters from dozens of persons who knew Lincoln personally. Up to now, the valuable information he collected has been available only in a microfilm edition in the Library of Congress, of such poor quality that it has been rarely used, particularly since there was no table of contents or adequate index, and in collections at the Huntington Library and the Illinois State Historical Library. The only previous publication of Herndon's materials, more than a half century ago, contains less than 10 percent of the collection and is so unreliable that scholars have hesitated to use it. Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis have earned the gratitude and admiration of scholars by taking on the daunting task of collating the collections in the three libraries, painstakingly deciphering the all but illegible handwriting of Herndon and some of his informants, and carefully documenting the entire work.

    . . . Deserves a place in the highest ranks of Civil War scholarship."--The Cleveland Plain DealerIn November 1860, telegraph lines carried the news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president. Over the next five months the United States drifted, stumbled, and finally plunged into the most destructive war this country has ever faced. With a masterful eye for telling detail, Maury Klein provides fascinating new insights into the period from the election of Abraham Lincoln to the shelling of Fort Sumter.Klein brings the key players in the tragedy unforgettably to life: from the vacillating lame-duck President Buchanan, to the taciturn, elusive, and relatively unknown Abraham Lincoln; from Secretary of State Seward carrying on his own private negotiations with the South, to Major Robert Anderson sitting in his island fortress awaiting reinforcements. Never has this immensely significant moment in our national story been so intelligently of so spellbindingly related.

    Organized by state and cross-referenced chronologically so that readers can follow the different campaigns, the book explains the particular strategies behind troop movements and gives travel information for each battlefield, as well as for landmarks, historic buildings, and newly discovered and developing sites open to the public today. For the armchair historian or the avid sightseer, here are the stunning dramas that unfolded on the battlefields, with historical maps, photographs, and illustrations that bring the scenes to life.

    Eisenhower comes the biography of General Winfield Scott, the towering commander, a hero of the War of 1812, who was instrumental in shaping America's border and who created the modern U.S. military.

    Callaway took part in some of the most critical campaigns of the Civil War. His twice-weekly letters home, written between April 1862 and November 1863, chronicle his gradual change from an ardent Confederate soldier to a weary veteran who longs to be at home.Callaway was a schoolteacher, husband, and father of two when he enlisted in the 28th Alabama Infantry Regiment at the age of twenty-seven. Serving with the Army of the Tennessee, he campaigned in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, and north Georgia. Along the way this perceptive observer and gifted writer wrote a continuous narrative detailing the activities, concerns, hopes, fears, discomforts, and pleasures of a Confederate soldier in the field.Whether writing about combat, illness, encampments, or homesickness, Callaway makes even the everyday aspects of soldiering interesting. This large collection, seventy-four letters in all, is a valuable historical reference that provides new insights into life behind the front lines of the Civil War.

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

    27524Phone: (910) 594-0789Fax: (910) 594-0074Email: bentonville@ncdcr.gov

    Author Bob Zeller resurrects a fascinating aspect of Civil War photography that has, until now, been largely forgotten, assembling more than 150 of the most compelling views of the war -- some of them well known in their one-dimensional form; all of them remarkable windows on another time. Complete with a stereoscopic viewer that unveils each image in glorious 3-D, The Civil War in Depth offers scenes that come to life in a way no two-dimensional photograph ever could. The remarkable collection includes the first war action photograph ever taken -- the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1863 -- as well as more than a dozen Civil War images never published until now. From the stoic face of Abraham Lincoln to the slave pens, prisons, wrecked battlefields, and devastated cities of the South, the war between the states has never been revealed with such astonishing clarity.

    The Fifth Company, Washington Artillery of New Orleans, fought with the Army of Tennessee from Shiloh to Chickamauga, from Perryville to Mobile, and from Atlanta to Jackson, Mississippi. Slocomb's Battery, as it was also known, won repeated praise from every commander of that army. Although it sustained high losses, the company was recognized for its bold, tenacious fighting and was considered the Army of Tennessee's finest close-combat battery. The Pride of the Confederate Artillery is the compelling story of four hundred men, their organization and service, their victories and defeats in over forty battles.

    

    "Stonewall" Jackson's legendary Shenandoah Valley Campaign. The Battle of Kernstown has been the least understood encounter of that famous spring in 1862 - until now. Gary Ecelbarger's new book brings to light the strategy, tactics, and personalities associated with March 23, 1862, by using hundreds of rare first-hand accounts from Kernstown soldiers. "We Are In For It!" demonstrates why one Civil War veteran considered the infantry fire at Kernstown to be "as heavy as it was at Antietam, Gettysburg, or the Wilderness."

    Officers in handsome military outfits, ladies in elegant daytime and evening dresses of rich taffeta, silk, percale and other fabrics, and children in apparel mirroring adult fashions. Adapted from pages of vintage fashion publications. Captions.

    This edition benefits from census and probate records, family photographs, and examines the genealogy of the African American from Burge plantation.

    Representing 26 years of research and travel, Owen and Owen have located and described the last resting place of the Confederacy's military leadership. These sites are in 21 states, the District of Columbia, and two foreign countries.

    The Leaders" explores the Federals and Confederates who had the greatest influence on how the war was fought. Illustrated and indexed.

    Buell examines three pairs of commanders from the North and South, who met each other in battle. Following each pair through the entire war, the author reveals the human dimensions of the drama and brings the battles to life. 38 b&w photos.From the Hardcover edition.

    The citizen soldiers of General George J. Stannard's Second Vermont Brigade, only a few days short of their nine-month enlistments, occupied a sector of Cemetery Ridge, helped stabilize the line, and then shattered the right flank of Pickett's famous charge just when the outcome of the battle hung in the balance.In this unique eye-witness account, Coffin draws on scores of soldiers' letters to relate how and why young recruits from isolated hill farms flocked to the Union colors in response to Lincoln's call in 1862. During the nine months leading up to their rendezvous with destiny at Gettysburg, they recorded, in humorous detail, foraging for food, and, in more sober terms, enduring homesickness, monotony, and often fatal diseases. We share, too, their anxieties as they are thrust suddenly into the most important infantry maneuver directed against the Confederate assault.

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

    

    Hitchcock of the 21st Massachusetts InfantryRonald WatsonHitchcock recorded many details of Civil War battles and camp life, as well as a rare account of the notorious Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia.

    The fight began with Federal officer Nathaniel Lyonís capture of the ammunition-packed St. Louis Arsenal. Gov. Claiborne F. Jackson unleashed the call for war and hastily formed militia units to defeat the Federals. In a bold campaign designed to destroy the vaunted state guard, Lyon and Federal Col. Franz Sigel launched a two-pronged attack. Ten miles north of the small town of Carthage, Jackson met Sigel and heavily outnumbered the Federal colonelís force. Sigel was forced to improvise a series of remarkable rearguard actions designed to save his supply wagons and his army. The Battle of Carthage is the first book devoted to this influential, early war battle. The book features detailed tactical coverage of the battle and in-depth biographical sketches, with critical evaluations of both sidesí major participants. The authorsí exhaustive battle analysis contains new interpretations of how and why the fighting evolved. This story of the battle of Carthage includes comprehensive original maps, photos and illustrations, a detailed discussion of casualties, explanatory endnotes, an order of battle, and an interview with coauthor David C. Hinze.

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

    You'll share their memories of good times and hardships, of births, weddings and funerals, games and duties in the master's house, and finally the "surrender" that set them all free. Above all, you'll hear the voices of true storytellers who afford us a glimpse of our inescapable past, revealing aspects of slavery rarely seen.Belinda Hurmence lets real people do the talking, revealing aspects of slavery rarely seen and their thoughts on what it really means to be free.

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

    Organized in an easy-to-read A-to-Z format, this volume pieces together the integrated structure of the Confederacy. Politics, society, economics, culture, and the military - the role and relationship of each is described in colorful detail, bringing this fascinating period of nineteenth-century America to life. You will find articles about the history, battles, and government of the Confederacy along with battle maps and rare photographs. Discover vivid descriptions of life in the Southern states during the Civil War. "Stonewall, " "Red Dogs, " "Bleeding Kansas, " "Marse Robert, " "King Cotton, " "the Gray Ghost, " "Extra Billie, " and the "Fire Eaters."

    This volume is a collection of his favorite paintings of the Civil War that feature subjects from a Northern viewpoint.

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

    Beginning with secession fever in 1860, the author leads us through stories about Robert E. Lee's sojourn in Savannah, the building of the ironclads, the fall of Fort Pulaski and Fort McAllister, Sherman's march to the sea, and the death of the Confederacy in 1865.

    Rejecting the common assumption that wartime domestic legislation was a series of piecemeal reactions to wartime necessities, Heather Cox Richardson argues that party members systematically engineered pathbreaking laws to promote their distinctive theory of political economy.Republicans were a dynamic, progressive party, the author shows, that championed a specific type of economic growth. They floated billions of dollars in bonds, developed a national currency and banking system, imposed income taxes and high tariffs, passed homestead legislation, launched the Union Pacific railroad, and eventually called for the end of slavery. Their aim was to encourage the economic success of individual Americans and to create a millennium for American farmers, laborers, and small capitalists.However, Richardson demonstrates, while Republicans were trying to construct a nation of prosperous individuals, they were laying the foundation for rapid industrial expansion, corporate corruption, and popular protest. They created a newly active national government that they determined to use only to promote unregulated economic development. Unwittingly, they ushered in the Gilded Age.

    It focuses on his race stance, his friendship with Lincoln, and his early advocacy of the hard war policies.

    The author provides a blow by blow of the regiment's battles, focusing on the accounts of individual officers and men. The text is accompanied by diagrams battles and campaigns and some b&w photographs. Annotation c. by Book News

    

    Graduating (last in his class) in 1861 from West Point, he quickly joined the fighting, and went on to take part in nearly every major battle of the war. In 1863, he was promoted brigadier general-the youngest general in the Union army-and given charge of the Michigan cavalry brigade, which he dubbed "Wolverines."The Wolverines fought ferociously from 1863 to the end of the war under its flamboyant commander. Longacre covers in dramatic detail the brigade's critical defense of the Union line at Gettysburg, and the brigade's key role in surrounding Lee's army at Appomattox. By war's end, the Wolverines had gained the respect and admiration of the entire Union army for its bravery, and the brigade's famous red ties, emulating Custer, had become a well-known badge of pride and honor."A fine study of this famous command...a worthy addition to Longacre's previous works."-Blue & Gray Magazine

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

    On Christmas Day of that year she began a diary which she would keep for the duration of the war, during which time troops were quartered in her home and battles were literally waged in her front yard.This extraordinary chronicle mirrors the experience of many women torn between loyalty to the Confederate cause and dissatisfaction with the unrealistic ideology of white southern womanhood. In powerful, unsentimental language, Buck's diary reveals her anger and ambivalence about the challenges thrust upon her by the upheaval of her self, her family, and the world as she knew it. This document provides an extraordinary glimpse into the "shadows on the heart" of both Lucy Buck and the American South.