It saw Lincoln's assassination just five days later and a near-successful plot to decapitate the Union government, followed by chaos and coup fears in the North, collapsed negotiations and continued bloodshed in the South, and finally, the start of national reconciliation.In the end, April 1865 emerged as not just the tale of the war's denouement, but the story of the making of our nation.Jay Winik offers a brilliant new look at the Civil War's final days that will forever change the way we see the war's end and the nation's new beginning. Uniquely set within the larger sweep of history and filled with rich profiles of outsize figures, fresh iconoclastic scholarship, and a gripping narrative, this is a masterful account of the thirty most pivotal days in the life of the United States.

    With this book, however, the critical first day's fighting finally receives its due. After sketching the background of the Gettysburg campaign and recounting the events immediately preceding the battle, Harry Pfanz offers a detailed tactical description of events of the first day. He describes the engagements in McPherson Woods, at the Railroad Cuts, on Oak Ridge, on Seminary Ridge, and at Blocher's Knoll, as well as the retreat of Union forces through Gettysburg and the Federal rally on Cemetery Hill. Throughout, he draws on deep research in published and archival sources to challenge many long-held assumptions about the battle.

    In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion. In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial. Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.

    This is not only too simple an explanation; Blood on the Moon reveals that it is completely wrong. John Wilkes Booth was neither mad nor alone in his act of murder. He received the help of many, not the least of whom was Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, the Charles County

    

    Lee, and her great-grandmother, Martha Washington; many have visited the cemetery that now occupies her family estate. But few today know much about Mary Custis Lee herself. Chronically ill and often in excruciating pain, Mary raised seven children, faithfully witnessing to her husband for years before his conversion. She retained her dignity and faith throughout a fruitless, heartbreaking attempt to win compensation for the confiscation of her home and possessions. History is never more powerful than when it provides a role model for enduring hardship with sturdy and radiant faith. Mary Custis Lee is such an example.

    Generations after nearly 50,000 soldiers shed their blood there, serious and fundamental misunderstandings persist about Robert E. Lee's generalship during the campaign and battle. Most are the basis of popular myths about the epic fight. Last Chance for Victory: Robert E. Lee and the Gettysburg Campaign addresses these issues by studying Lee's choices before, during, and after the battle, the information he possessed at the time and each decision that was made, and why he acted as he did. Even options open to Lee that he did not act upon are carefully explored from the perspective of what Lee and his generals knew at the time. Some of the issues addressed include:Whether Lee's orders to Jeb Stuart were discretionary and allowed him to conduct his raid around the Federal army. The authors conclusively answer this important question with the most original and unique analysis ever applied to this controversial issue;Why Richard Ewell did not attack Cemetery Hill as ordered by General Lee, and why every historian who has written that Lee's orders to Ewell were discretionary are dead wrong;Why Little Round Top was irrelevant to the July 2 fighting, a fact Lee clearly recognized;Why Cemetery Hill was the weakest point along the entire Federal line, and how close the Southerners came to capturing it;Why Lee decided to launch en echelon attack on July 2, and why most historians have never understood what it was or how close it came to success; Last Chance for Victory will be labeled heresy by some, blasphemy by others, all because its authors dare to call into question the dogmas of Gettysburg. But they do so carefully, using facts, logic, and reason to weave one of the most compelling and riveting military history books of our age.Readers will never look at Robert E. Lee and Gettysburg the same way again.

    Swanson and Daniel R. Weinberg, follows the shocking events from the tragic scene at Ford's Theatre to the trial and execution of Booth's co-conspirators. For twelve days after the president was shot, the nation waited breathlessly as manhunters tracked down John Wilkes Booth—the story that was brilliantly told in Swanson's New York Times bestseller, Manhunt. Then, during the spring and summer of 1865, a military commission tried eight people as conspirators in Booth's plot to murder Lincoln and other high officials, including the secretary of state and vice president. Few remember them today, but once the names Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Edman Spangler, Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlin, and Dr. Samuel Mudd were the most reviled and notorious in America.In Lincoln's Assassins, Swanson and Weinberg resurrect these events by presenting an unprecedented visual record of almost 300 contemporary photographs, letters, documents, prints, woodcuts, newspapers, pamphlets, books, and artifacts, many hitherto unpublished. These rare materials, which took the authors decades to collect, evoke the popular culture of the time, record the origins of the Lincoln myth, take the reader into the courtroom and the cells of the accused, document the beginning of American photojournalism, and memorialize the fates of the eight conspirators.Lincoln's Assassins is a unique work that will appeal to anyone interested in American history, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, law, crime, assassination, nineteenth-century photographic portraiture, and the history of American photojournalism.

    The climax of a campaign that began two months before in northern Mississippi, Perryville came to be recognized as the high water mark of the western Confederacy. Some said the hard-fought battle, forever remembered by participants for its sheer savagery and for their commanders' confusion, was the worst battle of the war, losing the last chance to bring the Commonwealth into the Confederacy and leaving Kentucky firmly under Federal control. Although Gen. Braxton Bragg's Confederates won the day, Bragg soon retreated in the face of Gen. Don Carlos Buell's overwhelming numbers. Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle is the definitive account of this important conflict.While providing all the parry and thrust one might expect from an excellent battle narrative, the book also reflects the new trends in Civil War history in its concern for ordinary soldiers and civilians caught in the slaughterhouse. The last chapter, unique among Civil War battle narratives, even discusses the battle's veterans, their families, efforts to preserve the battlefield, and the many ways Americans have remembered and commemorated Perryville.

    He transforms exhaustive research into a moving narrative account of the assault from both Union and Confederate perspectives, analyzing its planning, execution, aftermath, and legacy.

     The six-month-long agony that began with Lincoln's election in November sputtered from one crisis to the next, and finally exploded as the soldiers at Sumter neared starvation. With little help from Washington, D.C., Major Robert Anderson, a soldier whose experience had taught him above all that war is the poorest form of policy, almost single-handedly forestalled the beginning of the war until he finally had no choice but to fight. Skillfully re-created from a decade of extensive research, Allegiance exposes the passions that led to the fighting, the sober reflections of the man who restrained its outbreak, and the individuals on both sides who changed American history forever.

    Fascinating sidebars and contemporary documents tells the story of the war in the voices of those who experienced it. The interactive CD-ROM features a multimedia Civil War strategy game. 800+ photos, many in color. 3-D maps. Printed endpapers. Full-cloth case.

    Wert re-creates the last day of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg in astonishing detail, taking readers from Meade's council of war to the seven-hour struggle for Culp's Hill -- the most sustained combat of the entire engagement. Drawing on hundreds of sources, including more than 400 manuscript collections, he offers brief excerpts from the letters and diaries of soldiers. He also introduces heroes on both sides of the conflict -- among them General George Greene, the oldest general on the battlefield, who led the Union troops at Culp's Hill. A gripping narrative written in a fresh and lively style, Gettysburg, Day Three is an unforgettable rendering of an immortal day in our country's history.

    But to Julia Taft, he was Tad Lincoln's father. Invited to the White House to watch over her two brothers, who were playmates of the Lincolns' sons, Julia had an intimate perspective on the First Family's home life, which she describes with charm and candor in this book. A rare look behind the public facade of the great man, Julia's affectionate account of the Lincolns at home is rich with examples of the humor and love that held the family together and that helped the President endure the pressures of governing a nation divided. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln often expressed their regret at not having a daughter of their own. Julia Taft thus enjoyed a special place in their lives, and her memoir reveals the warmth she elicited from the couple. She speaks of her initial fear of Lincoln—the towering, rough-and-tumble backwoodsman—who won her over with teasing, and of her relationship with Mary, who was never really accepted into Washington social life and took particular comfort in Julia's presence. A unique glimpse into the social life of the Lincoln White House, Julia Taft Bayne's memoir shows us the human drama played out daily behind the great pageant of history.

    Dew finds in the commissioners' brutally candid rhetoric a stark white supremacist ideology that proves the contrary. The commissioners included in their speeches a constitutional justification for secession, to be sure, and they pointed to a number of political "outrages" committed by the North in the decades prior to Lincoln's election. But the core of their argument--the reason the right of secession had to be invoked and invoked immediately--did not turn on matters of constitutional interpretation or political principle. Over and over again, the commissioners returned to the same point: that Lincoln's election signaled an unequivocal commitment on the part of the North to destroy slavery and that emancipation would plunge the South into a racial nightmare.Dew's discovery and study of the highly illuminating public letters and speeches of these apostles of disunion--often relatively obscure men sent out to convert the unconverted to the secessionist cause--have led him to suggest that the arguments the commissioners presented provide us with the best evidence we have of the motives behind the secession of the lower South in 1860-61.Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century after the Civil War, Dew challenges many current perceptions of the causes of the conflict. He offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were absolutely critical factors in the outbreak of war--indeed, that they were at the heart of our great national crisis.

    It saw the surrender of Vicksburg and the retreat of General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia after a crushing defeat at Gettysburg. In interweaving the narratives of these two storied battles, Duane Schultz has presented a compelling blow-by-blow account of what is arguably the most pivotal point of the entire conflict.All the players are brought to life here, whether it is Lincoln agonizing in the telegraph office while he waits for news from Generals Grant and Meade, General Pete Longstreet trying to cajole Lee into revising his plan of attack, or the women of the towns of Vicksburg and Gettysburg coming under fire and tending to the legions of wounded.We see a nation in the midst of its greatest convulsion, and we see that, while the "Glorious Fourth" dashed the greatest hopes of the Confederacy, the war was far from over.

    The Civil War not only pitted brother against brother but also Christian against Christian, with soldiers from North and South alike devoutly believing that God was on their side.Steven Woodworth, one of our most prominent and provocative Civil War historians, presents the first detailed study of soldiers' religious beliefs and how they influenced the course of that tragic conflict. He shows how Christian teaching and practice shaped the worldview of soldiers on both sides: how it motivated them for the struggle, how it influenced the way they fought, and how it shaped national life after the war ended.Through the diaries, letters, and reminiscences of common soldiers, Woodworth illuminates religious belief from the home front to the battlefield, where thoughts of death and the afterlife were always close at hand. Woodworth reveals what these men thought about God and what they believed God thought about the war.Wrote one Unionist, "I believe our cause to be the cause of liberty and light . . . the cause of God, and holy and justifiable in His sight, and for this reason, I fear not to die in it if need be." With a familiar echo, his Confederate counterpart declared that "our Cause is Just and God is Just and we shall finally be successful whether I live to see the time or not."Woodworth focuses on mainstream Protestant beliefs and practices shared by the majority of combatants in order to help us better understand soldiers' motivations and to realize what a strong role religion played in American life throughout the conflict. In addition, he provides sharp insights into the relationship between Christianity and both the abolition movement in the North and the institution of slavery in the South.Ultimately, Woodworth shows us how opposing armies could put their trust in the same God while engaging in four years of organized slaughter and destruction. His compelling work provides a rich new perspective on religion in American life and will forever change the way we look at the Civil War.

    The writings he produced about that conflict comprise a body of work unique in our nation's literature. This volume gathers for the first time virtually everything Bierce wrote about the war, from letters composed on the field of battle to maps he drew as a topographical engineer, from his masterful short stories to his final bittersweet ruminations before he disappeared into Mexico in 1914.The collection is organized chronologically, following Bierce's participation in a wide range of battles, from the early skirmishes in the West Virginia mountains to the bloodbaths at Shiloh and Chickamauga and his near fatal wounding at Kennesaw Mountain. His overlapping accounts of these events provide a clear and compelling record of the sights and sounds of the battlefield, the psychological traumas the war induced in its soldiers, and the memories that would haunt survivors for the rest of their lives. In prose that anticipates the work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien, Bierce's writings unflinchingly tell the truth about the war.Writing in the 1880s and 1890s, at a time when both the North and South were erecting monuments to the heroes and glories of the war, Bierce insisted that his readers confront what really happened. Rather than celebrate causes and comrades, Bierce's fiction and memoirs describe the impossibly brutal realities of the Civil War battlefield.The volume includes a biographical introduction and comprehensive notes on all the writings and is suitable for classroom adoption and general readers alike.

    None -- not one -- suffered more deaths in battle than the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers. At the center of this regiment's searing experience is Colonel Edward Cross, a journalist and adventurer who infused the Fifth with his formidable personality. Concord Monitor editors Mike Pride and Mark Travis spent eight years digging for the story of Cross and his men in letters, diaries, memoirs, official records, and newspaper accounts. The result is a military history unfolded in human terms, as the men themselves experienced it.As Walter Holden, a longtime student of the Fifth, writes in his foreword: The reader will see how an outstanding regiment was formed and outfitted, how the men camped and marched, how they reacted to battle. Here are the deft personal touches that bring events to life. Here are the heroics but also the gripes and backbiting, the conflicts between leaders and the subjugation of the individual for the success of the group. This is a book for any Civil War buff or student of history, but it will be of particular interest in the state that produced this extraordinary regiment long ago.

    Lee a gifted soldier whose only weaknesses lay in the depth of his loyalty to his troops, affection for his lieutenants, and dedication to the cause of the Confederacy? Or was he an ineffective leader and poor tactician whose reputation was drastically inflated by early biographers and Lost Cause apologists? These divergent characterizations represent the poles between which scholarly and popular opinion on Lee has swung over time. Now, in eight essays, Gary Gallagher offers his own refined thinking on Lee, exploring the relationship between Lee's operations and Confederate morale, the quality of his generalship, and the question of how best to handle his legacy in light of the many distortions that grew out of Lost Cause historiography.Using a host of contemporary sources, Gallagher demonstrates the remarkable faith that soldiers and citizens maintained in Lee's leadership even after his army's fortunes had begun to erode. Gallagher also engages aspects of the Lee myth with an eye toward how admirers have insisted that their hero's faults as a general represented exaggerations of his personal virtues. Finally, Gallagher considers whether it is useful--or desirable--to separate legitimate Lost Cause arguments from the transparently false ones relating to slavery and secession. Was Robert E. Lee a gifted soldier whose only weaknesses lay in the depth of his loyalty to his troops, affection for his lieutenants, and dedication to the cause of the Confederacy? Or was he an ineffective leader and poor tactician whose reputation was drastically inflated by early biographers and Lost Cause apologists? These divergent characterizations represent the poles between which scholarly and popular opinion on Lee has swung over time. In eight essays, Gary Gallagher offers his own refined thinking on Lee, exploring the relationship between Lee's operations and Confederate morale, the quality of his generalship, and the question of how best to assess his legacy in light of the many distortions that grew out of Lost Cause historiography.

    His ideas on the importance of sea power influenced navies around the world, and helped prompt naval buildups before World War I. Despite his success in the Navy, his skills in actual command of a ship were not exemplary, and a number of vessels under his command were involved in collisions. On the other hand, the books he wrote ashore made him arguably the most influential naval historian. In 1885, he was appointed lecturer in naval history and tactics and the Naval War College. Before entering on his duties, Mahan was pointed to write his future studies and lectures on the influence of sea power. He organized his lectures into his most influential books, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (1890). To a modern reader his emphasis on sea-borne commerce may seem commonplace, but the notion was much more radical in Mahan's time. His other works include: The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (1897) and Types of Naval Officers (1902).

    General William T. Sherman called him the greatest Indian fighter and manager the army ever had. And yet, on hearing of Crook’s death, the Sioux chief Red Cloud lamented, "He, at least, never lied to us." As a young officer in the Pacific Northwest, Crook emphasized training and marksmanship--innovative ideas in the antebellum army.Crook’s career in the West began with successful campaigns against the Apaches that resulted in his promotion to brigadier general. His campaign against the Lakota and Cheyennes was less successful, however, as he alternately displayed deep insight, egotism, indecision, and fear.Charles M. Robinson pieces together the contradictions of Crook’s career to reveal that although the general sometimes micromanaged his campaigns to the point that his officers had virtually no flexibility, he gave his officers so much freedom on other occasions that they did not fully understand his expectations or objectives. Crook resented any criticism and was quick to blame both subordinates and superiors, yet Robinson shows that much of Crook’s success in the Indian wars can be attributed to the efforts of subordinate officers. He also details Crook’s later efforts to provide equal rights and opportunities for American Indians. General Crook and the Western Frontier, the first full-scale biography of Crook, uses contemporary manuscripts and primary sources to illuminate the general’s personal life and military career.

    The daughter of prominent Philadelphia lawyer Thomas Wharton, Emily had married Charles Sinkler of St. Johns Berkeley Parish and Charleston, South Carolina, and moved south to begin a new life. Collected by her great-great-granddaughter Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq, Emily's letters ring with keen insights into Southern society and offer a definitive account of a young woman transplanted to the South in 1842 through the Civil War. This frequent and thorough correspondence conveys the rich and varied details of a time divided between North and South.Like her contemporary Mary Boykin Chesnut, Emily relates tales of colorful characters and stimulating events during a turbulent era of American history. Her urban background contrasted greatly with her daily duties as a rural plantation mistress, and she describes creating a world of culture and charm in the midst of the swamps of South Carolina. She writes of fabulous lancing tournaments, exciting horse races, frightening ocean voyages, and vivid evenings full of games, dancing, and music. At the same time, she was pioneering her way in a rural, isolated environment, inventing alternatives for everyday necessities, and managing the resources of a plantation. Much of her time was consumed by cooking, sewing, gardening, and mothering, and she excelled at these routine responsibilities. She also tells of her profound interest in religion and African American culture and how she sought to get around a South Carolina law that forbade schooling for African Americans by establishing a church where she taught reading through song and prayer. Determined and inventive, Emily Sinkler lived very successfully in two different worlds: cosmopolitan Philadelphia and the slaveholding South. Her passionate account of the antebellum period re-creates a time in American history when both regions were setting a perilous course.

    In bleak November, Kent Gramm makes a pilgrimage to the most famous battleground in American history and over the course of a month transforms his search into a discovery of the meaning of Lincoln's elegy for America's identity.For Gramm, the century that began with Lincoln's address and ended with the assassinations of the 1960s saw the destruction of the 'modern' world and with it America's sense of purpose. The book reflects on the November anniversaries of public events such as the Armistice that ended World War One, Kristallnacht, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death of C. S. Lewis, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, and the publication of Robert F. Kennedy's To Seek a Newer World, and also on private events in Gramm's family history, provide the occasions for Gramm's meditations on public and private heroism, on modernism's hopes and postmodern despair. In November, he asks us to seek a path toward the 'new birth of freedom' that Lincoln envisioned at Gettysburg."The month begins with things that perish. But ultimately, November is a journey of hope, as was Lincoln's journey to Gettysburg. So too I will journey to Gettysburg in these pages. Like Lincoln's fellow citizens, I go there to assuage personal grief, to find answers; and I hope, for me as for them, that my personal sorrows become a vehicle for larger answers and a larger purpose. Lincoln addressed their grief, why not mine; he gave his generation purpose, why not ours."

    These men adorned their own caps with bucktails and were thus set apart from the typical Federal soldier by their distinctive plumage. These Pennsylvanians saw action early in the war at Drainesville under the command of Col. Thomas Kane, who later fought with four companies in the Shenandoah Valley, while Major Roy Stone led the additional six companies on the Virginia Peninsula with the Army of the Potomac—both contingents rendering distinguished service. Kane's men figured prominently at Harrisonburg, Cross Keyes, and Cedar Mountain, while Stone's soldiers were equally gallant at Mechanicsville, Gaines' Mill and Charles City Crossroads. Upon reunification of the regiment, they consistently displayed consistent courage and tactical ability on the battlefields of Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania. Sometimes the Bucktails stood and fought in a line of battle, but often were detailed as skirmishers and sharpshooters where they could employ their deadly talents more effectively until mustering out on June 11, 1864. The gallant service of the original Bucktails led to the call in the summer of 1862 for an entire brigade of Bucktailed regiments. In the end, only two Bucktail regiments managed to take the field—the 149th and 150th Pennsylvania Infantry. The men of the new Bucktail regiments, sought to be worthy of their more famous predecessors. Initially called into service during the 1862 Maryland Campaign, the two regiments were posted for a time in the vicinity of Washington, DC. One company had the illustrious honor to be assigned the duty of protecting President Abraham Lincoln. The greatest trial by fire for these two regiments came at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Serving side by side in the same brigade, the next blood-letting for the 149th and 150th came during the horrendous fighting at the Battle of The Wilderness in early May 1864. They continued on with the Army of the Potomac through the actions at Spotsylvania, and Petersburg, especially along the Weldon Railroad. With the numerical strength of each regiment greatly reduced, they were withdrawn from the lines and sent to Elmira, New York, in February 1865. The Bucktails did the Keystone State proud and earned a noted place in the pantheon of Civil War regiments. Their legacy has had the admiration of many over the years and their fame remains strong today. This book is an extensive photographic look at the three Bucktail regiments, that contains 264 images of these noted soldiers. Each soldier included in the book has been extensively researched, and a detailed biographical sketch is given about each identified Bucktail. Complete with capsule unit histories and a photo index. Hardcover. High quality, glossy paper.

    With All for the Regiment, Gerald Prokopowicz deftly fills this surprising gap. He offers an engaging history of the army from its formation in 1861 to its costly triumph at Shiloh and its failure at Perryville in 1862.Prokopowicz shows how the amateur soldiers who formed the Army of the Ohio organized themselves into individual regiments of remarkable strength and cohesion. Successive commanders Robert Anderson, William T. Sherman, and Don Carlos Buell all failed to integrate those regiments into an effective organization, however. The result was a decentralized and elastic army that was easily disrupted and difficult to command--but also nearly impossible to destroy in combat. Exploring the army's behavior at minor engagements such as Rowlett's Station and Logan's Cross Roads, as well as major battles such as Shiloh and Perryville, Prokopowicz reveals how its regiment-oriented culture prevented the army from experiencing decisive results--either complete victory or catastrophic defeat--on the battlefield. Regimental solidarity was at once the Army of the Ohio's greatest strength, he argues, and its most dangerous vulnerability.

    Navy and the fledgling Confederate Navy, which may make this the first book to compare and contrast the strategic concepts of the Southern Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory against his Northern counterpart, Gideon Welles. Both men had to accomplish much and were given great latitude in achieving their goals.Mallory's vision of seapower emphasized technological innovation and individual competence as he sought to match quality against the Union Navy's numerical superiority. Welles had to deal with more bureaucratic structure and to some degree a national strategy dictated by the White House. The naval blockade of the South was one of his first tasks -- for which he had but few ships available -- and although he followed the national strategy, he did not limit himself to it when opportunities arose.Mallory's dedication to ironclads is well known, but he also defined the roles of commerce raiders, submarines, and naval mines. Welles's contributions to the Union effort were rooted in his organizational skills and his willingness to cooperate with the other military departments of his government. This led to successes through combined army and naval units in several campaigns on and around the Mississippi River.Naval Strategies of the Civil War then is the story of the very different approaches each man took in defining and executing the naval struggles of the conflict. Until now, it has been mostly an untold story lost in the general histories of the war. In the end, the author concludes that success favored flexible organization rather than desperate, albeit creative,measures.

    Movements and engagements in the Eastern and Western theaters, political intrigue in the White House and at Richmond, and social, technical and overseas developments are all examined. In addition to the timechart, sidebars cover infantry organization and equipment, artillery and firearms, naval conflicts, military strategies, POWs, blacks in the Union Army, guerrilla warfare, journalism, technical developments and much more. A narrative history is accompanied by concise illustrated biographies offering glimpses of leaders on both sides, including Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Custer, Davis, Lee, Jackson and dozens more. An extended sequence of two-page spreads includes chronologies, maps, diagrams and narratives detailing more than two dozen key battles and campaigns, First Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, The Wilderness and Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, among them. An A-Z of the Civil War serves as a throrough index, and bibliographies provide information on related museums, battle sites, books and websites.

    A timely collection of essays examining the controversy surrounding the use & display of Confederate symbols in the modern South.

    Wilson in this remarkable collection offer new perspectives on the Civil War in the West. He documents, for example, the activities of Kit Carson, William Brady, and other well known figures whose roles in the Civil War have been incompletely understood; highlights for the first time the dedicated service of native New Mexican officers; unravels the sophisticated espionage (and the brutal executions of suspected spies) carried out by both sides; demonstrates how this national drama took place against the backdrop of ongoing Indian Wars -- with the Apaches, the Navajos, and even the Kiowas -- that ensnared both Union and Confederate armies; and elucidates the unprecedented ways in which the conflict militarised the Southwest for decades. The 282 letters, song lyrics, casualty lists, intelligence dispatches, transcripts of witness testimony, newspaper accounts, and official reports of battles that appear here build upon the massive anthology of Civil War documentation first published in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 volumes, 1881-1901). Wilson's book supplements

    In thirty-five illuminating essays and one hundred and fifty thousand words, it examines the war from the perspectives critical to its outcome-the larger-than-life personalities of the important players from Lincoln to Lee, and the national strategies and key battle tactics that shaped the four-year-long crisis. Contributors include the leading lights of Civil War scholarship: James M. McPherson, Stephen W. Sears, Gary W. Gallagher, David Herbert Donald, and twenty others. James M. McPherson's essays ponder three diverse, yet fascinating subjects: Abraham Lincoln's use of language and its role in his victory; Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee's failed Southern strategies; and Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs as a reflection of his superlative generalship. Stephen W. Sears, in four essays, describes the daring flanking maneuvers of Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville, and presents the last word on Lee's infamous "lost order", among other topics. Other highlights include David Herbert Donald on Lincoln's early command; Gary W. Gallagher on Lee's record before his ascension as a Southern icon; John Bowers on Chickamauga; Noah Andre Trudeau on the battle of the Wilderness; Thomas Fleming on West Point, and much more.

    Every day brought more casualties from weakness or disease. The deplorable conditions forced many prisoners—including Gil—to become "Galvanized Yankees," former Confederate soldiers who joined the Union Army to fight Indians out West. But life on the frontier was no easier for Gil and the others. They soon learned that no one there was glad to see them. The Union troops didn't trust them, and the Indians were looking only for a way to rid their lands of all white men forever. Surrounded by enemies, the Galvanized Yankees had to fight harder than ever to survive—battling threats on both sides of the fort's walls.

    Warren, a brilliant student at West Point and a topographical engineer, earned early acclaim for his explorations of the Nebraska Territory and the Black Hills in the 1850s. With the start of the Civil War, Warren moved from teacher at West Point to lieutenant colonel of a New York regiment and was soon a rising star in the Army of the Potomac. His fast action at Little Round Top, bringing Federal troops to an undefended position before the Confederates could seize it, helped to save the Battle of Gettysburg. For his service at Bristoe Station and Mine Run, he was awarded command of the Fifth Corps for the 1864 Virginia campaign.Warren's peculiarities of temperament and personality put a cloud over his service at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania and cost him the confidence of his superiors, Grant and Meade. He was summarily relieved of his command by Philip Sheridan after winning the Battle of Five Forks, just eight days before Appomattox. Warren continued as an engineer of distinction in the Army after the war, but he was determined to clear his name before a board of inquiry, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the battle, Warren's conduct, and Sheridan's arbitrary action. However, the findings of the court vindicating Warren were not made public until shortly after his death.For this major biography of Gouverneur Warren, David M. Jordan utilizes Warren's own voluminous collection of letters, papers, orders, and other items saved by his family, as well as the letters and writings of such contemporaries as his aide and brother-in-law Washington Roebling, Andrew Humphreys, Winfield Hancock, George Gordon Meade, and Ulysses S. Grant. Jordan presents a vivid account of the life and times of a complex military figure.

    Roland, David Donald, and T. Harry WilliamsEdited, with a New Preface, by Grady McWhineyWith a New Introduction by Joseph T. GlatthaarDuring the Civil War centennial, four eminent scholars of the conflict -- Bruce Catton, Charles P. Roland, David Donald, and T. Harry Williams -- gathered at a Northwestern University symposium to debate and commemorate this transforming event in American history. Originally published in 1964, Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals assembles their conference papers into one small volume that has become a giant in Civil War studies.Catton provides a brief but brilliant summary and assessment of Ulysses S. Grant's Civil War career and Roland does the same for Robert E. Lee's. The essays by Donald and Williams continue the historians' running debate on the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans. With an informative new introduction by Joseph T. Glatthaar and a new preface by Grady McWhiney, Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals continues to shape and illuminate the scholarship on these central Civil War figures.

    This collection of biographical essays on the "winners and losers" of the Civil War covers some of the most intriguing: Ulysses S. Grant, Sam Houston, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and William Clarke Quantrill, to name just a few. The articles represent a broad cross-section of the scholarship of noted author Albert Castel; most were written over a fifty-year period for publication in national "popular history" magazines such as American Heritage, Civil War History, and Civil War Times Illustrated.