Best of
Civil-War-History

2011

The Maps of Antietam: An Atlas of The Antietam (Sharpsburg) Campaign, Including the Battle of South Mountain, September 2 - 20, 1862


Bradley M. Gottfried - 2011
    Gottfried s bestselling The Maps of Gettysburg (2007) and The Maps of First Bull Run (2009), part of the ongoing Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series.Now available as an ebook short, The Maps of Antietam: The Movement to and the Battle of Antietam, September 14 - 18, 1862 plows new ground in the study of the campaign by breaking down the entire campaign in 63 detailed full page original maps. These cartographic creations bore down to the regimental level, offering students of the campaign a unique and fascinating approach to studying what may have been the climactic battle of the war.The Maps of Antietam: The Movement to and the Battle of Antietam, September 14 - 18, 1862 offers 12 action-sections including: - To Sharpsburg - The Eve of Battle - Antietam: Hooker Opens the Battle- Antietam: Hood s Division Moves up and Attacks - Antietam: Mansfield s XII Corps Enters the Battle - Antietam: Sedgwick s Division Drives East- Antietam: Final Actions on the Northern Front- The Sunken Road - The Lower (Burnside s) Bridge- Burnside Advances on Sharpsburg- A. P. Hill s Division Arrives from Harpers Ferry- Antietam: Evening StalemateGottfried s original maps enrich each map section. Keyed to each piece of cartography is detailed text about the units, personnel, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) that make the Antietam story come alive. This presentation allows readers to easily and quickly find a map and text on virtually any portion of the campaign. Serious students of the battle will appreciate the extensive endnotes and will want to take this book with them on their trips to the battlefield.Perfect for the easy chair or for walking hallowed ground, The Maps of Antietam is a seminal work that, like his earlier Gettysburg and First Bull Run studies, belongs on the bookshelf of every serious and casual student of the Civil War.

Untold Civil War: Exploring the Human Side of War


James I. Robertson Jr. - 2011
    Postal Service? Did President Lincoln really age so dramatically

Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of the Troops Who Served Under Robert E. Lee


Joseph T. Glatthaar - 2011
    Glatthaar provides a comprehensive narrative and statistical analysis of many key aspects of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Serving as a companion to Glatthaar's General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, this book presents Glatthaar's supporting data and major conclusions in extensive and extraordinary detail.While gathering research materials for General Lee's Army, Glatthaar compiled quantitative data on the background and service of 600 randomly selected soldiers--150 artillerists, 150 cavalrymen, and 300 infantrymen--affording him fascinating insight into the prewar and wartime experience of Lee's troops. Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia presents the full details of this fresh, important primary research in a way that is useful to scholars and students and appeals to anyone with a serious interest in the Civil War. While confirming much of what is believed about the army, Glatthaar's evidence challenges some conventional thinking in significant ways, such as showing that nearly half of all Lee's soldiers lived in slaveholding households (a number higher than previously thought), and provides a broader and fuller portrait of the men who served under General Lee.

Grand Traverse: The Civil War Era


John C. Mitchell - 2011
    Throughout the Civil War, Grand Traverse soldiers fought and died in major battles and forgotten skirmishes, earning for the region a compelling military history in the most crucial and deadly of American conflicts. All who feel a connection to Northern Michigan should read this book.

Bad Doctors


Thomas P. Lowry - 2011
    Over 11,000 surgeons served in the Union army; 10,400 were well behaved. The other 600 were in trouble for embezzlement, insubordination, rape, AWOL, desertion, surliness, stealing food, and a host of other misdeeds. One man was deemed, "Drunk, but not too drunk to operate." Another was hopping into the beds of women in the VD hospital. Yet another forged his own performance reports, reporting his own excellent character. A statistical study compares their incidence of malpractice with one of today's mid-West states.These remarkable stories are accompanied by full citations and are indexed by regiment. An eye-opener and a much-needed reference work.

The McGavocks of Carnton Plantation: A Southern History


Lochlainn Seabrook - 2011
    In The McGavocks of Carnton Plantation, Southern historian, former Carnton docent, McGavock relation, and award-winning Tennessee author Colonel Lochlainn Seabrook digs deep into the history of the McGavocks, providing facts, material, and topics that you will not find in any other book or on any historical tour.Included in this monumental 1,050-page work is a detailed history of Carnton Plantation and her occupants from 1700 to the present; a "you-are-there" tour of the grounds and the mansion, top to bottom, interior and exterior; an in-depth discussion of Lincoln's War, slavery, the Confederate States of America, and the Battles of Franklin II and Nashville, as the McGavocks and other loyal Confederates saw them; a complete McGavock family tree from their earliest known ancestor in Scotland; a complete Winder family tree from their earliest known ancestor in England; a royal European McGavock family tree back to Robert the Bruce King of Scotland; a brief history of Company H Twentieth Tennessee Infantry; well-researched citations with 1,700 footnotes, a 1,000-book bibliography, and an exhaustive index.The book also contains hundreds of illustrations, maps, photos, diagrams, and drawings, all chronicling the lives, customs, and beliefs of this fascinating Confederate clan. The longest and most detailed book ever written on the McGavocks, most of this material has never been published before, and Colonel Seabrook's insights into the Southern (as opposed to the Northern) perspective of the Great War of 1861 will provide readers with a new and illuminating view of Nineteenth-Century life at Carnton.Penned from the traditional South's point of view and written with a love for Dixie, reverence for the Confederacy, and respect for the McGavocks, this massive and important Civil War Sesquicentennial study is a one-of-a-kind book that is already becoming an American classic. Seven years in the making, The McGavocks of Carnton Plantation is one that every true Southerner, every lover of liberty, and every student of history will want in their library. The Introduction is by Dr. Michael R. Bradley, Chaplain SCV Camp #155 and award-winning author. The Foreword is by Sue A. Thompson, Master Curator and Decorative Arts Director, Lotz House Museum, Franklin, Tennessee.World-acclaimed Civil War scholar Lochlainn Seabrook, a descendant of the families of Alexander H. Stephens and John S. Mosby, is the most prolific and well respected pro-South writer in America today. The leading popularizer of Civil War history, he is a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal and the author of over 50 books that have introduced hundreds of thousands to the truth about the War for Southern Independence. Known as the "new Shelby Foote," Colonel Seabrook is a seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage and the sixth great-grandson of the Earl of Oxford. He has a forty-year background in American and Southern history, and is the author of the international blockbuster Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!His other titles include: Abraham Lincoln Was a Liberal, Jefferson Davis Was a Conservative; Lincoln's War: The Real Cause, the Real Winner, the Real Loser; All We Ask is to be Let Alone: The Southern Secession Fact Book; The Ultimate Civil War Quiz Book; The Great Yankee Coverup; Confederacy 101; Slavery 101; Confederate Flag Facts; Lincoln's War; Women in Gray: A Tribute to the Ladies Who Supported the Southern Confederacy.

Victors in Blue: How Union Generals Fought the Confederates, Battled Each Other, and Won the Civil War


Albert E. Castel - 2011
    But the Union had the manpower, the money, the materiel, and, most important, the generals. Although the South had arguably the best commander in the Civil War in Robert E. Lee, the North's full house beat their one-of-a-kind. Flawed individually, the Union's top officers nevertheless proved collectively superior across a diverse array of battlefields and ultimately produced a victory for the Union.Now acclaimed author Albert Castel brings his inimitable style, insight, and wit to a new reconsideration of these generals. With the assistance of Brooks Simpson, another leading light in this field, Castel has produced a remarkable capstone volume to a distinguished career. In it, he reassesses how battles and campaigns forged a decisive Northern victory, reevaluates the generalship of the victors, and lays bare the sometimes vicious rivalries among the Union generals and their effect on the war.From Shiloh to the Shenandoah, Chickamauga to Chattanooga, Castel provides fresh accounts of how the Union commanders--especially Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Meade but also Halleck, Schofield, and Rosecrans--outmaneuvered and outfought their Confederate opponents. He asks of each why he won: Was it through superior skill, strength of arms, enemy blunders, or sheer chance? What were his objectives and how did he realize them? Did he accomplish more or less than could be expected under the circumstances? And if less, what could he have done to achieve more--and why did he not do it? Castel also sheds new light on the war within the war: the intense rivalries in the upper ranks, complicated by the presence in the army of high-ranking non-West Pointers with political wagons attached to the stars on their shoulders.A decade in the writing, Victors in Blue brims with novel, even outrageous interpretations that are sure to stir debate. As certain as the Union achieved victory, it will inform, provoke, and enliven sesquicentennial discussions of the Civil War.