As a young child he suffered a horrific leg and back injury that left him an invalid. Educated, inquisitive, perceptive, and exceptionally witty, the 12-year-old began keeping a journal in 1860--just before secession and Civil War tore the country and his world apart. He continued to write even as his health deteriorated until both the war and his life ended in 1865. His unique view of a waning age is published here for the first time in A Son of Georgia: The Civil War Journals of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865. The precocious youngster who read Shakespeare and Dickens, loved math, and played chess took in the world from his bed and inside a small wagon pulled around town by a slave his own age. Thirsting for news, LeRoy immersed himself in newspapers, letters, books, and adult conversation, following the course of the war closely as he recorded its impact on his family, his community, and the new Southern Confederacy. LeRoy's older brother Thomas served with Lee's army in Virginia, as did many uncles and neighbors. The wealthy slaveholding family had a deep stake in its outcome. Little escaped LeRoy's pen. His journals brim with both practical and philosophical observations on everything from the course of the war, politics, and family matters, to Macon's social activities, food, weather, and his beloved pets. The young scribe often voiced concern about "Houston," the family's plantation outside town. He recorded his interactions and relationships with "servants" and "valets" Howard, Eaveline, "Mammy Dinah" and others as he pondered the fate of human bondage and his family's fortunes. LeRoy's declining health is a consistent thread coursing through his fascinating journals. "I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before," he wrote on March 17, 1863. "I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was." Morphine and other "remedies" eased his suffering. Bedsores developed; nagging coughs often consumed him. Alternating between bouts of euphoria and despondency, he would often write, "Saw off my leg." Edited and annotated with meticulous care by Janet Croon, A Son of Georgia: The Civil War Journals of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865 captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body is slowly failing him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as a young voice of the Civil War South.

    This simple fact, writes James McPherson, has escaped a generation of historians who have looked to faulty morale, population, economics, and dissent as the causes of Confederate failure. These were all factors, he writes, but the Civil War was still a war--won by the Union army through key victories at key moments.With this brilliant review of how historians have explained the Southern defeat, McPherson opens a fascinating account by several leading historians of how the Union broke the Confederate rebellion. In every chapter, the military struggle takes center stage, as the authors reveal how battlefield decisions shaped the very forces that many scholars (putting the cart before the horse) claim determined the outcome of the war. Archer Jones examines the strategy of the two sides, showing how each had to match its military planning to political necessity. Lee raided north of the Potomac with one eye on European recognition and the other on Northern public opinion--but his inevitable retreats looked like failure to the Southern public. The North, however, developed a strategy of deep raids that was extremely effective because it served a valuable political as well as military purpose, shattering Southern morale by tearing up the interior. Gary Gallagher takes a hard look at the role of generals, narrowing his focus to the crucial triumvirate of Lee, Grant, and Sherman, who towered above the others. Lee's aggressiveness may have been costly, but he well knew the political impact of his spectacular victories; Grant and Sherman, meanwhile, were the first Union generals to fully harness Northern resources and carry out coordinated campaigns. Reid Mitchell shows how the Union's advantage in numbers was enhanced by a dedication and perseverance of federal troops that was not matched by the Confederates after their home front began to collapse. And Joseph Glatthaar examines black troops, whose role is entering the realm of national myth.In 1960, there appeared a collection of essays by major historians, entitled Why the North Won the Civil War, edited by David Donald; it is now in its twenty-sixth printing, having sold well over 100,000 copies. Why the Confederacy Lost provides a parallel volume, written by today's leading authorities. Provocatively argued and engagingly written, this work reminds us that the hard-won triumph of the North was far from inevitable.

    Makes some startling revelations using photographic evidence.

    cuts squarely across the accepted tradition... Fuller examines these two great soldiers from a fresh viewpoint and refuses to let himself be bound by tradition." --New York Times Book Review..". readable, instructive, stimulating, and... controversial as when first published." --Military ReviewFirst published fifty years ago, Fuller's study of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee remains one of his most brilliant and durable works, Grant and Lee is a compelling study not only of the two men, but also of the nature of leadership and command in wartime.

    Though he barely escaped expulsion from West Point, John Bell Hood quickly rose through the ranks of the Confederate army. With bold leadership in the battles of Gaines’ Mill and Antietam, Hood won favor with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. But his fortunes in war took a tragic turn when he assumed command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.   After the fall of Atlanta, Hood marched his troops north in an attempt to draw Union army general William T. Sherman from his devastating “March to the Sea.” But the ploy proved ruinous for the South. While Sherman was undeterred from his scorched-earth campaign, Hood and his troops charged headlong into catastrophe.   In this compelling account, Wiley Sword illustrates the poor command decisions and reckless pride that made a disaster of the Army of Tennessee’s final campaign. From Spring Hill, where they squandered an early advantage, Hood and his troops launched an ill-fated attack on the neighboring town of Franklin. The disastrous battle came to be known as the “Gettysburg of the West.” But worse was to come as Hood pressed on to Nashville, where his battered troops suffered the worst defeat of the entire war.   Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award for best work of nonfiction about the Civil War, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah chronicles the destruction of the South’s second largest army. “Narrated with brisk attention to the nuances of strategy—and with measured solemnity over the waste of life in war,” it is a groundbreaking work of scholarship told with authority and compassion (Kirkus Reviews).

    LEE CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE OF CENTRAL NEW JERSEYWINNER, 2009, GETTYSBURG ROUND TABLE’S DISTINGUISHED BOOK AWARDWinner of The Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award, 2009, given by the Robert E. Lee Civil War Round Table of Central New Jersey.  Now available in paperback, 'Sickles at Gettysburg: The Controversial Civil War General Who Committed Murder, Abandoned Little Round Top, and Declared Himself the Hero of Gettysburg', by licensed battlefield guide James Hessler, is the most deeply-researched, full-length biography to appear on this remarkable American icon. And it is long overdue.No individual who fought at Gettysburg was more controversial, both personally and professionally, than Major General Daniel E. Sickles. By 1863, Sickles was notorious as a disgraced former Congressman who murdered his wife’s lover on the streets of Washington and used America’s first temporary insanity defense to escape justice. With his political career in ruins, Sickles used his connections with President Lincoln to obtain a prominent command in the Army of the Potomac’s Third Corps—despite having no military experience. At Gettysburg, he openly disobeyed orders in one of the most controversial decisions in military history.No single action dictated the battlefield strategies of George Meade and Robert E. Lee more than Sickles’ unauthorized advance to the Peach Orchard, and the mythic defense of Little Round Top might have occurred quite differently were it not for General Sickles. Fighting heroically, Sickles lost his leg on the field and thereafter worked to remove General Meade from command of the army. Sickles spent the remainder of his checkered life declaring himself the true hero of Gettysburg.Although he nearly lost the battle, Sickles was one of the earliest guardians of the battlefield when he returned to Congress, created Gettysburg National Military Park, and helped preserve the field for future generations. But Dan Sickles was never far from scandal. He was eventually removed from the New York Monument Commission and nearly went to jail for misappropriation of funds.Hessler’s critically acclaimed biography is a balanced and entertaining account of Sickles’ colorful life. Civil War enthusiasts who want to understand General Sickles’ scandalous life, Gettysburg’s battlefield strategies, the in-fighting within the Army of the Potomac, and the development of today’s National Park will find Sickles at Gettysburg a must-read.REVIEWS: “The few other Sickles biographies available will now take a back seat to Hessler’s powerful and evocative study of the man, the general, and the legacy of the Gettysburg battlefield that old Dan left America. I highly recommend this book.” J. David Petruzzi, co-author of Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg (2006) and with Steve Stanley The Complete Gettysburg Guide (2009)“This book is a breath of fresh air—it is an objective, thorough, and readable examination of the controversial general. Hessler avoids getting bogged down in extreme reactions typically seen in others who write on this subject.” Sue Boardman, Licensed Battlefield Guide, GNMP; Leadership Program Coordinator, Gettysburg Foundation; and author of The Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama: A History and GuideAbout the Author: James A. Hessler works in the financial services industry and is a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park.

    Particularly important today with our soldiers all over the world.

    Grant the most important general of the war.Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. General Grant moved his army south and joined forces with Admiral Porter, but even together they could not come up with a successful plan. At one point Grant even tried to build a canal so that the river could be diverted away from Vicksburg.In Vicksburg, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city. He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. Grant’s efforts repeatedly failed until he found a way to lay siege and force the city to capitulate. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution.Ultimately, Vicksburg was the battle that solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but in the end he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war, the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.

    It is our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic—our Iliad, but also our Bible, a story of sin and judgment, suffering and despair, death and resurrection in a “new birth of freedom.” Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs, The Civil War: The First Year brings together over 120 pieces by more than sixty participants to create a unique firsthand narrative of this great historical crisis.Beginning on the eve of Lincoln’s election in 1860 and ending in January 1862 with the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war, signaling a new energy and determination to the Union war effort, this volume collects writing by figures well-known—Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Mary Chesnut, Frederick Douglass, and Lincoln himself among them—and less familiar, like pro-slavery advocate J.D.B. DeBow, Lieutenants Charles B. Haydon of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and Henry Livermore Abbott of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and plantation mistresses Catherine Edmondston of North Carolina and Kate Stone of Mississippi. Together, the selections provide a powerful sense of the immediacy, uncertainty, and urgency of events as the nation was torn asunder. Secessionist appeals by Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown and Alabama legislator Stephen F. Hale give voice to the intense racial fears that helped drive the South toward disunion; Union corporal Samuel J. English and Confederate surgeon Lunsford P. Yandell evoke the shock, confusion, and horror of battle in Virginia and Missouri; memoirist Sallie Brock candidly records the impact of war on Richmond society; and Sam Mitchell recounts his liberation from slavery when the South Carolina Sea Islands fell to Union soldiers.The Civil War: The First Year includes headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, endpaper maps, and an index.

    Albert Woolson, 109 years old, slipped in and out of a coma at a Duluth, Minnesota, hospital, his memories as a Yankee drummer boy slowly dimming. Walter Williams, at 117 blind and deaf and bedridden in his daughter's home in Houston, Texas, no longer could tell of his time as a Confederate forage master. The last of the Blue and the Gray were drifting away; an era was ending. Unknown to the public, centennial officials, and the White House too, one of these men was indeed a veteran of that horrible conflict and one according to the best evidence nothing but a fraud. One was a soldier. The other had been living a great, big lie.

    It is a slave narrative of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped in Washington, D.C., sold into slavery, and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana. He provided details of slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, as well as describing at length cotton and sugar cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.

    Grant (1822-1885) was one of the most esteemed individuals of the nineteenth century. His two-volume memoirs, sold door-to-door by former Union soldiers, have never gone out of print and were once as ubiquitous in American households as the Bible. Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Matthew Arnold, Henry James, and Edmund Wilson hailed these works as great literature, and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both credit Grant with influencing their own writing. Yet a judiciously annotated clarifying edition of these memoirs has never been produced until now.The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is the first comprehensively annotated edition of Grant's memoirs, fully representing the great military leader's thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War and his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. An introduction contextualizes Grant's life and significance, and lucid editorial commentary allows the president's voice and narrative to shine through. With annotations compiled by the editors of the Ulysses S. Grant Association's Presidential Library, this definitive edition enriches our understanding of the antebellum era, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. Grant provides insight into how rigorously these events tested America's democratic institutions and the cohesion of its social order.The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant preserves and extends a work of profound political, historical, and literary significance and serves as the gateway for modern readers of all backgrounds to an American classic.

    Stewart's captivating missives from her homestead in Wyoming bring to full life the beauty, isolation, and joys of working the prairie.

    Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation “a new birth of freedom” in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

    The entire South—its people, culture, history, customs, both past and present—has been and continues to be lied about and demonized by the unholy trinity of the American establishment: Academia, Hollywood, and the Media. In the midst of the anti-South hysteria currently infecting the American psyche—the banning of flags, charges of hate and “racism,” the removal and attempted removal of Confederate monuments, the renaming of schools, vandalism of monuments and property displaying the Confederate Battle Flag, and even physical assaults, albeit rarely at present, on people who display the symbols of the South — Shotwell Publishing offers this unapologetic, unreconstructed, pro-South book with the hope that it will reach those who are left that are not afraid to question the sanity of this cultural purge and the veracity of its narrative concerning the South.