The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America's Most Reviled President

by Larry Tagg

From the publisher:
Today, Abraham Lincoln is a beloved American icon, widely considered to be our best president. It was not always so. Larry Tagg's The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln is the first study of its kind to concentrate on what Lincoln's contemporaries actually thought of him during his lifetime. Be forewarned: your preconceived notions are about to be shattered.

Torn by civil war, the era in which our sixteenth president lived and governed was the most rough-and-tumble in the history of American politics. The violence of the criticism aimed at Lincoln by the great men of his time on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line is simply startling. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the spectacular prejudice against him is often shocking for its cruelty, intensity, and unrelenting vigor. The plain truth is that Mr. Lincoln was deeply reviled by many who knew him personally, and by hundreds of thousands who only knew of him.

Boisterous and venomous enough to be good entertainment, The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln rests upon a wide foundation of research that includes years of searching through contemporary newspapers. Tagg includes extensive treatment of the political context that begat Lincoln's predicament, riding with the president to Washington, and walking with him through the bleak years of war and up to and beyond assassination. Throughout, Tagg entertains with a lively writing style, outstanding storytelling verve, and an unconventional, against-the-grain perspective that is sure to delight readers of all stripes.

Lincoln's humanity has been unintentionally trivialized by some historians and writers who have hidden away the real man in a patina of bronze. Once readers learn the truth of how others viewed him, they will better understand the man he was, and how history is better viewed through a long-distance lens than contemporaneously.

The bicentennial of Lincoln's birth will be celebrated in 2009 and will be the biggest year ever for public interest in Abraham Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission created and funded by Congress will "inform the public about the impact Abraham Lincoln had on the development of our nation." The year will also witness the release of Steven Spielberg's long-awaited movie on President Lincoln. Of all the Lincoln books slated for publication, The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln will be the "must-read" title for general readers and scholars alike.

About the Author: Born in Lincoln, Illinois, Larry Tagg graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. A bass player/singer of world renown, Larry co-founded and enjoyed substantial commercial success with "Bourgeois Tagg" in the mid-1980s. He went on to play bass for Todd Rundgren, Heart, Hall and Oates, and other acts. He currently teaches high school English and drama in Sacramento, California. Larry is the author of the bestselling book The Generals of Gettysburg, a selection of the Military Book Club.

Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862

by Edward Cunningham

From the publisher:
The bloody and decisive two-day battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) changed the entire course of the American Civil War. The stunning Northern victory thrust Union commander Ulysses S. Grant into the national spotlight, claimed the life of Confederate commander Albert S. Johnston, and forever buried the notion that the Civil War would be a short conflict.

The conflagration at Shiloh had its roots in the strong Union advance during the winter of 1861-1862 that resulted in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. The offensive collapsed General Albert S. Johnston's advanced line in Kentucky and forced him to withdraw all the way to northern Mississippi. Anxious to attack the enemy, Johnston began concentrating Southern forces at Corinth, a major railroad center just below the Tennessee border. His bold plan called for his Army of the Mississippi to march north and destroy General Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with another Union army on the way to join him.

On the morning of April 6, Johnston boasted to his subordinates, "Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee!" They nearly did so. Johnston's sweeping attack hit the unsuspecting Federal camps at Pittsburg Landing and routed the enemy from position after position as they fell back toward the Tennessee River. Johnston's sudden death in the Peach Orchard, however, coupled with stubborn Federal resistance, widespread confusion, and Grant's dogged determination to hold the field, saved the Union army from destruction. The arrival of General Don C. Buell's reinforcements that night turned the tide of battle. The next day, Grant seized the initiative and attacked the Confederates, driving them from the field. Shiloh was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, with nearly 24,000 men killed, wounded, and missing.

Edward Cunningham, a young Ph.D. candidate studying under the legendary T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University, researched and wrote Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 in 1966. Although it remained unpublished, many Shiloh experts and park rangers consider it to be the best overall examination of the battle ever written. Indeed, Shiloh historiography is just now catching up with Cunningham, who was decades ahead of modern scholarship.

Western Civil War historians Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith have resurrected Cunningham's beautifully written and deeply researched manuscript from its undeserved obscurity. Fully edited and richly annotated with updated citations and observations, original maps, and a complete order of battle and table of losses, Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 will be welcomed by everyone who enjoys battle history at its finest.

About the Authors: Edward Cunningham, Ph.D., studied under T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University. He was the author of The Port Hudson Campaign: 1862-1863 (LSU, 1963). Dr. Cunningham died in 1997.

Gary D. Joiner, Ph.D., is the author of One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864, winner of the 2004 Albert Castel Award and the 2005 A. M. Pate, Jr., Award, and Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West. He lives in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Timothy B. Smith, Ph.D., is author of Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (winner of the 2004 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Non-fiction Award), The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield, and This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. A former ranger at Shiloh, Tim teaches history at the University of Tennessee.

From CWBN
This is the first paperback edition of a previously published hardback. This book's exact release date is unknown but falls within this month.

A Wisconsin Yankee in the Confederate Bayou Country: The Civil War Reminiscences of a Union General

by Halbert Eleazer Paine (Author), Samuel C., Jr. Hyde (Editor)

From the publisher:
General Halbert Eleazer Paine, commanding officer of the 4th Wisconsin Regiment of Volunteers, took part in most of the significant military actions in the lower Mississippi Valley during the Civil War. Nearly forty years after the conflict's end, Paine--a former schoolteacher and attorney who would become a three-term congressman--penned recollections of his wartime exploits, including his involvement in the Vicksburg campaign, the operations that resulted in the capture of New Orleans, the Battle of Baton Rouge, the Bayou Teche offensive, and the siege of Port Hudson. Now available for the first time, A Wisconsin Yankee in Confederate Bayou Country provides Paine's reflections and offer his excellent eyewitness account of the complexities of war.
Paine describes in detail the antiguerrilla operations he coordinated in southern Louisiana and Mississippi and his role in the defense of Washington, D.C., where he commanded a portion of the line during Confederate General Jubal Early's 1864 movement against the city. His experiences shed light on the daily struggle of the common solider and on the political and legal debates that dominated the times. In one striking episode, he describes his arrest for refusing to return to their masters fugitive slaves who entered his lines. He discusses the occupation of New Orleans and the relations between Federal soldiers and local slaves and provides definitive commentary on dramatic incidents such as the burning of Baton Rouge and the destruction of the ironclad ram C.S.S. Arkansas.

A departure from most accounts by Union army veterans, Paine's story includes less celebration of the grand cause and greater analysis of the motives for his actions--and their inherent contradictions. He sympathized with the many "contrabands" he encountered, for example, yet he callously dismissed a reliable servant for suggesting that the rebels fought well. Despite expressing kind feelings toward certain southern families, Paine all but condoned his troops' "excessive looting" of local homes and businesses, which he viewed as acceptable retribution for those who resisted Federal authority. After the war, Paine also served as commissioner of patents, championing innovations such as the introduction of typewriters into the Federal bureaucracy.

With a useful introduction and annotations by noted historian Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., A Wisconsin Yankee in Confederate Bayou Country reveals many of the subtle advantages enjoyed by the troops in blue, as well as the attitudes that led to behavior that left a violent legacy for generations.

Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., is a professor of history and the Leon Ford Endowed Chair at Southeastern Louisiana University. He is also the director of the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies and the author or editor of several books, including Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana's Florida Parishes, 1810-1899.

From CWBN
This book's exact release date is unknown but falls within this month.

Counterfeit Justice: The Judicial Odyssey of Texas Freedwoman Azeline Hearne

by Dale Baum

From the publisher:
For many of the forty years of her life as a slave, Azeline Hearne cohabitated with her wealthy, unmarried master, Samuel R. Hearne. She bore him four children, only one of whom survived past early childhood. When Sam died shortly after the Civil War ended, he publicly acknowledged his relationship with Azeline and bequeathed his entire estate to their twenty-year-old mulatto son, with the provision that he take care of his mother. When their son died early in 1868, Azeline inherited one of the most profitable cotton plantations in Texas and became one of the wealthiest ex-slaves in the former Confederacy. In Counterfeit Justice, Dale Baum traces Azeline's remarkable story, detailing her ongoing legal battles to claim and maintain her legacy.

As Baum shows, Azeline's inheritance quickly made her a target for predatory whites determined to strip her of her land. A familiar figure at the Robertson County District Court from the late 1860s to the early 1880s, Azeline faced numerous lawsuits--including one filed against her by her own lawyer. Samuel Hearne's family took steps to dispossess her, and other unscrupulous white men challenged the title to her plantation, using claims based on old Spanish land grants. Azeline's prolonged and courageous defense of her rightful title brought her a certain notoriety: the first freedwoman to be a party to three separate civil lawsuits appealed all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and the first former slave in Robertson County indicted on criminal charges of perjury. Although repeatedly blocked and frustrated by the convolutions of the legal system, she evolved from a bewildered defendant to a determined plaintiff who, in one extraordinary lawsuit, came tantalizingly close to achieving revenge against those who defrauded her for over a decade.


Due to gaps in the available historical record and the unreliability of secondary accounts based on local Reconstruction folklore, many of the details of Azeline's story are lost to history. But Baum grounds his speculation about her life in recent scholarship on the Reconstruction era, and he puts his findings in context in the history of Robertson County. Although history has not credited Azeline Hearne with influencing the course of the law, the story of her uniquely difficult position after the Civil War gives an unprecedented view of the era and of one solitary woman's attempt to negotiate its social and legal complexities in her struggle to find justice.

Baum's meticulously researched narrative will be of keen interest to legal scholars and to all those interested in the plight of freed slaves during this era.

Dale Baum is a professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is the author of The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State during the Civil War Era and The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848-1876.

From CWBN
This book's exact release date is unknown but falls within this month.

African Americans and the Civil War

by Tim McNeese (Author), Ronald A. Reis (Editor)

From the publisher:
Though at first shunned when it was made clear that the Civil War was to be a white man's fight, Northern blacks sought to contribute to the war effort from the moment volunteers were called. Initially taken in as contraband, free blacks and ex-slaves eventually donned uniforms and fought in more than 400 battles to reunite the Union and free their brethren from bondage. Incurring blatant prejudice that saw black soldiers underpaid and denied officer commissions, the vast majority endured hardship and deprivation in battle after battle in an attempt to demonstrate bravery and dedication to the cause. With their willingness and ability to fight initially questioned, African Americans repeatedly proved their valor. Discover in African Americans and the Civil War how, according to President Abraham Lincoln, black soldiers made the difference between victory and defeat.

Ronald A. Reis has written young adult biographies of Eugenie Clark, Jonas Salk, Mickey Mantle, and Ted Williams, as well as books on the Dust Bowl, the New York Subway System, African Americans and the Civil War, and the World Trade Organization, all for Chelsea House. He is the technology department chair at Los Angeles Valley College.

From CWBN
This book's exact release date is unknown but falls within this month.

Civil War in New Bern & Fort Macon, North Carolina

by Drew Pullen

From the publisher:
After capturing Confederate positions on Hatteras Island and Roanoke Island, the loyal Union soldiers directed their attention to the town of New Bern, located on North Carolina's mainland. As a strategically important port of Neuse River, New Bern also served as a railroad centre - meaning that its capture could allow the Union forces to control territory near the major supply line for Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. New Bern's Confederate forces were understaffed and inadequately prepared to face the Federal assault. The fall of New Bern enabled Union forces to proceed to the small coastal town of Beaufort and lay siege to Fort Macon, thus confirming New Bern's infamous place in history.

Sacred Memories: The Civil War Monument Movement in Texas

by Kelly Mcmichael

From the publisher:
War memorials are symbols of a community's sense of itself, the values it holds dear, and its collective memory. They inform us more, perhaps, about the period in which the memorials were erected than the period of the war itself.

Kelly McMichael, in her book, Sacred Memories: The Civil War Monument Movement in Texas, takes the reader on a tour of Civil War monuments throughout the state and in doing so tells the story of each monument and its creation. McMichael explores Texans' motivations for erecting Civil War memorials, which she views as attempts during a period of turmoil and uncertainty - 'severe depression, social unrest, the rise of Populism, mass immigration, urbanization, industrialization, imperialism, lynching, and Jim Crow laws' - to preserve the memory of the Confederate dead, to instill in future generations the values of patriotism, duty, and courage; to create a shared memory and identity 'based on a largely invented story'; and to 'anchor a community against social and political doubt'. Her focus is the human story of each monument, the characters involved in its creation, and the sacred memories held dear to them.

KELLY McMICHAEL is associate director of the Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment, and Redesign at the University of North Texas. She lives in Denton, Texas.

The Sea King: The Last Confederate

by Gary McKay

From the publisher:
Based on documents never before publicly accessible from the US Navy, the National Archives of the United States of America and the British Home Office, The Sea King is the first biography of one of the Civil War's most fascinating players.

As the rogue captain of the last Confederate commerce raider, the Shenandoah, James Waddell was a huge thorn in the side of the post-Civil war administration (they branded him a pirate and an enemy of the state), who singlehandedly destroyed the US whaling fleet, almost brought Britain and America to war, and finally surrendered after a 22,000-mile journey at Liverpool. Proclaimed an American hero upon his death in 1886 he was given the only state funeral ever awarded for a former Confederate officer.

Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia's Criminal Justice System

by Glenn McNair

From the publisher:
Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia's Criminal Justice System is the most comprehensive study of the criminal justice system of a slave state to date. McNair traces the evolution of Georgia's legal culture by examining its use of slave codes and slave patrols, as well as presenting data on crimes prosecuted, trial procedures and practices, conviction rates, the appellate process, and punishment.

Based on more than four hundred capital cases, McNair's study deploys both narrative and quantitative analysis to get at both the theory and the reality of the criminal procedure for slaves in the century leading up to the Civil War. He shows how whites moved from the utopian innocence of the colony's original Trustees, who envisioned a society free of slavery and the depravity it inculcated in masters, to one where slaveholders became the enforcers of laws and informal rules, the severity of which was limited only by the increasing economic value of their slaves as property. The slaves themselves, regarded under the law both as moveable property and--for the purposes of punishment--as moral agents, had, inevitably, a radically different view of Georgia's slave criminal justice system.

Although the rules and procedures were largely the same for both races, the state charged and convicted blacks more frequently and punished them more severely than whites for the same crimes. Courts were also more punitive in their judgment and punishment of black defendants when their victims were white, a pattern of disparate treatment based on race that persists to this day. Informal systems of control in urban households and on rural plantations and farms complementedthe formal system and enhanced the power of slaveowners. Criminal Injustice shows how the prerogatives of slavery and white racial domination trumped any hope for legal justice for blacks.

Glenn McNair is Associate Professor of History at Kenyon College and a former special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives

by Dwight Eisnach

From the publisher:
Carefully documenting African American slave foods, this book reveals that slaves actively developed their own foodways-their customs involving family and food. The authors connect African foods and food preparation to the development during slavery of Southern cuisines having African influences, including Cajun, Creole, and what later became known as soul food, drawing on the recollections of ex-slaves recorded by Works Progress Administration interviewers. Valuable for its fascinating look into the very core of slave life, this book makes a unique contribution to our knowledge of slave culture and of the complex power relations encoded in both owners' manipulation of food as a method of slave control and slaves' efforts to evade and undermine that control.

While a number of scholars have discussed slaves and their foods, slave foodways remains a relatively unexplored topic. The authors' findings also augment existing knowledge about slave nutrition while documenting new information about slave diets.

Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon

by George S Burkhardt (Editor)

From the publisher:
In 1861 at the age of eighteen, Edward Woolsey Bacon, a Yale student and son of well-known abolitionist minister Leonard Bacon, left his home in New Haven, Connecticut, to fight for the United States. Over the next four years Bacon served in both the Union navy and army, which gave him a sweeping view of the Civil War.

His postings included being a captain’s clerk on the USS Iroquois, a hospital clerk in his hometown, a captain in the 29th Connecticut Infantry (Colored), and a major in the 117th U.S. Colored Infantry, and he described these experiences in vibrant letters to his friends and family. Historian George S. Burkhardt has compiled these letters, as well as Bacon’s diary in the impressive Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon.

Bacon tells of hunting Confederate commerce raiders on the high seas, enduring the tedium of blockade duty, and taking part in riverine warfare on the Mississippi. He recalls sweating in South Carolina as an infantry officer during drill and picket duty, suffering constant danger in the battlefield trenches of Virginia, marching victoriously on fallen Richmond, and tolerating the boredom of occupation duty in Texas.

His highly entertaining letters shed new light on naval affairs and reveal a close-knit family life. The narrative of his duty with black troops is especially valuable, since few first-hand accounts from white officers of the U.S. Colored Troops exist. Furthermore, his beliefs about race, slavery, and the Union cause were unconventional for the time and stand in contrast to those held by many of his contemporaries.

Double Duty in the Civil War is filled with lively descriptions of the men Bacon met and the events he experienced. With Burkhardt’s careful editing and useful annotations, Bacon’s letters and diary excerpts give rare insight into areas of the Civil War that have been neglected because of a lack of available sources. Given the scarcity of eyewitness testimonies to navy life and life in African American regiments, this book is a rarity indeed.

George S. Burkhardt is an independent scholar and writer who lives in Long Beach, California. A former news reporter and writer, he was the editor, publisher, and owner of California’s smallest daily newspaper, the Corning Daily Observer. He is the author of Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War.

Company C: New Bremen and the Civil War

by Mark Bernstein

From the publisher:
In 1861, New Bremen, Ohio was a dot of a place a German-speaking hamlet settled by immigrants who came to America for cheap land, low taxes and to keep their sons out of the draft. Yet, when President Lincoln called for volunteers, forty-five sons of New Bremen enlisted to preserve a nation which many of them barely knew and whose language few of them spoke. Their experience was an odyssey. As Company C, 37th Ohio Volunteers, they fought in West Virginia, at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and marched to the sea with Sherman.

The book is based on extensive research at the National Archives, scores of letters home and other original sources. The American Civil War was fought and won by the young men of thousands of places like New Bremen. By telling how and why these few fought, Company C illuminates the larger conflict. With 35 illustrations; five excellent maps.

Mark Bernstein writes on American history. His book Grand Eccentrics [Orange Frazer Press, 1996], tells the story of such turn-of-the century entrepreneurs and inventors as the Wright Brothers and Charles Kettering. Tom Crouch, senior curator, National Air & Space Museum: A fascinating account of an unconventional group who helped shape the history of the 20th century. His book World War II on the Air,[SourceBooks, 2003], is an account of Edward R. Murrow and the CBS radio correspondents in the European theatre. Published with an audio CD of famed broadcasts, narrated by Dan Rather of CBS News. A featured selection at the 2004 National Press Club Book Fair. Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes: I found this book and audio CD the most engrossing history lesson imaginable. He has also written for Smithsonian, Smithsonian Air & Space, American Heritage of Invention and Technology and other periodicals. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union

by Roger Pickenpaugh

From the publisher:
Perhaps no topic is more heated, and the sources more tendentious, than that of Civil War prisons and the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Partisans of each side, then and now, have vilified the other for maltreatment of their POWs, while seeking to excuse their own distressing record of prisoner of war camp mismanagement, brutality, and incompetence. It is only recently that historians have turned their attention to this contentious topic in an attempt to sort the wheat of truth from the chaff of partisan rancor.

Roger Pickenpaugh has previously studied a Union prison camp in careful detail (Camp Chase) and now turns his attention to the Union record in its entirety, to investigate variations between camps and overall prison policy and to determine as nearly as possible what actually happened in the admittedly over-crowded, under-supplied, and poorly-administered camps. He also attempts to determine what conditions resulted from conscious government policy or were the product of local officials and situations.

“An ambitious examination of almost all Union military prisons, [which] . . . addresses a specific historical category that has, to my knowledge, not yet been treated.” —William Marvel, author of Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox and Andersonville: The Last Depot

“This is a vivid description of conditions and events rarely described: the imprisonment of captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Its many parallels to circumstances in Andersonville are especially intriguing.” —Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States

From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1875

by Christopher M. Span

From the publisher:
In the years immediately following the Civil War—the formative years for an emerging society of freed African Americans in Mississippi—there was much debate over the general purpose of black schools and who would control them. From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse is the first comprehensive examination of Mississippi's politics and policies of postwar racial education.

The primary debate centered on whether schools for African Americans (mostly freedpeople) should seek to develop blacks as citizens, train them to be free but subordinate laborers, or produce some other outcome. African Americans envisioned schools established by and for themselves as a primary means of achieving independence, equality, political empowerment, and some degree of social and economic mobility—in essence, full citizenship. Most northerners assisting freedpeople regarded such expectations as unrealistic and expected African Americans to labor under contract for those who had previously enslaved them and their families. Meanwhile, many white Mississippians objected to any educational opportunities for the former slaves. Christopher Span finds that newly freed slaves made heroic efforts to participate in their own education, but too often the schooling was used to control and redirect the aspirations of the newly freed.

Christopher M. Span is assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Insiders' Guide to Gettysburg, 2nd Edition

by Kate Hertzog

From the publisher:
For more than twenty years, the Insiders’ Guide® series has been the essential source for in-depth travel and relocation information—from true insiders whose personal, practical perspective gives you everything you need to know.

Gettysburg is a charming town and a premier destination for history buffs. Best known for the Battle of Gettysburg—a turning point in the Civil War—the area also offers a delightful blend of natural beauty, family attractions, unique shopping, and a thriving arts and entertainment scene. This authoritative guide will show you the many things to see and do in south central Pennsylvania.

Inside you'll find:

• Detailed information on touring Gettysburg National Military Park
• Comprehensive listings of restaurants, lodging, and recreation opportunities
• Countless details on how to live and thrive in the area, from the best shopping to the lowdown on real estate
• Easy day trips, including Hershey Park and Harrisburg
• Sections dedicated to children and retirement

Petersburg 1864-65: The longest siege

by Ron Field (Author), Peter Dennis (Illustrator)

From the publisher:
In 1864 Petersburg, Virginia became the setting for one of the last great campaigns of the United States Civil War and the longest siege in American History. After his failure to capture Richmond in the Spring, General Ulysses S. Grant decided to strangle the life out of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia by surrounding the city of Petersburg and cutting off General Robert E. Lee's supply lines.

The ensuing siege would carry on for nearly ten months, involve 160,000 soldiers, and see a number of pitched battles including the Battle of the Crater, Reams Station, Hatcher's Run, and White Oak Road. But around these battles were long days of living in trenches, enduring poor diet and winter weather, and suffering constant artillery bombardment. In April of 1865, Grant ordered a sweeping offensive against the beleaguered Confederates, which broke Lee's right flank and forced him to retreat to Appomattox Court House, where he surrendered a week later.

Written by an expert on the American Civil War, this book examines the last clash between the armies of U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.

n the Shadow of the Patriarch: The John J. Crittenden Family in War and Peace

by Damon R. Eubank

From the publisher:
Senator John J. Crittenden was a central figure in Kentucky politics for more than fifty years and he fathered a remarkable family. The fame of the family patriarch has overshadowed the contributions of his children who deserve attention in their own right. George and Thomas Crittenden held significant commands during the Civil War while Ann Mary's life exemplified the struggles of antebellum women and their turmoil on the home front during the war. Several of the other siblings were leaders in their respective communities and their stories are interwoven as the evidence allows. The Crittendens exemplify the tragedy of a split family in the border region during the Civil War. By utilizing the role of birth order in creating family roles and establishing parental expectations the unique development of each sibling determined their response as they did at the outbreak of the Civil War. The impact of the war on family relations is followed by the rapprochement and reunion of the family, as well as the domestic developments of the family shadowed by the effects of the war. More than two-thirds of the book deals with the Civil War. Brothers George and Thomas fight on opposite sides. George receives a chapter on the disease at Mill Springs while attention is given to the rise and fall of Thomas as a commander. The overwhelming pressure to succeed placed on the siblings by their father handicapped both of them from truly succeeding as commanders.

Damon R. Eubank (Ph.D. Mississippi State) is professor of History, Campbellsville University.

In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals

by William J., Jr. Cooper and John M., Jr. Mccardell (Editors)

From the publisher:
In this remarkable collection, ten premier scholars of nineteenth-century America address the epochal impact of the Civil War by examining the conflict in terms of three Americas--antebellum, wartime, and postbellum nations. Moreover, they recognize the critical role in this transformative era of three groups of Americans--white northerners, white southerners, and African Americans in the North and South. Through these differing and sometimes competing perspectives, the contributors astutely address crucial ongoing controversies at the epicenter of the cultural, political, and intellectual history of this decisive period in American history.
Coeditors William J. Cooper, Jr., and John M. McCardell, Jr., introduce the collection, which contains essays by the foremost Civil War scholars of our time: James M. McPherson considers the general import of the war; Peter S. Onuf and Christa Dierksheide examine how patriotic southerners reconciled slavery with the American Revolutionaries' faith in the new nation's progressive role in world history; Sean Wilentz attempts to settle the long-standing debate over the reasons for southern secession; and Richard Carwardine identifies the key wartime contributors to the nation's sociopolitical transformation and the redefinition of its ideals.

George C. Rable explores the complicated ways in which southerners adopted and interpreted the terms "rebel" and "patriot," and Chandra Manning finds three distinct understandings of the relationship between race and nationalism among Confederate soldiers, black Union soldiers, and white Union soldiers. The final three pieces address how the country dealt with the meaning of the war and its memory: Nina Silber discusses the variety of ways we continue to remember the war and the Union victory; W. Fitzhugh Brundage tackles the complexity of Confederate commemoration; and David W. Blight examines the complicated African American legacy of the war. In conclusion, McCardell suggests the challenges and rewards of using three perspectives for studying this critical period in American history.

Presented originally at the "In the Cause of Liberty" symposium hosted by The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, Virginia, these incisive essays by the most respected and admired scholars in the field are certain to shape historical debate for years to come.

William J. Cooper, Jr., is the author of Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era; Jefferson Davis, American, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and numerous other books. A Boyd Professor of History at Louisiana State University, he lives in Baton Rouge.

John M. McCardell, Jr., is the author of The Idea of a Southern Nation and coeditor of A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald. He is President Emeritus and College Professor at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Lincoln and the Court

by Brian McGinty

From the publisher:
In a meticulously researched and engagingly written narrative, Brian McGinty rescues the story of Abraham Lincoln and the Supreme Court from long and undeserved neglect, recounting the compelling history of the Civil War president's relations with the nation's highest tribunal and the role it played in resolving the agonizing issues raised by the conflict.

Lincoln was, more than any other president in the nation's history, a "lawyerly" president, the veteran of thousands of courtroom battles, where victories were won, not by raw strength or superior numbers, but by appeals to reason, citations of precedent, and invocations of justice. He brought his nearly twenty-five years of experience as a practicing lawyer to bear on his presidential duties to nominate Supreme Court justices, preside over a major reorganization of the federal court system, and respond to Supreme Court decisions--some of which gravely threatened the Union cause.

The Civil War was, on one level, a struggle between competing visions of constitutional law, represented on the one side by Lincoln's insistence that the United States was a permanent Union of one people united by a "supreme law," and on the other by Jefferson Davis's argument that the United States was a compact of sovereign states whose legal ties could be dissolved at any time and for any reason, subject only to the judgment of the dissolving states that the cause for dissolution was sufficient. Alternately opposed and supported by the justices of the Supreme Court, Lincoln steered the war-torn nation on a sometimes uncertain, but ultimately triumphant, path to victory, saving the Union, freeing the slaves, and preserving the Constitution for future generations.

Clingman's Brigade in the Confederacy, 1862-1865

by Frances H. Casstevens

From the publisher:
On November 11, 1862, Brigadier General Thomas Lanier Clingman, despite a lack of formal military training, was named commander of four regiments sent to the eastern counties of North Carolina to prevent Federal troops from making further inroads into the state. Clingman has been called one of North Carolina's most colorful and controversial statesmen. Like Clingman, the brigade, composed of the 8th, 31st, 51st, and 61st regiments of North Carolina Infantry, has been both praised and condemned for its performance in battle. This work determines the effect Clingman's Brigade had on various battles and in various defensive positions. It also corrects falsehoods by providing a more accurate portrayal of Clingman, the brigade, and the problems it faced.

"Nicely done...the book should be of interest to anyone interested in Clingman and his troops or North Carolina and the war" --The Civil War Courier

"One of North Carolina's more enigmatic but ignored commanders...dispels myths and provides a more thorough account of the leader and his unit than ever before" --Civil War Book Review

Retired from Wake Forest University, Frances H. Casstevens has written frequently about the American Civil War and North Carolina history. She lives in Yadkinville, North Carolina. --Our State

The Second Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865

by Paul G. Zeller

From the publisher:
The many regiments that fought in the Civil War each had their own stories to tell about what they saw, smelled, tasted, heard and felt while serving in war. Most of these stories have been lost, but those that survive are compelling accounts of a dark time in our nation's history. The Second Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the Old Vermont Brigade saw its first combat at the Battle of Bull Run and fought on to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. This work views the war from the eyes of the junior officers, noncommissioned officers, and privates that made up the regiment, and draws from their service, pension and court-martial records, and personal letters and diaries to portray the men as they were in battle, on the march, and in camp. Some were heroes, like Private William W. Noyes, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Spotsylvania, and others were not, like Private George E. Blowers, who was publicly executed for desertion. A roster of the 1,858 men who served in the Second Vermont is also provided. Richly illustrated.

The Third Battalion Mississippi Infantry and the 45th Mississippi Regiment: A Civil War History

by David Williamson

From the publisher:
This is an accounting of the experiences of the soldiers of Hardcastle's 3rd Battalion Mississippi Infantry from enlistment to the end of the war. It includes their mid-war incarnation as the 45th Mississippi Regiment and the role they played in Cleburne's fabled division during almost every major engagement of the Army of Tennessee. Told as much as possible from the point of view of the soldier, the book shows what motivated the original volunteers to join and continue fighting to the end.

"A labor of love...valuable" --The Civil War News

"An exhaustive study that cannot fail to impress the reader with the amount of research involved, mostly based on primary source material...detailed accounts of the battles and skirmishes...important...Williamson is to be congratulated...very complete" --Civil War Courier.

Freelance writer David Williamson is a graduate of the University of Akron (B.A.) and Tulane University (Ph.D.). He lives in Mississippi. --North & South

Baseball's First Inning: A History of the National Pastime Through the Civil War

by William J. Ryczek

From the publisher:
This history of America's pastime describes the evolution of baseball from early bat and ball games to its growth and acceptance in different regions of the country. The New York clubs (i.e., the Atlantics, Excelsiors and Mutuals) are a primary focus, serving as examples of how the sport became more sophisticated and popular. The author compares theories about many of baseball's "inventors," exploring the often fascinating stories of several of baseball's oldest founding myths. The impact of the Civil War on the sport is discussed and baseball's unsteady path to becoming America's national game is analyzed at length.

The 25th North Carolina Troops in the Civil War: History and Roster of a Mountain-Bred Regiment

by Carroll C. Jones

From the publisher:
This historical account covers the 25th Regiment North Carolina Infantry Troops during the Civil War. Farmers and farmers' sons left their mountain homesteads to enlist with the regiment at Asheville in July and August 1861 and to defend their homeland from a Yankee invasion. The book chronicles the unit's defensive activities in the Carolina coastal regions and the battlefield actions at Seven Days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Plymouth, Richmond and Petersburg. In addition, casualty and desertion statistics are included, along with a complete regimental roster and 118 photos, illustrations, and maps.

Engineering consultant Carroll C. Jones is a North Carolina native and Civil War enthusiast.

Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders, and Others

by Larry G. Eggle

From the publisher:
When the Civil War broke out, women answered the call for help. They broke away from their traditional roles and served in many capacities, some of them even going so far as to disguise themselves as men and enlist in the army. Estimates of such women enlistees range from 400 to 700. About 60 women soldiers were known to have been killed or wounded. More than sixty women who fought or who served the Union or Confederacy in other ways are featured. Among them are Sarah Thompson, the Union spy and nurse who brought down the famous raider John Hunt Morgan; Elizabeth Van Lew, the Union spy instrumental in the largest prison break of the war; Sarah Malinda Blalock, who fought for the Confederacy as a soldier and then for the Union as a guerrilla raider; Dr. Mary Walker, a doctor for the Union and the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for Civil War service; and Jennie Hodgers, the longest serving woman soldier (and the only woman to receive a soldier's pension).

The Second United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War: A History and Roster

by Gerald L. Earley

From the publisher:
The Second U.S. Sharpshooters was a hodgepodge regiment, composed of companies raised in several New England states. The regiment was trained for a specific mission and armed with specially ordered breech-loading target rifles. This book covers the origin, recruitment, training, and battle record of the regiment and features 32 photographs, four battlefield maps, and a regimental roster.

Gerald L. Earley is a lifelong student of the Civil War and has personally visited all the major battlefields of the Second U.S. Sharpshooters. He is a graduate of Wichita State University and a veteran of the Vietnam War.

The Essential Lincoln: Speeches and Correspondence

by Orville Vernon Burton

From the publisher:
Edited by the author of The Age of Lincoln (2007), this anthology calls attention to Lincoln’s devotion to constitutional law and the principles of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Besides the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address, which respectively exhort and admonish an American people rent by civil war, Burton chooses orations and letters that Lincoln composed with persuasive intent. The election speeches he picks represent Lincoln balancing his antislavery convictions and his ambition to win before deeply prejudiced constituencies. The wartime public messages reflect Lincoln’s transition from disclaiming abolition of slavery to effecting emancipation, and his public letters defend controversial policies, such as the suspension of habeas corpus. Burton’s focus compels him to omit Lincoln’s military missives, a defensible decision for introducing readers to Lincoln-on-democracy and one that creates space for examples of private correspondence that express his famed compassion. Every collection needs some Lincoln unmediated, a library requirement that this set of 29 selections ably meets.

“Orville Vernon Burton notes that ‘Lincoln chose his words deliberately,’ and so does Burton. His introductions and editorial notes are concise, lively, and reliable, and Lincoln’s words, as always, are gripping, brilliant, and deeply moving. There have been many collections of Lincoln’s writings, but this slender, thoughtfully selected compendium more than lives up to its title: essential.” —Harold Holzer, co-chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

The 10th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster

by Dennis W. Belcher

From the publisher:
The 10th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry waged battle for the Union for three years during the Civil War, ranging from its home state to Atlanta. This work is filled with personal accounts, including 25 war-time letters written by the men of the regiment, and official records of the regiment's activities, which included action at Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge. The regiment began the war with 867 men, suffered a 40-percent casualty rate at Chickamauga, and helped break Confederate lines at Jonesboro. At the end of the war only 140 men staggered home in victory. This title features more than 60 photos, 14 maps, rosters and descriptions of the unit's soldiers.

Dennis Belcher has a Ph. D. from Mississippi State University and is a descendent of a member of the 10th Kentucky Infantry. He has been working on the history of the 10th Kentucky Infantry for eight years and operates the Web site www.tenthkentuckyinfantry.org.

Creating the John Brown Legend: Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Child and Higginson in Defense of the Raid on Harpers Ferry

by Janet Kemper Beck

From the publisher:
One of the triggering events of the Civil War helped divide a nation but also launched a cannonade of persuasive essays and propaganda. Early press reaction to John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry ranged from indignant horror in the South to stunned disbelief in the North. Brown's supporters wielded great power with their pens: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Lydia Maria Child. This book explores the moment when literature and history collided and literature rewrote history. This volume features 30 photographs, maps, proclamations and broadsides and a detailed timeline of events surrounding the raid.

Janet Kemper Beck teaches English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and is a member of the Thoreau Society and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society.

Colonel Worthington's Shiloh: the Tennessee Campaign, 1862, by an officer of the Ohio Volunteers

by T. Worthington

From the publisher:
This an account of the battle of Shiloh by one who was present as a colonel of the Ohio Volunteer infantry, but it is also much more than that. In every line of this book the reader feels the anger and vitriol of a deeply offended man. This work transcends history to become an exposure-according to the author's viewpoint-of incompetence, double dealing and cover-up on behalf of the senior officers of the Union Army. The particular target of Worthington's accusation is his superior officer W. T. Sherman. Certainly the two men were enemies-a situation which for Worthington, as the subordinate officer, was to have disastrous consequences. It is now recognised that Worthington's own conduct during the battle itself was exemplary, contributing much to the benefit of the Union action. Nevertheless, Sherman court martialled Worthington after the battle and he was cashiered from the service. Notwithstanding the illegality of his trial and its subsequent over turning by Lincoln himself, Sherman, in concert with Grant, ensured Worthington was never reinstated. This is a vital analysis of a Civil War battle with no holds barred and a story of great injustice done to a man of principle.

Civil War in the Ozarks: Revised Edition

by Phillip Steele and Steve Cottrell

From the publisher:
During the Civil War, the Ozarks were a bitter battleground between the Blue and Gray. This region experienced warfare of a rough style, unique in its ferocity to the struggles of the other fighting states. The combats that took place in this area involved colorful individuals who would later garner both fame and notoriety in the history of the Old West. In this revised edition of Civil War in the Ozarks, Steve Cottrell and the late Phillip W. Steele extensively researched and chronicled, in new detail, the battles that took place in the Ozarks during the Civil War. With additional commentary from contemporary experts and primary sources, this enhanced edition provides new insight into the Civil War in this area.

Steve Cottrell, who is also the author of Civil War in the Indian Territory, Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory, and Civil War in Tennessee, is a Civil War historian and former high-school teacher. Phillip W. Steele was a renowned folklorist and historian who wrote many books about the Ozarks, including Ozark Tales and Superstitions, Outlaws and Gunfighters of the Old West, The Last Cherokee Warriors, Starr Tracks: Belle and Pearl Starr, The Family Story of Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse and Frank James, and Two Longs and a Short: An Ozark Boyhood Remembered.

No Peace for the Wicked: Northern Protestant Soldiers and the American Civil War

by David Rolfs

From the publisher:
In the spring of 1861, young men throughout the Northern states rallied around the Union flag, eager to punish the Confederate renegades who had brazenly inaugurated civil war by firing on Fort Sumter. Often driven by their Protestant religious beliefs, many northern soldiers believed they were enlisting in a just war to save their Christian government from a "wicked" Southern rebellion.

These Protestant soldiers' faith was severely tested by the hardships and tragedies they experienced in the Civil War. The vast majority easily justified their wartime service by reminding themselves and their loved ones that they were engaged in a holy cause to preserve the world's only Christian republic. Others were genuinely haunted by the horrific violence of a seemingly endless civil war, and began to entertain serious doubts about their faith.

The first comprehensive work of its kind, David Rolfs' No Peace for the Wicked sheds new light on the Northern Protestant soldiers' religious worldview and the various ways they used it to justify and interpret their wartime experiences. Drawing extensively from the letters, diaries and published collections of hundreds of religious soldiers, Rolfs effectively resurrects both these soldiers' religious ideals and their most profound spiritual doubts and conflicts. No Peace for the Wicked also explores the importance of "just war" theory in the formulation of Union military strategy and tactics, and examines why the most religious generation in U.S. history fought America's bloodiest war.

David Rolfs earned his doctorate at Florida State University and is currently an instructor of history at Maclay College Preparatory School in Tallahassee, Florida.

Wars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War

by Joan Waugh (Editor), Gary W. Gallagher (Editor)

From the publisher:
The twelve essays in Wars within a War explore the internal stresses that posed serious challenges to the viability of the opposing sides in the Civil War as well as some of the ways in which wartime disputes and cultural fissures carried over into the postwar years and beyond.

Comprised of contributions from leading scholars, this volume extends the discussion of controversies far past the death of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865. Contributors address, among other topics, Walt Whitman's poetry, the handling of the Union and Confederate dead, the treatment of disabled and destitute northern veterans, Ulysses S. Grant's imposing tomb, and Hollywood's long relationship with the Lost Cause narrative.

Reflecting a variety of approaches and methodologies, these essays provide a starting point for anyone interested in how Americans have argued about the prosecution, meaning, and memory of the war.

Mystic Fire: A Bonanza (Novel)

by Monette L. Bebow-Reinhard

From the publisher:
The Cartwrights are back, yet this novel is a departure from the author's adventurous earlier work, FELLING OF THE SONS. The theme of MYSTIC FIRE novel is a darker one: Slavery and the Civil War. Then our country was torn apart with strong feelings on all sides. Which Cartwright sons will enlist? Who will stay behind? What of the "mystical" and ghostly doings that have become such a part of the culture with death all around. Which Cartwright will be haunted by a ghost?

Flags of Civil War Missouri

by Glenn Dedmondt

From the publisher:
Flags awaken incredibly powerful and patriotic emotions. Throughout the 1860s, scores of Missouri secession flags, state guard flags, and battle flags unfurled over the ranks of men defending their homelands against invading soldiers from the North. Symbolizing the way of life the men of Missouri sought to protect, these flags provide a unique index to the history of the Civil War in this western state.

From the stirring banner borne by the First Regiment Missouri Volunteer Militia, which serves as a significant reminder of the Camp Jackson massacre, to the famed flag Brig. Gen. Joseph O. Shelby never surrendered, each Missouri ensign represents a moment in history.

This comprehensive study of Missouri's Civil War-era flags presents more than fifty authentic flags, along with a history of the origins and the units they represented. The emblems, materials, construction, and dimensions of each flag are also included. From the state secession flags of 1861 to the flags of the Missouri State Guard and the Audrain County Flag of the Second Missouri Infantry Regiment, this examination is a true tribute to the men who bore these colors and is certain to be cherished by Civil War experts, genealogists, and students of military history.

Praise for Glenn Dedmondt's previous books: "An excellent research tool for historians, professional or hobbyist." --Today's Librarian

Compelled to Fight, The Seccession Crisis in Rockbridge County, Virginia

by Thomas Rittenburg

From the publisher:
The American Civil War continues to stir passion and fascination for many readers and historians. While there are hundreds of books about the war itself there are hardly any that delve into the mysteries of why a once united country at peace with itself and the world went to war-a war that has not been exceeded on this continent for its destruction or slaughter. In Compelled to Fight the causes of the Civil War are examined through Rockbridge County, Virginia, a microcosm of ante bellum Virginia and touches upon why this Union loving people in the most critical Southern border state abandoned hope of compromise and cast their lot with the slaveholding South. Read this book and you will understand why Virginia seceded.

Abraham Lincoln: His Life and Times: An Illustrated History

by Editors of Time Magazine

From the publisher:
This richly illustrated volume celebrates Abraham Lincoln by exploring the fascinating life and times of the president who saved the Union. Here, in more than 160 little-seen photos and illustrations, is a great nation still young and rapidly transforming. Here is the growth of the frontier and the Indian and Mexican wars; the advent of the telegram and the railroad; the battle over states' rights that erupted into the Civil War. And here in all its passion, complexity and tragedy, is the life story of the wise, visionary President who summoned America's founding ideals to keep the nation united.

John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal

by Thomas M. Settles

From the publisher:
Of all the major figures of the Civil War era, Confederate general John Bankhead Magruder is perhaps the least understood. The third-ranking officer in Virginia's forces behind Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, Magruder left no diary, no completed memoirs, no will, not even a family Bible. There are no genealogical records and very few surviving personal papers. It is not surprising, then, that much existing literature about Magruder is incorrect. In John Bankhead Magruder, an exhaustive biography that reflects more than thirty years of painstaking archival research, Thomas M. Settles remedies the many factual inaccuracies surrounding this enigmatic man and his military career.

Settles traces Magruder's family back to its seventeenth-century British American origins, describes his educational endeavors at the University of Virginia and West Point, and details his early military career and his leading role as an artillerist in the war with Mexico. Tall, handsome, and flamboyant, Magruder earned the nickname "Prince John" from his army friends and was known for his impeccable manners and social brilliance. When Virginia seceded in April of 1861, Prince John resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and offered his services to the Confederacy.

Magruder won the opening battle of the Civil War at Big Bethel. And later, in spite of severe shortages of weapons and supplies and a lack of support from Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, Samuel Cooper, and Joseph E. Johnston, Prince John, with just 13,600 men, he was able to hold his position on the Peninsula for a month against George B. McClellan's 105,000 man Federal army. This successful stand when Richmond was exceedingly vulnerable, was, according to Settles, John Magruder's greatest contribution to the Confederacy.

Following the Seven Days' battles, however, Magruder was harshly criticized for being too slow at Savage Station, then too rash at Malvern Hill and was transferred to command the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. There he skillfully recaptured the port of Galveston in early 1863 and held it for the Confederacy until the end of the war. After the war, he joined the Confederate exodus to Mexico but eventually returned to the United States, living in New York City and New Orleans before settling in Houston, where he died on February 18, 1871.

John Bankhead Magruder offers fresh insight into many aspects of the general's life and legacy, including his alleged excesses, his relationships within his family, and the period between Magruder's death and his memorialization into the canon of Lost Cause mythology. With engaging prose and impressive research, Settles brings this vibrant Civil War figure to life.

For more than thirty-five years, Thomas M. Settles has been a professor of history at San Antonio College in San Antonio, Texas.

The Black Brigade of Cincinnati

by Peter H. Clark

From the publisher:
The Black Brigade of Cincinnati: Being a Report of Its Labors and a Muster-roll of its Members: Together with Various Orders Speeches etc. Relating To It. Gale Archival Editions: On Demand are digital copies of rare and out-of-print historical content. Delivered where and when you need them, Gale Archival Editions arrive complete with original fonts, marks, notations, punctuation and spelling, giving you the feeling of owning the original work. These images of original works—from the world's leading libraries—include everything from books to pamphlets, many with original illustrations, indexes, maps and other annotations. Sourced from Joseph Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time (1868-1936), the Sabin American Civil War Collection includes thousands of titles on all topics related to the Civil War experience.

Commanding Lincoln's Navy: Union Naval Leadership During the Civil War

by Stephen R. Taaffe

From the publisher:
The Union Navy played a vital role in winning the Civil War by blockading Confederate ports, cooperating with the Union Army in amphibious assaults, and controlling the Mississippi River and its tributaries. President Lincoln understood, however, that the Navy was not as important, militarily and politically, to the war effort as the Army, so he delegated authority to his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, who divided the Navy into six squadrons and hand-picked their commanders. This book examines Welles selections and why he appointed them. While noting that the officers records, character, and abilities were of primary importance, Taaffe acknowledges that political connections, seniority, and availability were also factored into the selections. He demonstrates that Welles appointments improved markedly as the war continued and as he gained a better understanding of the Navy and its officer corps. Taaffe contends that Welles eventual success in picking effective squadron commanders contributed greatly to Union victory.
Stephen R. Taaffe is a professor of history at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. He holds MA and PhD degrees from Ohio University. He is also the author of the award-winning Commanding the Army of the Potomac, The Philadelphia Campaign, and MacArthur's Jungle War.

The War in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict through the Captivity Literature

by Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola

From the publisher:
The War in Words is the first book to study the captivity and confinement narratives generated by a single American war as it traces the development and variety of the captivity narrative genre. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines the complex 1862 Dakota Conflict (also called the Dakota War) by focusing on twenty-four of the dozens of narratives that European Americans and Native Americans wrote about it. This six-week war was the deadliest confrontation between whites and Dakotas in Minnesota’s history. Conducted at the same time as the Civil War, it is sometimes called Minnesota’s Civil War because it was—and continues to be—so divisive.

The Dakota Conflict aroused impassioned prose from participants and commentators as they disputed causes, events, identity, ethnicity, memory, and the all-important matter of the war’s legacy. Though the study targets one region, its ramifications reach far beyond Minnesota in its attention to war and memory. An ethnography of representative Dakota Conflict narratives and an analysis of the war’s historiography, The War in Words includes new archival information, historical data, and textual criticism.

Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola is a professor of English and the director of the William G. Cooper Jr. Honors Program in English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is the editor of Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives and the coauthor of The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900.

Gentleman and Soldier: A Biography of Wade Hampton III

by Edward G. Longacre

From the publisher:
Winner of the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award, Gentleman and Soldier is the first biography in more than fifty years of Wade Hampton III (1818–1902), a Confederate general whose life provides a unique, sweeping insight into the entire history of the Civil War in the South. Hampton was a leading citizen of South Carolina before the war and the highest-ranking cavalry leader on either side during the war. He fought in a remarkable number of battles from Antietam to Gettysburg to Bentonville and after the war served as governor of South Carolina and in the U.S. Senate.

Hampton’s life, however, was one of dramatic contradictions. He was the quintessential slave owner who nonetheless questioned the ethical underpinnings of the “peculiar institution.” He was a prewar spokesperson for national unity but became an avid secessionist. He condemned violence and abhorred dueling, but he probably killed more opponents in battle than any other general with the possible exception of Nathan Bedford Forrest. He “redeemed” South Carolina from Reconstruction but then extended more political benefits to African Americans than any other Democratic governor in the postwar South. For more than forty years he gave selflessly of himself to his state and his community, not only when wealthy but also when teetering on the abyss of poverty.

Edward G. Longacre has written twenty-three books on the Civil War. His book The Cavalry at Gettysburg, available in a Bison Books edition, won the Fletcher Pratt Award as the best book of Civil War nonfiction. He is also the author of Pickett, Leader of the Charge and Lee's Cavalrymen, a main selection of the History Book Club.

Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee

by Kent Dollar, Larry Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson (Editors)

From the publisher:
The fifteenth and sixteenth states to join the United States of America, Kentucky and Tennessee were cut from a common cloth—the rich region of the Ohio River Valley. Abounding with mountainous regions and fertile farmlands, these two slaveholding states were as closely tied to one another, both culturally and economically, as they were to the rest of the South.

Yet when the Civil War erupted, Tennessee chose to secede while Kentucky remained part of the Union. The residents of Kentucky and Tennessee felt the full impact of the fighting as warring armies crossed back and forth across their borders. Due to Kentucky’s strategic location, both the Union and the Confederacy sought to control it throughout the war, while Tennessee was second only to Virginia in the number of battles fought on its soil. Additionally, loyalties in each state were closely divided between the Union and the Confederacy, making wartime governance—and personal relationships—complex.

In Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee, editors Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson explore how the war affected these two crucial states, and how they helped change the course of the war. Essays by prominent Civil War historians, including Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Marion Lucas, Tracy McKenzie, and Kenneth Noe, add new depth to aspects of the war not addressed elsewhere.

The collection opens by recounting each state’s debate over secession, detailing the divided loyalties in each as well as the overt conflict that simmered in East Tennessee. The editors also spotlight the war’s overlooked participants, including common soldiers, women, refugees, African American soldiers, and guerrilla combatants. The book concludes by analyzing the difficulties these states experienced in putting the war behind them.

The stories of Kentucky and Tennessee are a vital part of the larger narrative of the Civil War. Sister States, Enemy States offers fresh insights into the struggle that left a lasting mark on Kentuckians and Tennesseans, just as it left its mark on the nation.

Kent T. Dollar is assistant professor of history at Tennessee Technological University and author of Soldiers of the Cross: Confederate Soldier-Christians and the Impact of War on their Faith.

Larry H. Whiteaker is professor emeritus of history at Tennessee Technological University and author of The Individual and Society in America.

W. Calvin Dickinson is professor emeritus of history at Tennessee Technological University and coauthor of Tennessee Tales the Textbooks Don’t Tell.