Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography

by Ari Hoogenboom

From the publisher:
This magisterial biography recounts the life and career of one of the U.S. Navy's most influential officers, Gustavus Vasa Fox. Ari Hoogenboom's examination of Fox's incredible life and distinguished career creates a vivid portrait of the man most responsible for the U.S. Navy's stellar performance in the Civil War.

Fox's naval service began in 1838 when he went to sea as a midshipman. He sailed in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Africa, in the Gulf of Mexico, and with the East India Squadron in the Pacific. By participating in the Coast Survey and by navigating the lower Mississippi River in the 1850s, as captain of a steamer that ran from New York to Havana to New Orleans and back, Fox gained valuable experience that would serve him well in the Civil War.

During the war, Fox was instrumental in mounting the blockade of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay to the Rio Grande. After the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia, Fox championed ironclad technology despite having to contend with an officer corps wedded to wooden ships. In planning and coordinating expeditions, Fox deserves much of the credit for the navy's successes at Hatteras, Port Royal, New Orleans, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher.

Initially neither proslavery nor antislavery, Fox was passionately committed to the preservation of the Union and, as black sailors made a crucial contribution toward that end, became an advocate of freedom and voting rights for African Americans. A skilled administrator who understood both the demands of politicians and the needs of line officers, he was able to communicate effectively with each group. Fox developed a close and collegial working relationship with Abraham Lincoln and was related by marriage to the postmaster general. Along with officers like Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs and coordinator of military railroads Herman Haupt, Fox played a critical but underappreciated role in the Union victory.

"At last, we have a full length and skillfully rendered portrait of Gus Fox, who acted as the de facto Chief of Naval Operations during the Civil War. This is must reading for anyone interested in the naval aspects of the Civil War." -- Craig L. Symonds, author of Lincoln and His Admirals

Lincoln and His Admirals

by Craig L. Symonds

From the publisher:
Abraham Lincoln began his presidency admitting that he knew "little about ships," but he quickly came to preside over the largest national armada to that time, not eclipsed until World War I. Written by prize-winning historian Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals unveils an aspect of Lincoln's presidency unexamined by historians until now, revealing how he managed the men who ran the naval side of the Civil War, and how the activities of the Union Navy ultimately affected the course of history.

Beginning with a gripping account of the attempt to re-supply Fort Sumter--a comedy of errors that shows all too clearly the fledgling president's inexperience--Symonds traces Lincoln's steady growth as a wartime commander-in-chief. Absent a Secretary of Defense, he would eventually become de facto commander of joint operations along the coast and on the rivers. That involved dealing with the men who ran the Navy: the loyal but often cranky Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, the quiet and reliable David G. Farragut, the flamboyant and unpredictable Charles Wilkes, the ambitious ordnance expert John Dahlgren, the well-connected Samuel Phillips Lee, and the self-promoting and gregarious David Dixon Porter. Lincoln was remarkably patient; he often postponed critical decisions until the momentum of events made the consequences of those decisions evident. But Symonds also shows that Lincoln could act decisively. Disappointed by the lethargy of his senior naval officers on the scene, he stepped in and personally directed an amphibious assault on the Virginia coast, a successful operation that led to the capture of Norfolk. The man who knew "little about ships" had transformed himself into one of the greatest naval strategists of his age.

A unique and riveting portrait of Lincoln and the admirals under his command, this book offers an illuminating account of Lincoln and the nation at war. In the bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth, it offers a memorable portrait of a side of his presidency often overlooked by historians.

"We know a great deal about Lincoln and his generals, but until now very little about Lincoln and his admirals. With a compelling portrait of personalities and a sharp analysis of strategy, Craig Symonds offers a gripping narrative that finally gives the Union navy--and its commander-in- chief--the credit they deserve for the important part they played in winning the Civil War." --James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

"This is an epic story-the quintessential, mal-de-mer-prone landlubber morphing into the admiral-in-chief of the mightiest armada on the planet. Spinning the yarn with resourceful scholarship and narrative verve, peerless naval historian Craig Symonds succeeds in creating an entirely new portrait of Lincoln: not only as healer of the land, but conqueror of the sea."--Harold Holzer, Co-Chairman, U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

"Craig L. Symonds has filled a gap by giving us a superb account of Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the navy and the people who ran it. Beautifully written, the narrative is also lively and informative. He eloquently describes how Lincoln's judicious temperament complemented his irascible 'Neptune,' Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles along with the calumny, envy, personal conflicts, and thirst for promotion that permeated the deep sea and riverine forces. This is the most complete and edifying story of Mr. Lincoln and his 'webbed-feet.'"--Frank Williams, Chief Justice, Rhode Island State Supreme Court and Lincoln Scholar

Abraham Lincoln and Robert Burns: Connected Lives and Legends

by Ferenc Morton Szasz

From the publisher:
Today the images of Robert Burns and Abraham Lincoln are recognized worldwide, yet few are aware of the connection between the two. In Abraham Lincoln and Robert Burns: Connected Lives and Legends, author Ferenc Morton Szasz reveals how famed Scots poet Robert Burns—and Scotland in general—influenced the life and thought of one of the most beloved and important U.S. presidents and how the legends of the two men became intertwined after their deaths. This is the first extensive work to link the influence, philosophy, and artistry of these two larger-than-life figures.

Lacking a major national poet of their own in the early nineteenth century, Americans in the fledgling frontier country ardently adopted the poignant verses and songs of Scotland’s Robert Burns. Lincoln, too, was fascinated by Scotland’s favorite son and enthusiastically quoted the Scottish bard from his teenage years to the end of his life. Szasz explores the ways in which Burns’s portrayal of the foibles of human nature, his scorn for religious hypocrisy, his plea for nonjudgmental tolerance, and his commitment to social equality helped shape Lincoln’s own philosophy of life. The volume also traces how Burns’s lyrics helped Lincoln develop his own powerful sense of oratorical rhythm, from his casual anecdotal stories to his major state addresses.

Abraham Lincoln and Robert Burns connects the poor-farm-boy upbringings, the quasi-deistic religious views, the shared senses of destiny, the extraordinary gifts for words, and the quests for social equality of two respected and beloved world figures. This book is enhanced by twelve illustrations and two appendixes, which include Burns poems Lincoln particularly admired and Lincoln writings especially admired in Scotland.

The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War

by Edward Bartlett Rugemer

From the publisher:
While many historians look to internal conflict alone to explain the onset of the American Civil War, in The Problem of Emancipation, Edward Bartlett Rugemer places the origins of the war in a transatlantic context. Addressing a huge gap in the historiography of the antebellum United States, he explores the impact of Britain's abolition of slavery in 1834 on the coming of the war and reveals the strong influence of Britain's old Atlantic empire on the United States' politics. He demonstrates how American slaveholders and abolitionists alike borrowed from the antislavery movement developing on the transatlantic stage to fashion contradictory portrayals of abolition that became central to the arguments for and against American slavery.

In this ground-breaking study, Rugemer examines how southern and northern American newspapers covered three slave rebellions that preceded British abolition--and how American public opinion shifted radically as a result. For example, American slaveholders learned from the Haitian Revolution and a series of West Indian slave rebellions that abolitionist agitation led to insurrection. When American slaves began reacting to antislavery rhetoric, slaveholders feared the Caribbean pattern of agitation and revolt had spread to the United States. In 1822 after the fierce debates over Missouri, several Charleston slaves conspired to seize their city, and in 1831 Nat Turner led a bloody revolt shortly after William Lloyd Garrison published his radical abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator. Turning fear into action, American slaveholders seized and burned the publications that abolitionists sent southward in the mail, and in the North, the partisans of slavery mobbed abolitionist meetings and silenced the discussion of slavery in Congress.

Abolitionists, by contrast, took inspiration from the developments abroad. Leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, and William Ellery Channing used the West Indian emancipation to help advance their position, and members of John Tyler's presidential administration pushed for the annexation of Texas. Believing that the British achieved emancipation by mobilizing the British people with a robust public relations campaign, many African Americans, often joined by white allies, staged annual celebrations of the First of August, the day the Parliament enacted abolition. The celebrations grew and spread throughout the North, facilitating the emergence of an antislavery constituency that bolstered the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

Richly researched and skillfully argued, The Problem of Emancipation explores a long-neglected aspect of American slavery and the history of the Atlantic World and bridges a gap in our understanding of the American Civil War.

Edward Bartlett Rugemer is an assistant professor of history and African American studies at Yale University.

The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt's Flight from the Gallows

by Andrew C. A. Jampoler

From the publisher:
Despite all that has been written about the April 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the story of John Surratt--the only conspirator who got away--remains untold and largely unknown.

The capture and shooting of John Wilkes Booth twelve days after he shot Lincoln is a well-known and well-covered story. The fate of the eight other accomplices of Booth has also been widely written about. Four, including Surratt's mother, Mary, were convicted and hanged, and four were jailed. John Surratt alone managed to evade capture for twenty months and escape punishment once he was put on trial. In this tale of adventure and mystery, Andrew Jampoler tells what happened to that last conspirator, who after Booth's death became the most wanted man in America.

As the first full-length treatment of Surratt's escape, capture, and trial, the book provides fascinating details about his flight from New York, where he was on a Confederate spy mission scouting the huge Union prisoner of war camp in Elmira, through eastern Canada to a hideout in Liverpool, England, and on to France and the Papal States. His twenty-month flight, including nearly one year of enlisted service in the Papal Zouaves (the pope's army), is a remarkable adventure through mid-century Europe and locations unknown to most Americans of the time. Despite an uncontrollable tendency to babble to strangers about who he really was and what he had done, Surratt, frequently sheltered by sympathetic Roman Catholic priests, managed to stay at large during a flight that took him across three continents and over the Atlantic Ocean and half the Mediterranean Sea. Finally caught in Alexandria, Egypt, he was returned to Washington to stand trial in 1867.

Jampoler brings Surratt to life as he traces the wily young man's remarkable journey and the bitter legal proceedings against him that bizarrely led to his freedom. After his trial, Surratt lived out his life peacefully in Baltimore, marrying a relative of Francis Scott Key and dying at the age of seventy-two. The book's cast of characters includes a menagerie of the nineteenth century's most colorful personalities.

ANDREW C.A. JAMPOLER is also the author of the award-winning book Adak as well as Sailors in the Holy Land. After retiring from the U.S. Navy, he became a sales and marketing executive in the international aerospace industry. Now a resident of Loudoun County, VA, he has been writing full time for a decade.

The Papers of Jefferson Davis: June 1865-December 1870

by Suzanne Scott Gibbs (Author), Brady L. Hutchison (Author), Elizabeth Henson Smith (Author), Lynda Lasswell Crist (Editor), William J., Jr. Cooper (Introduction)

From the publisher:
"Being powerless to direct the current, I can only wait to see whither it runs," wrote Jefferson Davis to his wife, Varina, on October 11, 1865, five months after the victorious United States Army took him prisoner.

Indeed, in the tumultuous years immediately after the Civil War, Davis found himself more acted upon than active, a dramatic change from his previous twenty years of public service to the United States as a major political figure and then to the Confederacy as its president and commander in chief.

Volume 12 of The Papers of Jefferson Davis follows the former president of the Confederacy as he and his family fight to find their place in the world after the Civil War. A federal prisoner, incarcerated in a "living tomb" at Fort Monroe while the government decided whether, where, and by whom he should be tried for treason, Davis was initially allowed to correspond only with his wife and counsel. Released from prison after two hard years, he was not free from legal proceedings until 1869. Stateless, homeless, and without means to support himself and his young family, Davis lived in Canada and then Europe, searching for a new career in a congenial atmosphere. Finally, in November 1869, he settled in Memphis as president of a life insurance company and, for the first time in four years, had the means to build a new life.

Throughout this difficult period, Varina Howell Davis demonstrated strength and courage, especially when her husband was in prison. She fought tirelessly for his release and to ensure their children's education and safety. Their letters clearly demonstrate the Davises' love and their dependence on each other. They both worried over the fate of the South and of family members and friends who had suffered during the war.

Though disfranchised, Davis remained careful but not totally silent on the subject of politics. Even while in prison, he wrote without regret of his decision to follow Mississippi out of the Union and of his unswerving belief in the constitutionality of state rights and secession. Likewise, he praised all who supported the Confederacy with their blood and who, like himself, had lost everything.

Lynda Lasswell Crist has been editor of The Papers of Jefferson Davis since 1979. Suzanne Scott Gibbs has been assistant editor since 2006. Brady L. Hutchison and Elizabeth Henson Smith were assistant editors for the Jefferson Davis Project from 2004 to 2006 and 2003 to 2004, respectively.

First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War

by Joan E. Cashin

From the publisher:
When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection.

After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war.

A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.

Confederate Phoenix: Rebel Children and Their Families in South Carolina

by Edmund L. Drago

From the publisher:
In this innovative book, Edmund L. Drago tells the first full story of white children and their families in the most militant Southern state where the Civil War erupted.

Drawing on a rich array of sources, many of them formerly untapped, Drago shows how the War transformed the domestic world of the white South. Households were devastated by disease, death, and deprivation. Young people took up arms like adults, often with tragic results. In their play, boys at the Charleston Depot killed more civilians in South Carolina than Sherman's troops did. Thousands of fathers and brothers died in battle; many returned home with grave physical and psychological wounds. Widows and orphans often had to fend for themselves.

From the first volley at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor to the end of Reconstruction, Drago explores the extraordinary impact of war and defeat on the South Carolina home front. He covers a broad spectrum from the effect of "boy soldiers" on the ideals of childhood and child rearing to changes in education, marriage customs, and community as well as family life. He surveys the children's literature of the era, and explores the changing dimensions of Confederate patriarchal society. By studying the implications of the War and its legacy on cultural memory, Drago unveils the conflicting perspectives of South Carolina children-white and black--today.

Kentuckians in Gray: Confederate Generals and Field Officers of the Bluegrass State

by Bruce S. Allardice and Lawrence Lee Hewitt, editors

From the publisher:
Kentuckians in Gray is a comprehensive collection of biographical sketches of key Confederate military personnel from the Bluegrass state. In addition to providing short profiles of lesser-known colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors, the book vividly details significant players including Tyree H. Bell, Abraham Buford, Thomas James Churchill, and Richard Taylor. This work will be a standard reference for historians and Civil War buffs of the Bluegrass for years to come.

"Such a source on Kentucky's Confederate colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors has never been published--until now."--James A. Ramage, Regents Professor of History, Northern Kentucky University, and author of Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan

Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World

by Eric Foner, editor

From the publisher:
Our best historians offer fresh insights on Abraham Lincoln and his time to mark the upcoming bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.

In 1876 the abolitionist Frederick Douglass observed, "No man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln." Undeterred, the contributors to Our Lincoln believe it is possible even now, especially if the starting point is the interaction between the life and the times.

Several of these original essays focus on Lincoln's leadership as president and commander in chief. James M. McPherson examines Lincoln's deft navigation of the crosscurrents of politics and wartime strategy. Sean Wilentz assesses Lincoln's evolving position in the context of party politics. On slavery and race, Eric Foner writes of Lincoln and the movement to colonize emancipated slaves outside the United States. James Oakes considers Lincoln's views on race and citizenship. There are also brilliant essays on Lincoln's literary style, religious beliefs, and family life. The Lincoln who emerges is a man of his time, yet able to transcend and transform it—a reasonable measure of greatness.

Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. His many award-winning books focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. He lives in New York City.

The Gettysburg Companion: A Guide to the Most Famous Battle of the Civil War

by Mark Adkin

From the publisher:
There have been many books about Gettysburg, but never one to rival this in scale or authority. Based on extensive research, The Gettysburg Companion describes the battle in detail, drawing on firsthand accounts of participants on all sides in order to give the reader a vivid sense of what it was like to experience the carnage at Gettysburg in early July 1863. The many full-color maps--all specially commissioned for the book--and the numerous photographs, charts, and diagrams make this book a feast for the eyes and a collector's dream. 500 color illustrations, 9 x 12

Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War

by Jacqueline Jones

From the publisher:
A panoramic portrait of the city of Savannah before, during, and after the Civil War—a poignant story of the African American freedom struggle in this prosperous southern riverport, set against a backdrop of military conflict and political turmoil. Jacqueline Jones, prizewinning author of the groundbreaking Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, has written a masterpiece of time and place, transporting readers to the boisterous streets of this fascinating city.

Drawing on military records, diaries, letters, newspapers, and memoirs, Jones brings Savannah to life in all its diversity, weaving together the stories of individual men and women, bankers and dockworkers, planters and field hands, enslaved laborers and free people of color. The book captures in vivid detail the determination of former slaves to integrate themselves into the nation’s body politic and to control their own families, workplaces, churches, and schools. She explains how white elites, forestalling democracy and equality, created novel political and economic strategies to maintain their stranglehold on the machinery of power, and often found unexpected allies in northern missionaries and military officials.

Jones brilliantly describes life in the Georgia lowcountry—what it was like to be a slave toiling in the disease-ridden rice swamps; the strivings of black entrepreneurs, slaves and free blacks alike; and the bizarre intricacies of the slave-master relationship. Here are the stories of Thomas Simms, an enslaved brickmason who escapes to Boston only to be captured by white authorities; Charles Jones Jr., the scion of a prominent planter family, who remains convinced that Savannahis invincible even as the city’s defenses fall one after the other in the winter of 1861; his mother, Mary Jones, whose journal records her horror as the only world she knows vanishes before her; Nancy Johnson, an enslaved woman who loses her family’s stores of food and precious household belongings to rampaging Union troops; Aaron A. Bradley, a fugitive slave turned attorney and provocateur who defies whites in the courtroom, on the streets, and in the rice fields; and the Reverend Tunis G. Campbell, who travels from the North to establish self-sufficient black colonies on the Georgia coast.

Deeply researched and beautifully written, Saving Savannah is a powerful account of slavery’s long reach and the way the war transformed this southern city forever.

North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction

by Paul D. Escott, editor

From the publisher:
Although North Carolina was a "home front" state rather than a battlefield state for most of the Civil War, it was heavily involved in the Confederate war effort and experienced many conflicts as a result. North Carolinians were divided over the issue of secession, and changes in race and gender relations brought new controversy. Blacks fought for freedom, women sought greater independence, and their aspirations for change stimulated fierce resistance from more privileged groups. Republicans and Democrats fought over power during Reconstruction and for decades thereafter disagreed over the meaning of the war and Reconstruction.

With contributions by well-known historians as well as talented younger scholars, this volume offers new insights into all the key issues of the Civil War era that played out in pronounced ways in the Tar Heel State. In nine essays composed specifically for this volume, contributors address themes such as ambivalent whites, freed blacks, the political establishment, racial hopes and fears, postwar ideology, and North Carolina women. These issues of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras were so powerful that they continue to agitate North Carolinians today.

Contributors include David Brown, Judkin Browning, Laura F. Edwards, Paul D. Escott, John C. Inscoe, Chandra Manning, Barton A. Myers, Steven E. Nash, Paul Yandle, and Karin Zipf. The editor is Paul D. Escott.

Paul D. Escott is Reynolds Professor of American History and former dean at Wake Forest University. He is author or editor of thirteen books, including Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives and Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900 (both from the University of North Carolina Press).

Civil War Battlefields Then and Now

by James Campi

From the publisher:
As a defining event in the history of the United States, the Civil War has no equal. Civil War Battlefields Then and Now looks at the battlegrounds where it all took place, covering the broad sweep of events from the Southern capture of Fort Sumter to the Battles of Gettysburg and Appomattox. Historical illustrations and archival photographs of these sacred locations are compared with specially commissioned photographs of the battlefields as they are today, accompanied by descriptive and interesting text.

From CWBN:
This is the paperback release of a previously published hardcover.

Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register

by Bruce S. Allardice

From the publisher:
This first comprehensive study of the Confederacy s colonels contains biographical articles on each of the 1,583 men who achieved the rank of full colonel by the end of their careers including both staff and line officers and members of all armies. Appendixes list state army colonels, colonels who became generals, and colonels whose rank cannot be proven. Allardice also explains how one became a colonel and exposes the inadequacies of the officer-nominating process, questions of seniority, and problems of rank inflation.

Bruce S. Allardice is an Adjunct Professor at South Suburban College and Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois and the author of More Generals in Gray and coauthor of Texas burial Sites of Civil War Notables. He lives in Des Plaines, Illinois.

The Black Citizen-Soldiers of Kansas, 1864-1901

by Roger D. Cunningham

From the publisher:
Many Americans know the story of the United States Colored Troops, who broke racial barriers in Civil War combat, and of the Buffalo Soldiers, who served in the West after that conflict, but African Americans also served in segregated militia units in twenty-three states. This book tells the story of that experience in Kansas. In addition to black regulars, hundreds of other black militiamen and volunteers from Kansas provided military service from the Civil War until the dawn of the twentieth century. More than a military history, this account records the quest of black men, many of them former slaves, for inclusion in American society. Many came from the bottom of the socioeconomic order and found that as militiamen they could gain respect.

Roger D. Cunningham is a retired U.S. Army Officer who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The Road to Disunion: Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861

by William W Freehling

From the publisher:
Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more.

As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession.

Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject.

"This sure-to-be-lasting work--studded with pen portraits and consistently astute in its appraisal of the subtle cultural and geographic variations in the region--adds crucial layers to scholarship on the origins of America's bloodiest conflict." -- The Atlantic Monthly

"Splendid, painstaking account...and so a work of history reaches into the past to illuminate the present. It is light we need, and we owe Freehling a debt for shedding it." -- Washington Post

"A masterful, dramatic, breathtakingly detailed narrative." -- The Baltimore Sun

Thomas Ewing Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General

by Ronald D. Smith

From the publisher:
The Ewings influenced the course of the Midwest for more than fifty years. Patriarch Thomas Ewing raised four major players in the nation s history including William Tecumseh Cump Sherman, taken in as a nine-year-old. Smith shows that Tom Jr. had a remarkable career of his own. He came to national prominence in the fight over the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, was instrumental in starting up the Union Pacific Railroad, and became the first chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. Ewing obtained a commission in the Civil War and issued the dramatic General Order No. 11 that expelled residents from sections of western Missouri. Then this confidant of Abraham Lincoln s went on to courageously defend three of the assassination conspirators and lobbied the key vote to block the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

Ronald D. Smith is an attorney in Larned, Kansas.

The Rebel and the Rose: James Semple, Julia Gardiner Tyler, and the Lost Confederate Gold

by Wesley Millett and Gerald White

From the publisher:
In April 1865 the Civil War was over for most Americans. More than 600,000 soldiers, North and South, had died from wounds or disease. At Petersburg, Virginia, the Union army overwhelmed the Confederate lines, forcing Confederate President Jefferson Davis to flee Richmond, the Southern capital. Accompanying him, first by train and later on horseback are most of the officials of his administration, an escort of cavalry, various hangers-on, and all that remains of the treasury.

One of these traveling with Davis was a navy paymaster, James A. Semple. First, the group stopped at Danville, Virginia, but was forced to retreat farther following Lee's surrender. With the defeat of the last significant Confederate army in the East, the Confederate government dissolved. Davis, however, felt obliged to carry on the struggle by going west. In Washington, Georgia, a small town untouched by the war, Semple was entrusted with the Confederate treasury: $86,000 in coins and bullion, the equivalent of about $2 million today. The gold was secured in the false bottom of a carriage, and Semple and another man, Edward M. Tidball, disappeared with it into the night.

In The Rebel and the Rose, Wesley Millett and Gerald White reveal for the first time what happened to the gold (as well as some 160,000 Mexican silver dollars, which, if found today, would be valued at up to $16 million). Yet Millett and White offer more than an accounting of the missing treasury. In Semple, they find a man on the run, seeking to evade capture in the devastated South that now swarmed with Federal troops. His odyssey took him from the swamps of Georgia to the Staten Island home of Julia Gardiner Tyler, where he eventually took refuge. Once known as the "Rose of Long Island" for an advertisement that included her image and still captivating in her forties, Julia was the widow of former president John Tyler and the stepmother of Semple's estranged wife.

In detail, Millett and White document the symbiotic bond that developed between the Rebel and the Rose, as well as Semple's growing passion for Julia. At the same time, Semple was a man on a mission. He worked with other expatriate Confederates, often traveling to Canada, toward the goal of precipitating a crisis between the United States and Great Britain. Through it all, Semple is the threat that binds events together. And the Confederate gold plays a part in all that follows.
Wesley Millett has been a researcher and writer for more than twenty-five years. His articles appear regularly in more than a dozen national and international publications.

Gerald White is a retired air force colonel and instructor at the Army War College. Before his retirement, he held senior leadership positions in air force intelligence. He is the author of several books on recent U.S. military operations.

George B. McClelland the Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman

by Thomas J. Rowland

From the publisher:
Perhaps no other Union commander’s reputation has been the subject of as much controversy as George B. McClellan’s.

Thomas J. Rowland presents a framework in which early Civil War command can be viewed without direct comparison to that of the final two years. Such comparisons, in his opinion, are both unfair and contextually inaccurate. Only by understanding how very different was the context and nature of the war facing McClellan, as opposed to Grant and Sherman, can one discard the traditional "good general-bad general" approach to command performance. In such a light, McClellan’s career, both his shortcomings and accomplishments, can be viewed with clearer perspective.

As the subtitle suggests (In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman), the wartime records of Grant and Sherman and the handling of those records by McClellan critics, provide counterpoints for restoring perspective. Such simplicity makes this historiography easy for all. It is good reading that can be enjoyed by both the general public and Civil War specialists. - Trenton Times

Thomas J. Rowland is an instructor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His articles have appeared in Civil War History, Catholic Historical Review, Eire-Ireland, and Journal of American Ethnic History.

From CWBN:
This book is a milestone in ACW historiography, marking a shift in the tide that is now cresting ten years later.

It is the first book-length study of McClellan's critics. From my Amazon review of 1999:

Its importance is magnified both by its challenge to consensus "truths" about McClellan and by the importance of McClellan himself to the early Union war effort. Well written, eminently reasonable, thoroughly informed of all the McClellan controversies, this is a volume for anyone who wants to delve just a little deeper than pop history. Rowland makes historiography (ugly word) easy and even enjoyable. I can't recommend this work highly enough.

I rated it ACW book of the year then and it is very much on my mind still. If you've ever overdosed on historians' emotional tirades and polemics, Rowland provides the antidote.

This is the paperback release of a previously published hardcover.

Cobb's Legion Cavalry: A History and Roster of the Ninth Georgia Volunteers in the Civil War

by Harriet Bey Mesic

From the publisher:
"The best regiment of either army, North or South"-this was the description of Cobb's Legion offered by General Wade Hampton during the Civil War. This large and extremely experienced unit played a crucial role for the South throughout the war. This book offers a history of their actions in more than 100 battles and skirmishes over the course of the war. Additionally, biographies of the officers and the nearly 1500 men of the regiment are included, as well as records of those who died, deserted, or were prisoners of war.

Harriet Bey Mesic, whose great-grandfather was part of Cobb's Legion Cavalry, edited the L.E. Beacon Newsletter for two decades and has written a book about Fredericksburg, Virginia. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Confederate Struggle for Command: General James Longstreet and the First Corps in the West

by Alexander Mendoza

From the publisher:
Was Lt. Gen. James Longstreet a lackluster, indecisive leader or a victim of political circumstances?

Though traditionally saddled with much of the blame for the Confederate loss at Gettysburg, Longstreet was actually a capable, resourceful, and brave commander, argues historian Alexander Mendoza. Confederate Struggle for Command offers a comprehensive analysis of Longstreet's leadership during his seven-month assignment in the Tennessee theater of operations. Mendoza concludes that the obstacles to effective command faced by

Longstreet had at least as much to do with longstanding grievances and politically motivated prejudices as they did with any personal or military shortcomings of Longstreet's.

Longstreet's First Corps parted company with Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in September 1863. Subsequently, the First Corps contributed decisively to the Confederate victory at Chickamauga. But when Longstreet then joined a group of disaffected generals in denouncing Braxton Bragg, the commanding general of the Army of Tennessee, the resulting imbroglio hampered the effectiveness of the entire First Corps.

Confederate Struggle for Command adds an important layer of nuanced understanding to the career and legacy of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and will be an enjoyable and informative source for Civil War buffs, military historians, and interested general readers.

Alexander Mendoza, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler, holds a Ph.D. from Texas Tech University.

Pictorial History Of The Confederacy

by John Chandler Griffin

From the publisher:
Rather than diminishing with time, the fascination with the Confederacy and its heroes seems to grow increasingly stronger. This volume features a wide selection of rarely seen photographs of Confederate heroes, such as Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, Jubal Early, Nathan Bedford Forest, A.P. Hill and Jeb Stuart, along with details of their military careers and personal lives that are little known to the average reader.

Arranged chronologically and geographically, this book features descriptions of more than forty battles of the War Between the States, along with battle maps, which illustrate where the Confederates and the Union antagonists were located during these various fights. The first section discusses and provides images from 1860 to 1861, during the secession to Fort Sumter. The author then discusses the major battles that occurred in 1861 in northern Virginia and in the South and West, providing several photographs that take on much of the story telling. The sections for the years 1862 to 1865 are arranged similarly and each section also includes background about the Southern battle flags from various groups such as The Texas Rangers (8th Texas Calvary) and the Confederate Navy. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Dr. John Chandler Griffin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus with the University of South Carolina, is the author of thirteen books and numerous magazine articles. Governor Jim Hodges recently named him to the Order of the Silver Crescent, the state’s highest award.

From CWBN:
This is the paperback release of a previously published hardcover.

People of the Underground Railroad: A Biographical Dictionary

by Tom Calarco

From the publisher:
The Underground Railroad was perhaps the best example in U.S. history of blacks and whites working together for the common good. People of the Underground Railroad is the largest in-depth collection of profiles of those individuals involved in the spiriting of black slaves to freedom in the northern states and Canada beginning around 1800 and lasting to the early Civil War years. One hundred entries introduce people who had a significant role in the rescuing, harboring, or conducting of the fugitives--from abolitionists, evangelical ministers, Quakers, philanthropists, lawyers, judges, physicians, journalists, educators, to novelists, feminists, and barbers--as well as notable runaways. The selections are geographically representational of the broad railroad network. There is renewed interest in the Underground Railroad, exemplified by the new National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and energized scholarly inquiry. People of the Underground Railroad presents authoritative information gathered from the latest research and established sources, many of them from period publications. Designed for student research and general browsing, in-depth essay entries include further reading. Numerous sidebars complement the entries. A timeline, illustrations, and map help put the profiles into context.

TOM CALARCO is an independent scholar specializing in the Underground Railroad. He is the author of The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region (2004) among other works.

Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign That Decided the Civil War

by Jack Hurst

From the publisher:
Deep in the winter of 1862, on the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, two extraordinary military leaders faced each other in an epic clash that would transform them both and change the course of American history forever.

Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant had no significant military successes to his credit at the outset of the campaign. He was barely clinging to his position within the Union Army—he had been officially charged with chronic drunkenness only days earlier, and his own troops despised him. His opponent was as untested as he was: an obscure lieutenant colonel named Nathan Bedford Forrest. The two men held one thing in common: an unrelenting desire for victory at any cost.

A riveting account of the making of two great military leaders, and two battles that transformed America forever, Men of Fire is destined to become a classic work of military history.

Jack Hurst is a former journalist who has written for newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Tennessean. He is the author of Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography. A descendant of both Union and Confederate military officers, he lives with his wife outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

From CWBN
This is the first paperback edition of a previously published hardback.

Confederate Admiral: The Life and Wars of Franklin Buchanan

by Craig L. Symonds

From the publisher:
A leading historian of both the Civil War and American naval history takes a fresh look at Franklin Buchanan, the U.S. Naval Academy's first superintendent who went on to become the Confederate Navy's first admiral. Buchanan's resignation from the U.S. Navy in April 1861 as the nation teetered on the brink of Civil War is one of the many dramatic episodes in this revealing biography. Convinced that his native state of Maryland was about to secede from the Union, Buchanan gave up his commission; when Maryland did not secede, he desperately tried to get it back. Unsuccessful, he eventually went South, where as the Confederacy's only full admiral he helped mold its naval strategy and took command of both the Virginia (Merrimack) in the battle of Hampton Roads in 1861 and the Tennessee in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864.

While Buchanan's Civil War experiences helped define the drama of the period, his fifty-year naval career illuminates the sweeping changes in the U.S. Navy of the antebellum years. This stimulating and authoritative biography chronicles Buchanan's life as a midshipman on the square-rigged sailing frigate Java and as a commander at the helm of the coal-burning side-wheel steamer Susquehanna. It examines his pivotal role in the establishment of the Naval Academy and his experiences both as the first American to set foot in Japan and the first to conn a U.S. Navy warship up the Yangtze River. More than a record of events in Buchanan's career, this biography helps readers understand Buchanan's character and appreciate the broader issues of politics, slavery, loyalty, and professionalism in the era of America's greatest national trauma.

From CWBN
This is the first paperback edition of a previously published hardback.

Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C.

by Kathryn Allamong Jacob (author) and Edwin H. Remsberg (photographer)

From the publisher:
Although the monuments of Washington, D.C., honor more than two centuries of history and heroes, five years of that history produced more of the city's public commemorative sculpture than all the others combined. The heroes of the Civil War command Washington's choicest vantage points and most visible parks, lending their names to the city's most familiar circles and squares -- Scott, Farragut, Logan, Sheridan, Dupont, and others.

In Testament to Union, Kathryn Allamong Jacob tells the stories behind the many District of Columbia statues that honor participants in the Civil War, predominantly Union, and testify to their sacrifice and valor. In her introduction, Jacob puts these monuments in historical context, describing the often bitter battles over control of historical memory, the postwar monument business (a lone soldier-in-granite model could cost a community as little as $1,000), and the rise of the "city beautiful" movement that transformed Washington. She then offers individual descriptions of forty-one sculptures, providing a lively and informative guide to some of Washington's most beautiful and moving works of art.

Organized geographically for easy use on walking or driving tours, the entries begin by listing the subject or title of the memorial along with its sculptor, medium, date, and location. Jacob describes its various elements and symbols, and she notes who commissioned the sculpture, who paid for it (or failed to pay in several cases), and who approved its design and placement. She also includes anecdotes and controversies that bring the monuments and their colorful history more fully to life. Admiral David Farragut's statue, for example, is cast from the propeller of his ship the U.S.S. Hartford, from whose rigging he shouted, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" during the battle of Mobile Bay. At the dedication of Lincoln Park's Emancipation Monument in 1876, the largest assembly of African-American to date, speaker Frederick Douglass shocked white listeners with thinly veiled criticism of the martyred Lincoln.

Edwin Remsberg's photographs of the monuments capture striking images of war and sacrifice -- the straining horses and terrified men of the cavalry grouping at the Grant Monument; the vivid tomb effigy of young John Meigs, depicting him as he was found dead in a field; the Pension Building frieze with its hundreds of finely detailed terra cotta soldiers and sailors marching and rowing across the face of the building. Along with swashbuckling generals atop pedestals bristling with cannon, unexpected subjects appear. A statue of John Ericsson, the Swedish-American who designed the Monitor and perfected the screw propeller for the Union Navy, is hidden in a circle of shrubbery beside the Potomac. A bas-relief of twelve nuns dedicated to the memory of various religious orders who nursed the wounded during the Civil War sits beside noisy Rhode Island Avenue. In addition to the enormous white temple to Lincoln on the Mall, four smaller statues of that president can be found in the city where he was assassinated.

Washington's Civil War sculptures bear silent witness to the struggle to preserve the Union. They are the fruit of conscious efforts to shape the nation's memory of that struggle. For tourists and long-time residents, and for anyone interested in the Civil War or public art, Testament to Union is a wonderful guide to these tangible connections to the nation's past and an era when public monuments packed powerful messages.

Kathryn Allamong Jacob is deputy director of the American Jewish Historical Society in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is the author of Capital Elites: Society in Washington, D.C., after the Civil War. Edwin Harlan Remsberg is a photographer who lives in Jarrettsville, Maryland. His photographs appear in Maryland's Vanishing Lives, also available from Johns Hopkins.

From CWBN
This gorgeous mix of lyric observation, art history, historiography, and Civil War miscellany. Cannot recommend it too highly.

Note: This is the first paperback edition of a previously published hardback.

How Confederate Women Created New Self-Identities as the Civil War Progressed: A Study of Their Diaries

by Dana W. McMichael

From the publisher:
This study explores the connection between periodic life writing and the formation of ethnic identity, and argues that the practice of keeping a diary enabled Confederate women to actively maintain and build power structures which privileged “white” Southerners.

“By providing careful analysis, thoughtful interpretation, and full context for these diaries, this book pushes forward scholars’ understanding of the diary form and creates a model of how we may understand the rich troves of artifact and text to be unearthed and considered as American self-writing.” – R. Scott LaMascus, Professor of English, Oklahoma Christian University

“[McMichael] provides fascinating insights into the making of the Other in the Civil War South as Southern women defined themselves against Yankee soldiers, African-American slaves, and non-literate whites. [This] book is a welcome addition to the fields of diary studies, ethnic studies, and Civil War history.” – Dr. Brent Gibson, Associate Professor of English, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

Dr. Dana McMichael is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Abilene Christian University. She completed her Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University

Civil War Paintings

by Mort Kunstler

From the publisher:
For nearly twenty years, Mort Künstler has interpreted the Civil War through his paintings. As part of his research, he has turned to leading historians and scholars for information that he has then translated on canvas to create an indelible image of the war, in many ways the defining ordeal in American history.

The four volumes that make up The Civil War Paintings of Mort Künstler contains more than 650 images. Some of these images are of original sketches, others are of the works in progress, others are completed paintings, yet others are details in the paintings that are of particular interest.

The four-volume set contains the following titles:

Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Antietam
ISBN13: 9781581825566
ISBN10: 1581825560
$18.95, Hardcover

Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Gettysburg
ISBN13: 9781581825572
ISBN10: 1581825572
$18.95, Hardcover

Volume 3: The Gettysburg Campaign
ISBN13: 9781581825589
ISBN10: 1581825587
$18.95, Hardcover

Volume 4: Gettysburg to Appomattox
ISBN13: 9781581825596
ISBN10: 1581825595
$18.95, Hardcover

MORT KUNSTLER is the reigning dean of American historical artists. No other artist has illustrated so many events in America with such authenticity and drama, from cave-dwelling Native Americans to the space program. He has had numerous one-man exhibitions at galleries such as the Hammer Galleries in New York City. He also was the subject of a one-hour special on A&E Network's Time Machine. His previous books include Images of the Civil War, Gettysburg, Jackson and Lee, and The Civil War Art of MORT KüNSTLER. He lives in Oyster Bay, New York.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition

by Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson (editors)

From the publisher:
While the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas are undoubtedly the most celebrated in American history, they may also be the most consequential as well. For the issues so fiercely debated in 1858 were about various interrelated aspects of one momentous, nation-threatening issue: slavery. The contest between Lincoln and Douglas became a testing ground for the viability of conflicting ideals in a nation deeply divided. One of the most colorful and engaging episodes in American history, this series of debates is of enduring interest as an illuminating instance of the ever-recurring dilemma of self-government: what happens when the guiding principle of democracy, "popular sovereignty," confronts a principled stand against a "moral, social, and political evil"? The tragic answer in this case came three years later: civil war.

Important as they are, the Lincoln-Douglas debates have long since ceased to be self-explanatory. This edition is the first to provide a text founded on all known records, rather than following one or another of the partisan and sometimes widely-varying newspaper accounts. Meticulously edited and annotated, it provides numerous aids to help the modern reader understand the debates, including extensive introductory material, commentary, and a glossary. The fullest and most dependable edition of the Lincoln-Douglas debates ever prepared, this edition brings readers as close as possible to the original words of these two remarkable men.

The Great Comeback: How Abraham Lincoln Beat the Odds to Win the 1860 Republican Nomination

by Gary Ecelbarger

From the publisher:
In the fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln looked to be anything but destined for greatness. Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, Lincoln was wallowing in the depths of despair following his loss to Stephen Douglas in the 1858 senatorial campaign and was taking stock in his life. The author takes us on a journey with Abraham Lincoln from the last weeks of 1858 until the end of May in 1860, on the road to his unlikely Republication presidential nomination.

In tracing Lincoln's steps from city to city, from one public appearance to the next along the campaign trail, we see the future president shape and polish his public persona. Although he had accounted himself well in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, the man from Springfield, Illinois, he was nevertheless seen as the darkest of dark horses for the highest office in the land. Upon hearing Lincoln speak, one contemporary said, “I will not say he reminded me of Satan, but he certainly was the ungodliest figure I had ever seen." The reader sees how this "ungodliest" of figures shrewdly spun his platform to crowds far and wide and, in doing so, became a public celebrity on par with any throughout the land.

This is a story teeming with drama and intrigue about an event that no one could fathom occurring today...yet it absolutely happened in with America seven score and eight years ago, when Lincoln, the man, took his first steps on the way toward becoming Abraham Lincoln, the legendary leader and most respected president of American history.

"Anyone who has thought there was nothing more to be said about Lincoln will have to think again after reading Gary Ecelbarger's excellent new book, The Great Comeback. With impressive research and engaging prose Ecelbarger shows a fact of Lincoln's rise to the presidency that has never before been exploed and in the process weaves a tale that is as interesting as it is inspiring.”—Steven E. Woodworth, author of Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865

Two Brothers - One North, One South (novel)

by David H. Jones

From the publisher:
Walt Whitman feared that the real war would never get in the books: the true stories that depicted the courage and humanity of soldiers who fought, bled, and died in the American Civil War.

Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, along with the personages that forged them, David H. Jones's novel spans four years in the midst of America s costliest and most commemorated war. The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended. As fate has it, William's brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well. The reader is taken seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.

The author, David H. Jones, born and raised in West Virginia, has been a lifelong student of the Civil War. His research took him into the swamps of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, to rediscover the lost location where a pivotal event in the book took place. A graduate of Kentucky Military Institute and Babson College, former Navy officer, and entrepreneur, he currently lives and writes in Los Angeles, California.

Lincoln And His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842

by Richard Lawrence Miller

From the publisher:
In the second volume of this monumental Lincoln biography, the young Illinois politician is challenged by Stephen Douglas--brilliant organizer of the Illinois Democratic Party, perennial officeholder and candidate, and unscrupulous when publicly debating Lincoln. Lincoln and his fellow Whigs go on the attack as Democrats split into two factions. Rhetorical violence becomes physical as Whig mobs attack and politicians attempt murder. Lincoln publicly asks whether democracy can endure under such conditions. Yet Lincoln more than once takes politically unpopular stances condemning slavery and defending rights of free blacks in Illinois. The second volume of Lincoln and His World also explores Lincoln's private life: his romances with Ann Rutledge and wealthy plantation belle Mary Owens, his intimate friendship with Joshua Speed, and a stormy, loving relationship with the vivacious and passionate Mary Todd. Rather than concentrate on how Lincoln affected the world, author Richard Lawrence Miller shows how the world affected Lincoln, placing Lincoln in historical context to help readers to understand him. Presenting numerous firsthand recollections, Miller lets participants speak for themselves, an approach reflecting his years in public radio script writing.

Richard Lawrence Miller, a resident of Kansas City, is a former public radio producer and independent scholar whose books range from the Cold War to the drug war. His first presidential biography, Truman: The Rise to Power, was published twenty years ago. Articles about his Lincoln research have appeared in The New Yorker and American Heritage. His Lincoln website is www.myspace.com/lincolnian.

Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865

by Ethan Rafuse

From the publisher:
The generalship of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy's greatest commander, has long fascinated students of the American Civil War. In assessing Lee and his military career, historians have faced the great challenge of explaining how a man who achieved extraordinary battlefield success in 1862-63 ended up surrendering his army and accepting the defeat of his cause in 1865. How, in just under two years, could Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Confederacy have gone from soaring triumph at Chancellorsville to total defeat at Appomattox Court House?

In this reexamination of the last two years of Lee's storied military career, Ethan S. Rafuse offers a clear, informative, and insightful account of Lee's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to defend the Confederacy against a relentless and determined foe. Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy describes the great campaigns that shaped the course of this crucial period in American history, the challenges Lee faced in each battle, and the dramatic events that determined the war's outcome. In addition to providing readable and richly detailed narratives of such campaigns as Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Spotsylvania, and Appomattox, Rafuse offers compelling analysis of Lee's performance as a commander and of the strategic and operational contexts that influenced the course of the war. He superbly describes and explains the factors that shaped Union and Confederate strategy, how both sides approached the war in Virginia from an operational standpoint, differences in the two sides' respective military capabilities, and how these forces shaped the course and outcome of events on the battlefield. Rich in insights and analysis, this book provides a full, balanced, and cogent account of how even the best efforts of one of history's great commanders could not prevent the total defeat of his army and its cause. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in the career of Robert E. Lee and the military history of the Civil War.

This book provides a comprehensive, yet concise and entertaining narrative of the battles and campaigns that highlighted this phase of the war and analyzes the battles and Lee's generalship in the context of the steady deterioration of the Confederacy's prospects for victory.

Ethan Rafuse is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His previous books include McClellan's War: the Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, George Gordon Meade and the War in the East, and A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and the Battle of Manassas.

Black Troops, White Commanders and Freedmen during the Civil War

by Howard Westwood

From the publisher:
In the ten probing essays collected in this volume, Howard C. Westwood recounts the often bitter experiences of black men who were admitted to military service and the wrenching problems associated with the shifting status of African Americans during the Civil War.

Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen during the Civil War covers topics ranging from the roles played by Lincoln and Grant in beginning black soldiery to the sensitive issues that arose when black soldiers (and their white officers) were captured by the Confederates. The essays relate the exploits of black heroes such as Robert Smalls, who singlehandedly captured a Confederate steamer, as well as the experiences of the ignoble Reverend Fountain Brown, who became the first person charged with violating the Emancipation Proclamation.

Although many thousands were enlisted as soldiers, blacks were barred from becoming commissioned officers and for a long time they were paid far less than their white counterparts. These and other blatant forms of discrimination understandably provoked discontent among black troops which, in turn, sparked friction with their white commanders. Westwood's fascinating account of the artillery company from Rhode Island amply demonstrates how frustrations among black soldiers came to be seen as "mutiny" by some white officers.

The late Howard C. Westwood was a senior partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling. He published carefully documented articles on the Civil War for more than thirty years and served as a director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association.

Abraham Lincoln: A Biography

by Benjamin P. Thomas

From the publisher:
Long considered a classic, Benjamin P. Thomas's Abraham Lincoln: A Biography takes an incisive look at one of American history's greatest figures. Originally published in 1952 to wide acclaim, this eloquent account rises above previously romanticized depictions of the sixteenth president to reveal the real Lincoln: a complex, shrewd, and dynamic individual whose exceptional life has long intrigued the public.

Thomas traces the president from his hardscrabble beginnings and early political career, through his years as an Illinois lawyer and his presidency during the Civil War. Although Lincoln is appropriately placed against the backdrop of the dramatic times in which he lived, the author's true focus is on Lincoln the man and his intricate personality. While Thomas pays tribute to Lincoln's many virtues and accomplishments, he is careful not to dramatize a persona already larger than life in the American imagination. Instead he presents a candid and balanced representation that provides compelling insight into Lincoln's true character and the elements that forged him into an extraordinary leader. Thomas portrays Lincoln as a man whose conviction, resourcefulness, and inner strength enabled him to lead the nation through the most violent crossroads in its history.

Thomas's direct, readable narrative is concise while losing none of the crucial details of Lincoln's remarkable life. The volume's clarity of style makes it accessible to beginners, but it is complex and nuanced enough to interest longtime Lincoln scholars. After more than half a century, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography is still an essential source for anyone interested in learning more about the many facets of the sixteenth president, and it remains the definitive single-volume work on the life of an American legend.

Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President

by Thomas L. Krannawitter

From the publisher:
In this reasoned argument against the prevailing orthodoxies of the right, left, and center, Krannawitter takes on all of Lincoln's detractors and reasserts his contemporary relevance.

A heady mix of narrative history and political insights, Vindicating Lincoln reveals a man whose political and moral example sets him apart as the greatest President of the United States of America.

Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer

by Stephen Dando-Collins

From the publisher:
When he died in 1877, Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the Vanderbilt dynasty, was wealthier than the U.S. Treasury. But he had nearly lost his fortune in 1856, when William Walker, a young Nashville genius, set out to conquer Central America and, in the process, take away Vanderbilt’s most profitable shipping business. To win back his empire, Vanderbilt had to win a bloody war involving seven countries.

Tycoon’s War tells the story of an epic imperialist duel—a violent battle of capitalist versus idealist, money versus ambition—and a monumental clash of egos that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Written by a master storyteller, this incredible true story, impeccably researched and never before told in full, is packed with greed, intrigue, and some of the most hair-raising battle scenes ever written.

Stephen Dando-Collins is an Australian-born historian who has written a number of fiction and non-fiction books, including Caesar’s Legion and Standing Bear Is a Person. He lives in Tasmania.

Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign

by Peter Cozzens

From the publisher:
In the spring of 1862, Federal troops under the command of General George B. McClellan launched what was to be a coordinated, two-pronged attack on Richmond in the hope of taking the Confederate capital and bringing a quick end to the Civil War. The Confederate high command tasked Stonewall Jackson with diverting critical Union resources from this drive, a mission Jackson fulfilled by repeatedly defeating much larger enemy forces. His victories elevated him to near iconic status in both the North and the South and signaled a long war ahead. One of the most intriguing and storied episodes of the Civil War, the Valley Campaign has heretofore only been related from the Confederate point of view. With Shenandoah 1862, Peter Cozzens dramatically and conclusively corrects this shortcoming, giving equal attention to both Union and Confederate perspectives.

Based on a multitude of primary sources, Cozzens's groundbreaking work offers new interpretations of the campaign and the reasons for Jackson's success. Cozzens also demonstrates instances in which the mythology that has come to shroud the campaign has masked errors on Jackson's part. In addition, Shenandoah 1862 provides the first detailed appraisal of Union leadership in the Valley Campaign, with some surprising conclusions.

Moving seamlessly between tactical details and analysis of strategic significance, Cozzens presents the first balanced, comprehensive account of a campaign that has long been romanticized but never fully understood.

Peter Cozzens is an independent scholar and Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Department of State. He is author or editor of nine highly acclaimed Civil War books, including The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth (from the University of North Carolina Press).

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard

From the publisher:
On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter.

Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an expose, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides theclearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.

Irish-American Units in the Civil War

by Thomas Rodgers (Author), Richard Hook (Illustrator)

From the publisher:
Some 150,000 Irish-American immigrants served in the Union Army, most of them from Boston, New York and Chicago, and about 40,000 fought in the Confederate Army. The best known unit was the Irish Brigade of the Union Army of the Potomac, which distinguished itself at Antietam and, particularly, at Fredericksburg, where its sacrificial bravery astonished friend and foe alike. Famous regiments were New York's 'Fighting 69th', the 9th Massachusetts, 116th Pennsylvania, 23rd Illinois and 35th Indiana. Two Louisiana Confederate brigages from New Orleans were almost entirely Irish and several other Irish companies made a name for themselves at Shiloh, Chickamauga and other key battles. This book will give a brief overview of the history of the units on each side of the conflict and will be illustrated with uniform details, flags and archival photographs.

Thomas G. Rodgers is an Alabama University history graduate and librarian, and prolific contributor to the Company of Military Historians publications on American Civil War units. The author lives in Eufaula, Alabama.

Fitz-John Porter, Scapegoat Of Second Manassas: The Rise, Fall and Rise of the General Accused of Disobedience

by Donald R. Jermann

From the publisher:
One of the darkest days in United States history since Valley Forge was August 30, 1862. On this date the Confederate army inflicted a smashing defeat to the United States army at Manassas, on the outskirts of Washington. To many, including the president and press, it appeared that Washington was all but lost.

The defeat was all the more galling because it was inflicted by a numerically inferior and inadequately equipped Confederate force. Someone, it was assumed, had to be responsible. Union Army commander Major General John Pope came forward and blamed the loss on young, handsome, charismatic and popular Major General Fitz-John Porter. He charged Porter with disobedience of orders and shameful conduct before the enemy. But was Porter really guilty or was it he who saved the country from an even greater disaster? This book examines the question of Porter’s guilt or innocence, examining the trial and its aftereffects from several perspectives. It also examines the larger question: If Porter was innocent, then who was to blame?

Captain Donald R. Jermann served more than 32 years on active duty in the Navy covering World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Afterward he served as a senior executive in the Department of Defense.

From CWBN
Amazon gives the publication date for this title as August 15; the publisher's site refers to availability in "fall/winter"; and Barnes & Noble lists "July" as the release date.

Guardian of Savannah: Fort McAllister, Georgia, in the Civil War and Beyond

by Roger S. Durham

From the publisher:
Built out of sand and mud and designed to serve as the southern anchor in the coastal defenses of Savannah, Georgia, Fort McAllister was constructed in June 1861 on the Great Ogeechee River, twelve miles south of the Savannah River. Roger S. Durham offers a comprehensive history of the fort's construction, strategic importance during the Civil War, and postwar restoration in this vivid account of how an earthen defense withstood not only devastating naval assaults but also the effects of time. Durham intertwines historical facts with human fates through frequent use of primary sources, letting the fort's defenders and attackers speak for themselves and bringing readers into the fiery heat of battle.

Two innovations in warfare wrought by the Civil War were the rifled cannon--which proved detrimental to the masonry construction of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River--and the ironclad warship, but neither could compromise the earthen parapets of Fort McAllister. Over the course of the war, McAllister's original four-gun design was augmented to include twenty-two guns, making the fort a much more difficult challenge to Union assaults. The monitor USS Montauk was twice summoned to take Fort McAllister and twice failed. In a third Union attempt, three ironclads and a supporting fleet of wooden gunboats bombarded the fort for seven hours, though the defenders suffered no casualties and the fort withstood the blasts. In all, seven unsuccessful naval attacks were made against the fort. McAllister's final threat did not come from the water but from the western reaches of the state. In December 1864 General William T. Sherman's famed March to the Sea negated the viability of coastal defenses, and Fort McAllister, like Savannah itself, fell at last.

Fort McAllister's story did not end with the war. In the 1930s the site was owned by the industrialist Henry Ford, who was instrumental in the initial preservation efforts to restore the fort as a historical monument. Ownership later passed to the International Paper Company, which in turn deeded the land to the State of Georgia. The historical site was opened to the public in 1963, on the centennial of the bombardments by the Union ironclads.

Durham's harrowing account of life and combat at Fort McAllister, and of the subsequent restoration, is augmented by twelve maps and sixty photographs--including rare images of Sherman's troops at the end of the March to the Sea and of early preservation initiatives.

"In this exciting tale of dirt versus iron, Roger Durham provides an outstanding history of Savannah's Fort McAllister, an earthen battery that withstood numerous attacks by Union ironclads before finally succumbing to a land-based assault. Through his thoughtful interpretation of the facts and his use of defenders' narratives, Durham captures all aspects of life and duty within the walls of this coastal fortification. He also carries the story forward to present day in his discussion of the preservation efforts that have established Fort McAllister as a popular historical site. Guardian of Savannah will appeal to students and enthusiasts of Civil War, Georgia, and maritime history as well as anyone with an interest in preserving our nation's rich and complex history." -- Daniel Brown, superintendent, Fort McAllister State Historic Park

"Located south of Savannah and built of sand and mud, Fort McAllister was pivotal in Confederate defiance of the Union blockade and thus a frequent target of naval attacks. Roger Durham has crafted a fascinating and thorough history of the fort's role as a proving ground for coastal defense designs and as the final obstacle in General Sherman's March to the Sea. Durham also details how Henry Ford's interest in preserving Fort McAllister set in motion the efforts that have since established the site as a historical park for interpretation and tourism." -- W. Eric Emerson, author of Sons of Privilege: The Charleston Light Dragoons in the Civil War

"Guardian of Savannah is a much-needed study of Fort McAllister which includes discussion of a number of examples of Civil War technology and innovations. Ironclad warships, torpedoes, and rifled cannons all make their appearances here in this story of the earthen fort and its small band of defenders. Roger Durham is to be commended for explaining how these military technologies were utilized and how the lessons learned at this Georgia fortification had wider implications for this war and others." -- Jeffrey Seymour, Auburn University

From CWBN:
A model "history of place" that weaves military, social, and science history into a narrative of war and restoration.