Vicksburg, 1863

by Winston Groom

From the publisher:
A riveting history of the battle that permanently turned the tide of the Civil War.

While Gettysburg is better known, Winston Groom makes clear in this engrossing narrative that Vicksburg was the more important battle from a strategic point of view. Re-creating the epic campaign that culminated at Vicksburg, Groom details the arduous struggle by the Union to gain control of the Mississippi River valley and to divide the Confederacy in two. He takes us back to 1861, when Lincoln chooses Ulysses S. Grant—seen at the time as a mediocre general with a drinking problem—to lead the Union army south from Illinois.

We follow Grant and his troops as they fight one campaign after another, including the famous engagements at Forts Henry and Donelson and the bloodbath at Shiloh, until, after almost a year, they close in on Vicksburg. We witness Grant’s seven long months of battle against the determined Confederate army, and the many failed Union attempts to take Vicksburg, during which thousands of soldiers on both sides would be buried and, ultimately, the fate of the Confederacy would be sealed. As Groom recounts this landmark confrontation, he brings the participants to life. We see Grant in all his grim determination, the feistiness of William Tecumseh Sherman, and the pride and intransigence of Confederate leaders from Jefferson Davis and General Joseph E. Johnston to General John C. Pemberton, the Philadelphia-born Rebel who commanded at Vicksburg and took the blame for losing.

A first-rate work of military history and an essential contribution to our understanding of the Civil War.

Groom's book is full of…authentically rendered excitement. Until now, his best-known work has been the novel that became the blockbuster movie Forrest Gump. But with Vicksburg 1863 he has fully arrived as a narrative historian, who proves again that facts skillfully woven can be more moving than the products of the busiest imagination. Rarely has the story of such a lengthy and complicated campaign been told with such clarity and grace. - The Washington Post - Ernest B. Furgurson

A Blue Bellied Yankee: A Runaway 17 - Year- Old Boy Joins the Union Army

by Robert M. Miller

From the publisher:
On the morning of July 24, 1863 William Lucas, a seventeen year old boy, the youngest of four brothers, all of whom served in the Union Army, tied his shoe strings together, draped the shoes over his shoulder and set off barefoot for the Putnam (now part of Zanesville), Ohio post office to enlist in the Union Army’s 86th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Portions of this unit were currently involved in the pursuit and subsequent capture of the Confederate raider, John Hunt Morgan at Salineville two days later.

The 86th moved by train and march to join in the bloodless capture of Cumberland Gap, September 9, 1863 and garrisoned the post until mustered out at Cleveland, Ohio, February 10, 1864. Three days later William Lucas enlisted in the 6th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and joined the regiment March 8, 1864 at Warrenton, Virginia.

He crossed the Rapidan into the Wilderness the night of May3, 1864 and took part in the actions at Todd’s Tavern, subsequently joined Sheridan’s Richmond Raid, and eventually participated in more than two dozen engagements including Meadow Bridge, Cold Harbor, Haw’s Shop, Trevilian Station, Dinwiddie Court House, Saylor’s Creek and Appomattox Court House where the 6th Ohio blocked Lee’s escape route—the Appomattox-Lynchburg Road.

Subsequent to the surrender at Appomattox, the 6th Ohio served as an escort for Grant and as military police in Virginia before disbanding in Cleveland August 9, 1865.

No Holier Spot of Ground: Confederate Monuments and Cemeteries of South Carolina

by Kristina Dunn Johnson

From the publisher:
The monuments of South Carolina bear on their weathered faces and cracked tablets a history of honor and of memory embodied in stone. Whether revealing the lost graves of Southern sons, unveiling the history of the only national cemetery to inter Confederate soldiers alongside the Union fallen during wartime or recording the simple obelisks that reach for heaven throughout the Palmetto State, this volume is a story of remembrance and of mourning. Kristina Dunn Johnson, curator of history with the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, shares with us the powerful stories of memory and acceptance that are the legacy of the Confederacy, as varied as those who lie beneath the Southern soil.

The Addiction of Mary Todd Lincoln

by Anne E. Beidler

From the publisher:
Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the president we have immortalized, has always been difficult for us to understand. She could appear poised and brilliant one moment yet rude and ugly the next. Sometimes competent and strong, able to entertain dignitaries from around the world, at other times she appeared dependent and weak. At times she seemed utterly beside herself with sobbing and screaming. Historians have mostly avoided saying very much about Mary Todd Lincoln except in reference to her husband, Abraham. To many it would seem that Mary Todd Lincoln is still an embarrassment in the tragic story of her martyred husband.

But Mary Todd Lincoln lived her own tragic story even before Abraham was murdered. She was an addict, addicted to the opiates she needed for her migraine headaches. Seeing Mary Todd Lincoln as an addict helps us understand her and give her the compassion and admiration she deserves. In her time there had been no courageous First Lady like Betty Ford to help people understand the power of addiction. There was no treatment center. In Mary Todd Lincoln’s time there were many addicts at all levels of society, as there are now, but it was a more socially acceptable condition for men to have than for women. More importantly, addiction was not very well understood, and it was often mistreated.

Because Mary Todd Lincoln’s only surviving son, Robert Lincoln, made a great effort to protect his mother and his family from journalists and historians, he intentionally destroyed most of Mary Todd Lincoln’s medical records and many of her letters. What he could not destroy, however, is the record of Mary Todd Lincoln’s pain and the record of how she behaved while living with this pain. In The Addiction of Mary Todd Lincoln, we can see clearly, for the first time, what Mary Todd Lincoln had to live with and the courage it took for her to carry on.

ANNE E. BEIDLER is a former director of Family House, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a doctorate in educational research from Lehigh University. In addition to The Addiction of Mary Todd Lincoln, she is also author of Eating Owen, a historical novel.

Eastern Tennessee

by Comte De Paris

From the publisher:
The North had been victorious at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Casualties on both sides were heavy. The draft riots of 1863 had been put down and the armies are once again on the move. Generals Rosencrans and Burnside were able to outflank General Bragg and take Chattanooga. Bragg would stand and fight at Chickamauga and the battle will prove costly for the Union forces...all eyes are on Eastern Tennessee.

From CWBN
Digital Scanning has been republishing segments of the Comte de Paris' History of the Civil War in America as standalone books. This is one of several released this year; to see a complete list, the reader should search on Comte de Paris on Amazon.

Official History, 73rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment

by the 73rd Regimental Association

From the publisher:
The men of the valiant 73rd Indiana Regiment were first to attack in the Battle of Stones River at Murphreesborough. They lost a third of their men in that fight, listed as one of the ten bloodiest battles of America's Civil War. Firing outdated 1842 smoothbore Springfield Muskets these hearty boys blasted their way far behind enemy lines for an entire week of running battles during the Raid of Streight's Brigade. A powerful story - it is not well known, but recorded by early historians as the most combative small-scale raid of the War. The 73rd was at the battle of Perryville, KY., and played a vital role in the last battles of Alabama forts at Athens and Decatur. They fought at Tuscumbia, Blountsville, Gadsden and Rome. And their officers knew famed Libby Prison at Richmond all too well. Their history is a fascinating cameo of the Civil War in it's western arena...a poignant description of individual soldiers, the incredible heroism they gave...and the suffering they lived through day by day...1862 to 1865.

Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America

by Evan Carton

From the publisher:
John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes--as a madman, martyr, or enigma. This illuminating biography brings him to life in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism.

Evan Carton is the Joan Negley Kelleher Centennial Professor in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Marble Faun: Hawthorne's Transformations and The Rhetoric of American Romance: Dialectic and Identity in Emerson, Dickinson, Poe, and Hawthorne.

Skirmisher: The Life, Times, and Political Career of James B. Weaver

by Robert B. Mitchell

From the publisher:
Outlining the career of a politician whose two campaigns for the White House helped change the course of American politics, this in-depth study explores the religious convictions of James B. Weaver and the role they played in his political contributions. Offering a panoramic view of some of the great events of the 19th century—the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, and presidential politics, from Abraham Lincoln to the rise of William Jennings Bryan—this insightful and detailed account also sheds new light on the influence of third parties in presidential elections and the federal government’s role in reducing economic hardship.

Robert B. Mitchell is an assistant editor with the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service. He lives in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Shenandoah Summer: The 1864 Valley Campaign

by Scott C. Patchan

From the publisher:
Jubal A. Early’s disastrous battles in the Shenandoah Valley ultimately resulted in his ignominious dismissal. But Early’s lesser-known summer campaign of 1864, between his raid on Washington and Phil Sheridan’s renowned fall campaign, had a significant impact on the political and military landscape of the time. By focusing on military tactics and battle history in uncovering the facts and events of these little-understood battles, Scott C. Patchan offers a new perspective on Early’s contributions to the Confederate war effort—and to Union battle plans and politicking.

Patchan details the previously unexplored battles at Rutherford’s Farm and Kernstown (a pinnacle of Confederate operations in the Shenandoah Valley) and examines the campaign’s influence on President Lincoln’s reelection efforts. He also provides insights into the personalities, careers, and roles in Shenandoah of Confederate general John C. Breckinridge, Union general George Crook, and Union colonel James A. Mulligan, with his “fighting Irish” brigade from Chicago. Finally, Patchan reconsiders the ever-colorful and controversial Early himself, whose importance in the Confederate military pantheon this book at last makes clear.

The Essential Lincoln

by Tim Davidson (ed.)

The Essential Lincoln: The Finest Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln collects the seminal speeches, letters, proclamations, debate performances, and miscellaneous other writings, spanning over thirty years of Lincoln's life. The entire text of each document or speech is included, rather than a short excerpt, to put into context the most commonly quoted Lincoln passages and to fully demonstrate the lawyerly elegance of his longer speeches and addresses. The book contains both the best-known (the Gettysburg address and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Second Inaugural, etc.) and some rarely-included pieces (a first draft of the Gettysburg address, the full text of a debate with Stephen Douglas, letters to Mary Todd Lincoln before and after his election as President, etc.) in simple chronological order.

Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War

by Marc Egnal

From the publisher:
Clash of Extremes takes on the reigning orthodoxy that the American Civil War was waged over high moral principles. Marc Egnal contends that economics, more than any other factor, moved the country to war in 1861.

Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Egnal shows that between 1820 and 1850, patterns of trade and production drew the North and South together and allowed sectional leaders to broker a series of compromises. After midcentury, however, all that changed as the rise of the Great Lakes economy reoriented Northern trade along east-west lines.

Meanwhile, in the South, soil exhaustion, concerns about the country’s westward expansion, and growing ties between the Upper South and the free states led many cotton planters to contemplate secession.

The war that ensued was truly a “clash of extremes.” Sweeping from the 1820s through Reconstruction and filled with colorful portraits of leading individuals, Clash of Extremes emphasizes economics while giving careful consideration to social conflicts, ideology, and the rise of the antislavery movement. The result is a bold reinterpretation that will challenge the way we think about the Civil War.

"... this is a serious work that may well reignite a historical debate" - Booklist

"Egnal's perceptive, fine-grained analysis of fragmentation within the North and South around local patterns of trade, agriculture and manufacturing is especially revealing." - Publishers Weekly

Marc Egnal is a professor of history at York University and the author of several books, including A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution and Divergent Paths: How Culture and Institutions Have Shaped North American Growth.

From CWBN
We are showing this book as published today because we missed its publication date in January.

The Battle of the Crater: A Complete History

by John F. Schmutz

From the publisher:
The Battle of the Crater is one of the lesser known yet most interesting battles of the Civil War. This book, detailing the onset of brutal trench warfare at Petersburg, Virginia, digs deeply into the military and political background of the battle. Beginning by tracing the rival armies through the bitter conflicts of the Overland Campaign and culminating with the siege of Petersburg and the battle intended to lift that siege, this book offers a candid look at the perception of the campaign by both sides.

Corporate attorney, Army veteran and longtime Civil War enthusiast John F. Schmutz resides in San Antonio, Texas.

From CWBN
We are showing this book as published today because we missed its publication date in February.

The Psychic Life of Abraham Lincoln

by Susan B. Martinez

From the publisher:
In dreams, he foresaw his sudden death. He consulted oracles, and at age 22 was told by a seer that he would become President of the United States.

Obscurantists and historians have dismissed Abraham Lincoln's psychic involvements which, in his own time, were profound state secrets. But Lincoln's rise to power coincided with the Great Age of Spiritualism and, as a Mystical Unionist, he felt he was controlled by "some other power."

Trauma and heartbreak opened the psychic door for this otherworldly President, whose precognitive dreams, evil omens, and trancelike states are carefully documented here in this bold yet poignant chronicle of tragic beginnings, White House seances, and paranormal eruptions of the Civil War era.

Aided by the deathbed memoir of his favorite medium, Lincoln's remarkable psychic experiences come to life with communications from beyond, ESP, true and false prophecies, as well as thumbnail sketches of the most influential spiritualists in Lincoln's orbit. Surveying clairvoyant incidents in Lincoln's life from cradle to grave, the book also examines the Emancipation Proclamation and the unseen powers that moved pen to hand for its historic signing into law.

SUSAN B. MARTINEZ, Ph.D., is an independent scholar, journalist, and activist who received her doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University in the 1970s. Raised by agnostic/intellectual parents in Brooklyn, New York, she found her way to Spiritualism in the early 1980s and has since researched and wrote on psychic phenomena, specializing in modern spiritualism in the Victorian era. Currently Book Review Editor at the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, she lives in the north Georgia mountains.

Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History

by Alan Huffman

From the publisher:
A powerful account of a surprisingly forgotten tragedy of the Civil War

A stunning wartime account of human endurance and adventure, and an exploration of just how much the human body and mind can take, Sultana follows several young Union soldiers through the Civil War and what was, for them, its unimaginably disastrous aftermath. We see them enlist and then almost immediately be plunged into a cascading series of wartime horrors: Battle, trauma, prison camp, and, finally, the sinking of the Sultana, the steamboat that was taking them back home.

On an April night in 1865, the Sultana slowly moved up the dark Mississippi, its overtaxed engines straining under the weight of a human cargo that included an estimated twenty-four hundred passengers—more than six times the number it was designed to carry. Most were weak, emaciated Union soldiers, recently paroled from Confederate prison camps, on their way home after enduring the violence of war. At two a.m., three of Sultana's four boilers exploded. Within twenty minutes, it went down in fire and water, taking an estimated seventeen hundred lives.

The sinking of the Sultana remains the worst maritime disaster in American history, yet due to a confluence of contemporary events (Lincoln had recently been assassinated and the war had ended), it soon faded into relative obscurity. Now Alan Huffman presents this harrowing story against the backdrop of the endless suffering already endured by its survivors. Using contemporary research as well as digging deep into archives and family keepsakes, Huffman paints a gripping portrait of the young men who made it home alive.

Alan Huffman is a freelance journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed Mississippi in Africa. He has appeared on numerous NPR shows and has contributed to many publications, including Smithsonian magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post Magazine. He lives in Bolton, Mississippi.

Shooting the Civil War: Cinema, History and American National Identity

by Jenny Barrett

From the publisher:
No fewer than seven hundred Civil War films have been made by Hollywood from early silent days to the present, from the epoch-making Birth of a Nation, through The Red Badge of Courage and Gone With the Wind to the recent Glory, Ride with the Devil and Cold Mountain.

This readable and innovative book on the American Civil War as presented in Hollywood cinema goes deep into the best of these films, arguing that rather than belonging to a single genre, Civil War films are to be found across genres, as domestic melodramas, Westerns or combat films for example. As such, they have fresh insights to give into the war and into America's sense of itself.

Shooting the Civil War shows how these films create an American ancestor who is blameless and undertakes a process of reinscription into the American historical family. It also makes the remarkable revelation that no Civil War film yet made has had a central black character who survives the war, fathers the children of the future, and can stand as representative of the whole American people. To this extent, the book is saying, the Civil War remains a work in progress.

Jenny Barrett is Program Leader in Film Studies at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire.

Chicago's Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War

by James B. Swan

From the publisher:
Extensively documented and richly detailed, Chicago’s Irish Legion tells the compelling story of Chicago’s 90th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, the only Irish regiment in Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s XV Army Corps. Swan’s sweeping history of this singular regiment and its pivotal role in the Western Theater of the Civil War draws heavily from primary documents and first-person observations, giving readers an intimate glimpse into the trials and triumphs of ethnic soldiers during one of the most destructive wars in American history.

At the onset of the bitter conflict between the North and the South, Irish immigrants faced a wall of distrust and discrimination in the United States. Many Americans were deeply suspicious of Irish religion and politics, while others openly doubted the dedication of the Irish to the Union cause. Responding to these criticisms with a firm show of patriotism, the Catholic clergy and Irish politicians in northern Illinois—along with the Chicago press and community—joined forces to recruit the Irish Legion. Composed mainly of foreign-born recruits, the Legion rapidly dispelled any rumors of disloyalty with its heroic endeavors for the Union. The volunteers proved to be instrumental in various battles and sieges, as well as the marches to the sea and through the Carolinas, suffering severe casualties and providing indispensable support for the Union. Swan meticulously traces the remarkable journey of these unique soldiers from their regiment’s inception and first military engagement in 1862 to their disbandment and participation in the Grand Review of General Sherman’s army in 1865.

Enhancing the volume are firsthand accounts from the soldiers who endured the misery of frigid winters and brutal environments, struggling against the ravages of disease and hunger as they marched more than twenty-six hundred miles over the course of the war. Also revealed are personal insights into some of the war’s most harrowing events, including the battle at Chattanooga and Sherman’s famous campaign for Atlanta. In addition, Swan exposes the racial issues that affected the soldiers of the 90th Illinois, including their reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation and the formations of the first African American fighting units. Swan rounds out the volume with stories of survivors’ lives after the war, adding an even deeper personal dimension to this absorbing chronicle.

The Last Confederate General: John C. Vaughn and His East Tennessee Cavalry

by Charles Larry Gordon

From the publisher:
The Last Confederate General presents the first biography of Confederate cavalry commander John Crawford Vaughn, from his birth in East Tennessee, through the Mexican War, the gold rush, and the War Between the States, to his return to Tennessee and his untimely death in Georgia.

In the mid-nineteenth century John Crawford Vaughn was one of the most famous men in Tennessee. He was the first man to raise a regiment in the state and one of the very last Confederate generals to surrender. History has not been kind to Vaughn, who finally emerges from the shadows in this absorbing assessment of his life and military career.

Follow Vaughn and his East Tennessee Cavalry to Manassas, Vicksburg, and other crucial battles as Larry Gordon makes use of new research and information to reveal the complete picture of Vaughn, including:

· Vaughn's hitherto unknown location on the field of crucial battles;

· His ability to overcome multiple battlefield wounds;

· His wife and family's incarceration as Union hostages;

· The effects of his anxiety over his family's incarceration on his performance as a military commander;

· His close friendship with Jefferson Davis-close enough for him to become Davis's escort during the final month of the war; and

· His importance as one of the few Confederate generals to return to Tennessee after Reconstruction, where he soon became president of the state senate.

Larry Gordon is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College and Army War College; and a veteran of the Vietnam War, with many years of service in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. Mr. Gordon, who works at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and has long been an interpretive volunteer at Manassas National Battlefield Park. He lives in Northern Virginia.

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

What Shall We Do with the Negro?: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America

by Paul D. Escott

From the publisher:
Throughout the Civil War, newspaper headlines and stories repeatedly asked some variation of the question posed by the New York Times in 1862, "What shall we do with the negro?" The future status of African Americans was a pressing issue for those in both the North and in the South. Consulting a broad range of contemporary newspapers, magazines, books, army records, government documents, publications of citizens' organizations, letters, diaries, and other sources, Paul D. Escott examines the attitudes and actions of Northerners and Southerners regarding the future of African Americans after the end of slavery. "What Shall We Do with the Negro?" demonstrates how historians together with our larger national popular culture have wrenched the history of this period from its context in order to portray key figures as heroes or exemplars of national virtue.

Escott gives especial critical attention to Abraham Lincoln. Since the civil rights movement, many popular books have treated Lincoln as an icon, a mythical leader with thoroughly modern views on all aspects of race. But, focusing on Lincoln's policies rather than attempting to divine Lincoln's intentions from his often ambiguous or cryptic statements, Escott reveals a president who placed a higher priority on reunion than on emancipation, who showed an enduring respect for states' rights, who assumed that the social status of African Americans would change very slowly in freedom, and who offered major incentives to white Southerners at the expense of the interests of blacks.

Escott's approach reveals the depth of slavery's influence on society and the pervasiveness of assumptions of white supremacy. "What Shall We Do with theNegro?" serves as a corrective in offering a more realistic, more nuanced, and less celebratory approach to understanding this crucial period in American history.

Paul D. Escott is Reynolds Professor of History at Wake Forest University and the author of After Secession and Slavery Remembered, winner of the Mayflower Cup.

Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War

by David Herbert Donald

From the publisher:
Harvard Professor David Herbert Donald traces Sumner's life in this Pulitzer-Prize winning classic about a nation careening toward Civil War. In a period when senators often exercised more influence than presidents, Senator Charles Sumner was one of the most powerful forces in the American government. His uncompromising moral standards made him a lightning rod in an era fraught with conflict.

Sumner's fight to end slavery made him a hero in the North and stirred outrage in the South. In what was called the first blow of the Civil War, he was physically attacked by a colleague on the Senate floor. An advocate of international peace and a leader of educational and prison reform, Sumner refused to abandon the moral high ground, no matter what the cost. He used his office and influence to transform the United States during the most contentious and violent period in the nation's history.

David Herbert Donald is the Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University. He has written over thirty books, including "Lincoln," (1996) which has sold well over 70,000 copies since 2002, and 9,078 copies in 2007 alone, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning "Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe."

Gettysburg

by Applewood Books

From the publisher:
Over 60 images relating to the battle of Gettysburg in a full-color paperback. Part of Applewood's Pictorial America series, the book features images drawn from historical sources and include prints, paintings, illustrations, and photographs. This small gem is the ideal gift for anyone interested in a concise and compelling visual history of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.