Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life

by Beverly Lowry

From the publisher:
“I am at peace with God and all mankind.”
—Harriet Tubman to Mary Talbert, on the occasion of their last visit, 1913

“I’ll meet you in the morning.
I’m bound for the Promised Land
On the other side of Jordan.
Bound for the Promised Land.”
—Harriet Tubman, singing to alert slaves of a rescue

Now, from the award-winning novelist and biographer, an astonishing reimagining of the remarkable life of Harriet Tubman—the “Moses of Her People.”

During her lifetime Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave, lumberjack, laundress, raid leader, nurse, fund-raiser, cook, intelligence gatherer, Underground Railroad organizer, and abolitionist. She was known both as Moses and as General Tubman.

In Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life, Beverly Lowry goes beyond the familiar tales to create a portrait of Tubman in lively imagined vignettes that, as Lowry writes, “catch her on the fly” and portray her life as she herself might have presented it. Lowry offers readers an intimate look at Tubman’s early life firsthand: her birth as Araminta Ross in 1822 in Dorchester, Maryland; the harsh treatment she experienced growing up—including being struck with a two-pound iron when she was twelve years old; and her triumphant escape from slavery as a young woman and rebirth as Harriet Tubman. We travel with Tubman along the treacherous route of the Underground Railroad and hear of her friendships with Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and other abolitionists. We accompany her to the battlefields of the Civil War, where she worked as a nurse and a cook and earned the nameGeneral Tubman, join her on slave-freeing raids in the heart of the Confederacy, and share her horror and sorrow as she witnesses the massacre of Colonel Shaw and the black soldiers of the 54th Regiment at Fort Wagner.

Integrating extensive research and interviews with scholars and historians into a stunningly rich and mesmerizing chronicle, Lowry brings Tubman to life as never before.

BEVERLY LOWRY is the author of six novels and the nonfiction works Crossed Over and Her Dream of Dreams. The recipient of the 2007 Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award, Lowry teaches at George Mason University. She lives in Austin, Texas.

From Kirkus:
A speculative biography, told mostly through imagined scenes, of the Underground Railroad's most famous conductor. Tubman (c. 1819-1913) never learned to read or write; her memories have all been recorded and interpreted by others. Lowry (Creative Nonfiction/George Mason Univ.; Her Dream of Dreams, 2003, etc.) deals with the documentation problems this creates by acknowledging inconsistencies in the records, considering their sources and then choosing what seems most probable to her. Words like "presumably," "may have," "might" and "probably" appear frequently. Throughout, the reader learns as much about slavery, the Underground Railroad, abolitionists, the Civil War in the Carolinas and emancipation as about Tubman. We do learn that she was struck in the head as a child on Maryland's Eastern Shore and thereafter experienced narcolepsy, had visions and heard voices. We see her as an overworked child, as an enterprising young woman and as a determined runaway who escaped to the North in 1849. Once there, she saw it as her responsibility to help others. Confident that God was directing her work, she made numerous trips back, acting as guide and commander to hundreds of slaves. How she accomplished this without being captured remains unclear, although she seems to have established a large network through which she could send messages and raise funds. During the Civil War, Tubman put her organizational, navigational and intelligence skills to use as a nurse, spy and scout for the Union in the Carolinas. After the war, she spent 30 years trying to obtain retroactive pay and a pension, finally succeeding when she was 77. Lowry swiftly moves through Tubman's later years. It is for her midlifefeats that she is remembered, and those accomplishments and the circumstances surrounding them are well depicted here. Creative nonfiction from a writer well-versed in the genre.

Ulysses S. Grant: The Soldier and the Man

by Edward G. Longacre

From the publisher:

A fresh look at General Grant's military career in light of his conflicted personality and drinking habits.

In this new biography of General Ulysses S. Grant, acclaimed Civil War historian, Edward G. Longacre, examines Grant's early life and his military career for insights into his great battlefield successes as well as his personal misfortunes.

Longacre concentrates on Grant's boyhood and early married life; his moral, ethical, and religious views; his troubled military career; his strained relationships with wartime superiors; and, especially, his weakness for alcohol, which exerted a major influence on both his military and civilian careers. Longacre, to a degree that no other historian has done before, investigates Grant's alcoholism in light of his devout religious affiliations, and the role these sometimes conflicting forces had on his military career and conduct. Longacre's conclusions present a new and surprising perspective on the ever-fascinating life of General Grant.

Edward G. Longacre is the author of numerous biographies of Civil War generals. He is a recipient of the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Award for Civil War writing. He lives in Newport News, Virginia.

Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America

by Andrew Ferguson

From the publisher:
Before he grew up and became one of Washington’s most respected reporters and editors, Andrew Ferguson was, of all things, a Lincoln buff — with the photos hung on his bedroom wall to prove it.

Decades later, Ferguson’s latent buffdom is reignited. In Land of Lincoln, he embarks on a curiosity-fueled coast-to-coast journey through contemporary Lincoln Nation, encountering everything from hatred to adoration to opportunism and all manner of reaction in between. He attends a national conference of Lincoln impersonators; attends a leadership conference based on Lincoln’s “management style”; drags his family across the three-state-long and now defunct Lincoln Heritage Trail; and even manages to hold one of five original copies of the Gettysburg Address.

Along the way he weaves in enough history to hook readers of presidential biographies and popular histories while providing the engaging voice and style of the best narrative journalism. This is an entertaining, unexpected, and big-hearted celebration of Lincoln and his enduring influence on the country he helped create.

From Publishers Weekly:
The question that animates this original, insightful, disarmingly funny book is: how do Americans commemorate Lincoln, and what do our memories of him reveal about our visions of the good life? To discover the answer, Ferguson, an editor at the Weekly Standardand a Lincoln buff, made a long field trip, poking into many of the places where Americans have chosen to remember—or to forget—Honest Abe. He eavesdrops on the Lincoln Reconsidered conference, where a group of "Abephobes" aim to retrieve Lincoln's memory from the distortions of "liberal historians." He considers the "Disney aesthetic" of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and attends a convention of Lincoln "presenters" (otherwise known as impersonators). Ferguson is occasionally and unnecessarily snide, and a deeper examination of the changing place of Lincoln in mainstream historical scholarship would have added a great deal to the book. Still, Ferguson's conclusions are stirring.

Uniforms of the Civil War

by Francis A. Lord

From the publisher:
Shattering the myth that the Civil War was fought between soldiers in blue or gray, this complete history details the rainbow of colors and styles worn.

From the Army of the United States and US Militia to the Confederate Army and Navy, it presents a wealth of blouses, frockcoats, chevrons, chapeaux, shoes, and more.

Over 100 rare photographs and illustrations.

This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath

by Michael Fellman et al

From the publisher:
This absorbing text examines the American Civil War and its aftermath, exploring the crucial themes, and challenging many traditional views about the war that nearly tore this nation in two.

Attention is paid to the social aspects of the war and includes a presentation of what was happening on the home front while the war was going on. While This Terrible War maintains a clear chronological foundation, it is also concerned with developing the central themes that are necessary for a rich and full understanding of the war and its aftermath.

With a clear chronological foundation, This Terrible War addresses the attitudes of pre-war American, the slavery debate, differences between the North and South, the economic and social climate of the country, the role of African Americans during the war, and the war itself with stories of both common soldiers and powerful military figures. The authors devote significant attention to the social and cultural aspects of the war to impart a rich and full understanding of this terrible war and its aftermath. Civil War, African Americans, Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee, the Union. Civil War and Reconstruction courses.

Whether a novice or an expert on the Civil War, readers will find This Terrible War to be a well-designed and fully developed book, and a powerful tool in learning about the Civil War and its foreground and aftermath. The book provides an analysis of the United States in the time leading up to the war—the slavery debate, the differences between North and South, the economic and social climate of the country—and moves into the war itself, presenting stories of both common soldiers and powerful military figures. The authors also trace the impact and eventual abolition of slavery, examining the role of African-Americans during the war. They conclude that the victory of the North resulted from superior resources and manpower, but also examine other contributing factors—providing a well-rounded, interesting and thorough analysis. The final section of the book describes the aftermath of the war, and the Epilogue examines how Americans have remembered the Civil War in later years. Ideal for anyone interested in the United States Civil War or US military history in general.

Virginia at War, 1862

by William C. Davis and James I Roberston Jr.

From the publisher:
In Virginia at War, 1862, we see Virginia emerged from the year 1861 in much the same state of uncertainty and confusion as the rest of the Confederacy. While the North was known to be rebuilding its army, no one could be sure if the northern people and government were willing to continue the war. Virginians' expectations for the coming year did not prepare them for what was about to happen, for in 1862 the war became earnest and real, and the Old Dominion became then and thereafter the major battleground of the war in the East. The landscape and the people of Virginia were a part of the battlefield, and as the contributors to Virginia at War, 1862 attest, no individual and no aspect of life in the Commonwealth could escape the war's impact.

William C. Davis is director of programs at the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. James I. Robertson Jr. is Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at Virginia Tech.

From CWBN:
We assigned a June 8 release date to the undated June release of this book.

Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861-1865

by by Richard R. Duncan

From the publisher:
During the Civil War, the strategically located town of Winchester, Virginia, suffered from the constant turmoil of military campaigning perhaps more than any other town. Occupied dozens of times by alternating Union and Confederate forces, Winchester suffered from three major battles including some seventy smaller skirmishes. In his voluminous community study of the town over the course of four tumultuous years, Richard R. Duncan shows that in many ways Winchester’s history provides a paradigm of the changing nature of the war. Indeed, Duncan reveals how the town offers a microcosm of the war: slavery collapsed, women assumed control in the absence of men, and civilians vied for authority alongside an assortment of revolving military commanders.

Control over Winchester was vital for both the North and the South. Confederates used it as a base to strike the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and conduct raids into western Maryland and Pennsylvania, and when Federal forces occupied the town, they threatened Staunton—Lee’s breadbasket—and the Virginia Central Railroad. At various times during the war, generals "Stonewall" Jackson, Nathaniel Banks, Robert Milroy, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and Philip Sheridan each controlled the town. Guerilla activity further compounded the region’s strife as insecurity became the norm for its civilian population. In this first scholarly treatment of occupied Winchester, Duncan has compiled a narrative of voices from the entire community, including those of groups often omitted from such studies, such as slaves, women, and Confederate dissenters. He shows how Federal occupation meant an early end to slavery in Winchester and how the paucity of men left women to serve as the major cohesive force in the community, making them a bulwark of Confederate support. He also explores the tensions between civilians and military personnel that inevitably arose as each group sought to protect its interests.

The war, Duncan explains, left Winchester a landscape of wreckage and economic loss. A fascinating case study of civilian survival amid the turmoil of war, Beleaguered Winchester will appeal to Civil War scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Richard R. Duncan is the author of Lee's Endangered Left: The Civil War in Western Virginia, Spring of 1864 and is professor emeritus of history at Georgetown University. He grew up in Winchester, Virginia, and now lives in Alexandria, VA.

From CWBN:
We assigned a release date of June 7 to this undated June release.

Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965

by Robert J. Cook

From the publisher:
In 1957, Congress voted to set up the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. A federally funded agency within the Department of the Interior, the commission's charge was to oversee preparations to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the central event in the Republic's history.

Politicians hoped that a formal program of activities to mark the centennial of the Civil War would both bolster American patriotism at the height of the cold war and increase tourism in the South. Almost overnight, however, the patriotic pageant that organizers envisioned was transformed into a struggle over the Civil War's historical memory and the injustices of Jim Crow. In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of this controversial event and reveals how the broadbased public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement.

Cook shows how the centennial provoked widespread alarm among many African Americans, white liberals, and cold warriors because the national commission failed to prevent southern whites from commemorating the Civil War in a racially exclusive fashion. The public outcry followed embarrassing attempts to mark secession, the attack on Fort Sumter, and the South's victory at First Manassas, and prompted backlash against the celebration, causing the emotional scars left by the war to resurface. Cook convincingly demonstrates that both segregationists and their opponents used the controversy that surrounded the commemoration to their own advantage. Southern whites initially embraced the centennial as a weapon in their fight to save racial segregation, while African Americans and liberal whites tried to transform the event into a celebration of black emancipation.

Forced to quickly reorganize the commission, the Kennedy administration replaced the conservative leadership team with historians, including Allan Nevins and a young James I. Robertson, Jr., who labored to rescue the centennial by promoting a more soberly considered view of the nation’s past. Though the commemoration survived, Cook illustrates that white southerners quickly lost interest in the event as it began to coincide with the years of Confederate defeat, and the original vision of celebrating America's triumph over division and strife was lost.

The first comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Civil War Centennial, Troubled Commemoration masterfully depicts the episode as an essential window into the political, social, and cultural conflicts of America in the 1960s and confirms that it has much to tell us about the development of the modern South.

Robert J. Cook is the author of several books, including Sweet Land of Liberty? The African American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century and Civil War America: Making of a Nation, 1848–1877. He is Professor of American History at the University of Sheffield in England.

From CWBN:
We assigned a release date of June 6 to this undated June release.

Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War

by Edwin C. Bearss

From the publisher:
Edwin C. Bearss presents legendary Civil War battles as they have never before been told, rich with human interest and little-known facts.

In Fields of Honor, Bearss, hailed as the "Homer of the Civil War," shares his encyclopedic knowledge in print for the first time, providing his legions of fans with a tangible collection of his expertise. Culled from recordings of his widely popular battlefield tours, Bearss recounts twenty of the war's most significant battles in lively, detailed prose. Illustrated with exhaustive battlefield maps and fascinating historical images - and published in conjunction with the 140th anniversary of the end of the Civil War - this volume will stand as an important reference for generations to come.

An easily accessible, episodic narrative, Fields of Honor will appeal to Civil War buffs and general interest readers alike. From the first shots at Fort Sumter to the surrender at Appomattox, this engaging collection takes readers through the Civil War in the unique voice that has made Edwin Bearss a living legend.

Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War

by Edwin C. Bearss

From Booklist:
Bearss presents the story of the Civil War as he has in the battlefield tours he has conducted for many years. A former chief historian of the National Parks Service, he chronicles 14 crucial battles, including Fort Sumter, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Sherman's march through the Carolinas, and Appomattox, the battles ranging between 1861 and 1865; included is an introductory chapter describing John Brown's raid in October 1859.

Bearss relates the details of terrain and tactics and of personalities and command decisions; he personalizes generals and politicians, sergeants and privates. The text is augmented by 80 black-and-white photographs and 19 maps. A chance to tour battlefields without leaving home.

Lincoln's White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O.Stoddard

By Harold Holzer

From the publisher:
William Osborn Stoddard, Lincoln’s “third secretary” who worked alongside John G. Nicolay and John Hay in the White House from 1861 to 1865, completed his autobiography in 1907, one of more than one hundred books he wrote. An abridged version was published by his son in 1955 as Lincoln’s Third Secretary: The Memoirs of William O. Stoddard. In this new, edited version, Lincoln’s White House Secretary: The Adventurous Life of William O. Stoddard, Harold Holzer provides an introduction, afterword, and annotations and includes comments by Stoddard’s granddaughter, Eleanor Stoddard. The elegantly written volume gives readers a window into the politics, life, and culture of the mid-nineteenth century.

Stoddard’s bracing writing, eye for detail, and ear for conversation bring a novelistic excitement to a story of childhood observations, young friendships, hardscrabble frontier farming, early hints of the slavery crisis, the workings of the Lincoln administration, and the strange course of war and reunion in the southwest. More than a clerk, Stoddard was an adventurous explorer of American life, a farmer, editor, soldier, and politician.

Enhanced by seventeen illustrations, this narrative sympathetically draws the reader into the life and times of Lincoln’s third secretary, adding to our understanding of the events and the larger-than-life figures that shaped history.

From CWBN:
We assigned June 5 to this undated June release.

Sherman's Forgotten General: Henry W. Slocum

by Brian C. Melton

From the publisher:
Henry Warner Slocum, a Union major general who was a corps and army commander in the Civil War, served from the first call for troops until he stood with Sherman to receive Joseph E. Johnston’s surrender after Appomattox. He saw action at Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, and by the end of the war, he had taken command of the Army of Georgia, yet historians have largely overlooked this key commander.

Brian Melton has written the first scholarly account of this important general––the first full length biography in nearly a century. Although Slocum is remembered primarily for his lackluster performance at Gettysburg, Melton discloses that there is more to him than current history credits, offering a holistic account of his life to show that his career was much more significant than has been supposed.

Brian C. Melton is Assistant Professor of History at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman

Edited by David W. Lowe

From the publisher:
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman served as Gen. George Gordon Meade’s aide-de-camp from September 1863 until the end of the Civil War. Lyman was a Harvard-trained natural scientist who was exceptionally disciplined in recording the events, the players, and his surroundings during his wartime duty. His private notebooks document his keen observations. Published here for the first time, Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman contains anecdotes, concise vignettes of officers, and lively descriptions of military campaigns as witnessed by this key figure in the Northern war effort.

Lyman may well be the finest chronicler of the day-to-day experiences of a staff officer in the Civil War, and his notebook entries have an immediacy, coming as close to real-time reporting as possible. As combat raged, Lyman penciled notations into his dispatch books, including exact times when Meade issued orders and when units deployed. He later transformed his notes into a coherent, historically accurate narrative, filling the account with personal and military details that few others were in a position to observe and including his sketches and hand-drawn maps showing the positions of the army after every significant movement.

With Meade’s Army, editor David W. Lowe has completed a task that should have been undertaken long ago: a proper and scholarly editing of Lyman’s journals. The publication of this significant resource will give historians and students of the Civil War a clearer understanding of the last great campaigns of the Army of the Potomac and of the men who led it.

“Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman is already well-known to students and scholars of the Civil War for his extensive letters first published in 1922. As a member of General George Meade’s staff from September 1863 until the end of the war, Lyman provided colorful commentary on the inner workings of the Army of the Potomac. Now, with the discovery and publication of Lyman’s “private notebooks,” readers will find even more of his illuminating observations. Historian David W. Lowe has salvaged these largely forgotten notebooks, carefully edited them, and made them easily accessible. Wonderfully rich in military detail, Meade’s Army offers a wealth of information from one of the war’s most perceptive chroniclers.” — Lesley J. Gordon, Series Editor, Civil War in the North

David W. Lowe is a historian for the National Park Service. He has published articles in North and South Magazine and Civil War Battlefield Guide and is the author of Civil War Sites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (National Park Service, 1992), Bentonville Battlefield Resources (National Park Service, 2001), and Civil War in Loudoun Valley (National (National Park Service, 2004).

Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah

by Tom Chaffin

From the publisher:
The sleek, 222-foot, black auxiliary steamer Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, ostensibly bound for Bombay. The subterfuge was ended off the shores of Madeira, where the ship was outfitted for war. The newly christened CSS Shenandoah then commenced the last, most quixotic sea story of the Civil War: the 58,000-mile, around-the-world cruise of the Confederacy’s second most successful commerce raider. Before its voyage was over, thirty-two Union merchant and whaling ships and their cargoes would be destroyed. But it was only after ship and crew embarked on the last leg of their journey that the excursion took its most fearful turn.

Four months after the Civil War was over, the Shenandoah’s Captain Waddell finally learned he was, and had been, fighting without cause or state. In the eyes of the world, he had gone from being an enemy combatant to being a pirate—a hangable offense. Now fearing capture and mutiny, with supplies quickly dwindling, Waddell elected to camouflage the ship, circumnavigate the globe, and attempt to surrender on English soil.

Tom Chaffin is the author of Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (H&W, 2002). His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Time, and other publications. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

From Kirkus:
Chaffin does a good job of charting the Shenandoah's path and fortunes, and though the narrative could have stood a little trimming here and there, he makes it clear that there were plenty of worse places to be in the war than on the ship's decks; the officers had time to read the many books they liberated from enemy vessels, while the crew, for all its rebelorthodoxy, merrily disported themselves among the dark women of Ascension, unrepentant pirates to the last. Good reading for Civil War buffs, taking the naval aspect of the conflict well beyond the usual Monitor and Merrimac fare.

From CWBN:
Books on the CSS Shenandoah keep coming. This one joins the ranks of The Voyage of the CSS Shenandoah: A Memorable Cruise (2005); The Last Shot: The Incredible Story of the C.S.S. Shenandoah and the True Conclusion of the American Civil War (2005); and Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah, 1864-65 (1995). We do not know how Sea of Gray differs from its predecessors except that here the subject is backed by a major trade publisher.

Quantrill in Texas: The Forgotten Campaign

by Paul R. Petersen

From the publisher:
The second of a three-volume work that examines the life of one of the most controversial figures of the Civil War, Quantrill in Texas: The Forgotten Campaign documents a part of William C. Quantrill's life and career that has largely been ignored by historians. Indeed, Quantrill's most unrecognized accomplishments outside his adopted state of Missouri occurred in Texas, not in Kansas or Kentucky.
Quantrill in Texas corrects that oversight, carefully exploring for the first time the places and people associated with the guerrilla leader as he moved south during the winter to a safer environment in Texas. The result is a surprising addition to the Quantrill legacy.

His first experience in Texas and his subsequent trips to and from the state reveal that he became acquainted with the noted personalities who lived there. His battles and skirmishes along the way increased his reputation among the citizenry as word spread of his victories throughout the South.

The arrival of Quantrill and his men was welcomed by those who lived in north Texas. While most historians depict him as resting in exile, he occupied himself with battling cattle thieves, warding off Indian attacks, hunting down deserters and draft dodgers, and even quelling riots on behalf of the Confederate cause. Careful research in the official records, local historical records, and archaeological excavations reveals that Quantrill and his men thwarted two known Federal invasions of Texas.

Paul R. Petersen is a highly decorated retired officer of the U.S. Marine Corps and a lifelong resident of Jackson County, Missouri, near where William Quantrill lived. The author of Quantrill of Missouri: The Making of a Guerrilla Warrior, he lives in Raytown, Missouri.

Shenandoah Summer: The 1864 Valley Campaign

by Scott C. Patchan

From the publisher:
Scott C. Patchan has performed a rare feat in his analysis of one of the least-known Civil War campaigns, that of Jubal A. Early, whose foray into the Shenandoah was a Confederate embarrassment and revealed its ultimate weakness. Early's disastrous battles in the Shenandoah Valley and his burning of the town of Chambersburg in retaliation for Union abuses caused Robert E. Lee to dismiss the well-respected but fiery officer in ignominious disgrace. By focusing on military tactics and battle history, Patchan reveals that Early--who was widely reviled--made significant political and military contributions by alarming Washington D.C., and causing Lincoln and the Union generals to rethink their war plan. This superbly argued study resurrects Early's significance as an influential military commander in the Confederate pantheon.

Scott C. Patchan, a Civil War battlefield guide and historian, is the author of Forgotten Fury: The Battle of Piedmont and a consultant and contributing writer for Shenandoah, 1862.

Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War

by Richard B. McCaslin

From the publisher:
It’s one thing to understand that over twenty-thousand Confederate and Union soldiers died at the Battle of Murfreesboro. It’s quite another to study an ambrotype portrait of twenty-year-old private Frank B. Crosthwait, dressed in his Sunday best, looking somberly at the camera. In a tragically short time, he’ll be found on the battlefield, mortally wounded, still clutching the knotted pieces of handkerchief he used in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding from his injuries.

Private Crosthwait’s image is one of more than 250 portraits—many never before published—to be found in the much anticipated Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War. The eighth in the distinguished Portraits of Conflict series, this volume joins the personal and the public to provide a uniquely rich portrayal of Tennesseans—in uniforms both blue and gray—who fought and lost their lives in the Civil War.

Here is the story of a widow working as a Union spy to support herself and her children. Of a father emerging from his house to find his Confederate soldier son dying at his feet. Of a nine-year-old boy who attached himself to a Union regiment after his mother died. Their stories and faces, joined with personal remembrances from recovered letters and diaries and ample historical information on secession, famous battles, surrender, and Reconstruction, make this new Portraits of Conflict a Civil War treasure.

Richard B. McCaslin is an associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Lee in the Shadow of Washington; Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas; and two volumes in the Portraits of Conflict series. He is the winner of the Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and a fellow in the Texas State Historical Association.

Confederate Guerrilla: The Civil War Memoir of Joseph M. Bailey

by T. Lindsay Baker (Editor)

From the publisher:
Joseph M. Bailey's memoir, Confederate Guerilla, provides a unique perspective on the fighting that took place behind Union lines in Federal-occupied northwest Arkansas during and after the Civil War. This story -- now published for the first time -- will appeal to modern readers interested in the grassroots history of the Trans-Mississippi war. Bailey participated in Port Hudson, eventually escaping to northwest Arkansas where he fought as a guerrilla against Federal troops and civilian unionists. After Federal forces gained control of the area, Bailey rejoined the Confederate army and continued in regular service in northeast Texas until the end of the war.

Historians will find the descriptions of military campaigns and the observations on guerrilla war especially valuable. According to Bailey, Southern guerrillas were motivated less by a sense of loyalty to either the Confederate or Union side than by a determination to protect their families and neighbors from the "Mountain Federals." This partisan war waged between the rebel guerrillas and Southern Unionists was essentually a "struggle for supremecy and revenge."

Comprehensive annotations are provided by editor T. Lindsay Baker to illuminate the clarity and reliability of Bailey's late-life memoir.

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 5

Edited by Peter Cozzens

From the publisher:
Indispensable must-reads for all Civil War buffs and historians, bringing together little-known and never before gathered first-hand accounts, articles, maps, and illustrations.

Praise for Volumes 5 and 6:

The first four volumes of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, published in the late nineteenth century, became the best-selling and most frequently cited works ever published on the Civil War. Volume 5, assembled by the acclaimed military historian Peter Cozzens, carries on the tradition of its namesake, offering a dazzling new collection of fresh material written by military and civilian leaders, North and South, on a broad array of war-related topics. Featured articles include General Grant on the second battle of Bull Run, General Beauregard on the Shiloh campaign, General Sherman on the conference at City Point, Joshua Chamberlain on the Fredericksburg campaign, and many more. Also presented are dozens of maps and more than one hundred illustrations.

Peter Cozzens, a foreign service officer, has published many books on the Civil War, including General John Pope: A Life for the Nation and his popular trilogy, The Civil War in the West.

Letters to a Civil War Bride

by Sandra Marsh Mercer (Compiler), Jerry L. Mercer (Compiler)

From the publisher:
Captain Wolcott Pascal Marsh wrote numerous letters to his young bride, Anna, during the early months of the Civil War (May 10, 1861 through December 19, 1862).

These letters were preserved as a family heirloom and are presented here in their original form replete with the rich language and political views of the day. They were written on the battlefield and give detailed descriptions of daily life in the Union Army, successful and failed battle strategies, the tragedy of sudden death, and the fear and flight so commonly experienced by the unseasoned soldier.

Marsh tells of writing one letter while lying on his back in a brush arbor, while on picket duty prior to the first battle of Manassas. Through his letters, readers will become acquainted with Wolcott Pascal Marsh, an average citizen who loved his wife and loved his country. He enlisted in the Union Army just two weeks after their nuptials to join in the fight to preserve the Union.

The authors have added notes from historical journals to help the reader put these letters in their original setting. Historic details of Burnside's campaign in North Carolina; the Battles of South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg; and other notable events are included. Numerous vintage photographs, illustrations and facsimile reprints of original documents enhance the text.

Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families

by Andrew Billingsley

From the publisher
On May 13, 1862, the enslaved African American Robert Smalls (1839-1915) commandeered a Confederate warship, the Planter, from Charleston harbor and piloted the vessel to cheering seamen of the Union blockade, thus securing his place in the annals of Civil War heroics. Slave, pilot, businessman, statesman, U.S. congressman - Smalls played many roles en route to becoming an American icon, but none of his accomplishments was a solo effort. Sociologist Andrew Billingsley offers the first biography of Smalls to assess the influence of his families - black and white, past and present - on his life and enduring legend. In so doing, Billingsley creates a compelling mosaic of evolving black-white social relations in the American South as exemplified by this famous figure and his descendants.

Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was raised with his master's family and grew up amid an odd balance of privilege and bondage. His distinctive situation instilled in him both an understanding of and desire for freedom. Billingsley underscores the influence of the slaveholders' household as well as Smalls's biological family on the development of the passions and abilities that led Smalls to his bid for freedom in 1862. Likewise, Billingsley charts the critical involvement of Smalls's wife, Hannah, and his extended family of black crewmates in the success of that plan.

Smalls served with distinction in the Union forces at the helm of the Planter. After the war he returned to Beaufort and bought the home of his former masters - a house that remained at the center of the Smalls family for a century. A founder of the South Carolina Republican Party, Smalls was elected as a delegate to the black majority 1868 Constitutional Convention, which confirmed the right of black men to vote, as well as to the overwhelmingly white Constitutional Convention of 1895, which took away that right. Between those two events, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, the state senate, and five times to the U.S. Congress. Throughout the trials and triumphs of his public service, Smalls was surrounded by an ever-growing family of supporters. Billingsley illustrates how this support system, coupled with Smalls's dogged resilience, empowered him for political success.

Today three branches of the Smalls family remain: the descendants of his daughter with first wife, Hannah; of Hannah's two daughters from a previous marriage whom Smalls adopted; and of his son with his second wife, Annie. Writing of subsequent generations of Smalls's family, Billingsley delineates the evolving patterns of opportunity, challenge, and change that have been the hallmarks of the African American experience thanks in no small part to the selfless investments in freedom and family made by Robert Smalls of South Carolina.

The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe---Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force

by Stephen Poleski

Reviews:
This first full-scale biography of Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913) makes fascinating reading for aviation buffs and students of nineteenth-century eccentricity. Lowe is best known for organizing the Civil War Army of the Potomac's Balloon Corps, though it was disbanded because of losing high-ranking support, bureaucratic infighting, and, to some extent, the technological immaturity of balloons. Lowe was a stage magician before the war and after it worked seriously in such fields as mountain railroading and the extraction of hydrogen from water. His career suggests a failed Thomas Edison. Endlessly fertile in invention, he lacked an organization to support the development of his ideas and winnow the viable ones from the rest. He never abandoned balloons, however, and left a definite legacy to fixed-wing aviation in the person of his granddaughter, aviatrix Pancho Barnes (1901-75, subject of Lauren Kessler's biography The Happy Bottom Riding Club, 2000). Aviation and history collections may acquire this seemingly tangential book with clear consciences. - Booklist

Secret Lives of the Civil War: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the War Between the States

by Cormac O'Brien

From the publisher:
The author of Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (100,000 in print) and Secret Lives of the First Ladies (30,000 in print) is back with another bizarre look at history's most celebrated personalities. With Secret Lives of the Civil War, Cormac O'Brien unearths a host of strange, little-known facts about Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Harriet Tubman. He also introduces lesser-known people who changed the fate of our country people like:

* Sarah Edmonds, who disguised herself as a man so she could fight in the Battle of Bull Run (the Civil War had a surprising number of women soldiers).
* William Clarke Quantrill, a sociopath who fought in both armies, mostly for the pleasure of shedding blood.
* And of course, Officer Ambrose Burnside, whose unique "sideburns" would later influence generations of Elvis Presley fans.

Complete with 30 dazzling portraits and illustrated maps, Secret Lives of the Civil War is a new look at one of the most fascinating chapters in American history.

Cormac O'Brien is the author of Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (Quirk, 2004) and Secret Lives of the First Ladies (Quirk, 2005). He lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship

by John Baldwin, Ron Powers

From the publisher:
As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to prowl the world’s oceans and sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider’s name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a twenty-four-year-old warrior who might have stepped from the pages of Arthurian legend. Whittle would share command with a dark and brooding veteran of the seas, Capt. James Waddell, and together with a crew of strays, misfits, and strangers, they would spend nearly a year sailing two-thirds of the way around the globe, destroying dozens of Union ships and taking more than a thousand prisoners, all while continually dodging the enemy.

Then, in August of 1865, a British ship revealed the shocking truth to the men of Shenandoah: The war had been over for months, and they were now being hunted as pirates.

What ensued was an incredible 15,000-mile journey to the one place the crew hoped to find sanctuary, only to discover that their fate would depend on how they answered a single question. Wondrously evocative and filled with drama and poignancy, Last Flag Down is a riveting story of courage, nobility, and rare comradeship forged in the quest to achieve the impossible.

From Kirkus:
The story of Confederate raider Shenandoah, which preyed on Yankee shipping in an epic round-the-world voyage. Baldwin, a descendant of the executive officer who left a detailed log of that voyage, teams with Pulitzer Prize winner Powers (Mark Twain, 2005, etc.) to tell the Shenandoah's story.

While their account covers essentially the same territory as Lynn Schooler's The Last Shot (2005), they focus on Baldwin's ancestor, Lieutenant Conway Whittle. In London, Whittle boarded Sea King, a steam-and-sail clipper that had set a record for a passage to China, He sailed to the Madeiras, where he met his fellow officers and Captain James Waddell, evidently a deeply troubled, uncommunicative man who distrusted his subordinates. The ship was renamed Shenandoah, provisioned and armed with cannon and commissioned as a Confederate warship. Her mission: to prey on U.S. commerce and weaken the federals' ability to wage war.

Shenandoah's crew was recruited from captured ships, choosing service with the C.S.A. over being held prisoner. The authors paint Whittle as a romantic hero of the Old South, obsessed with honor and eager to prevent his native land from falling prey to northern aggression. To that end, the raider attacked merchantmen and whalers from the Atlantic to the Bering Sea, where she captured or sank more than three dozen whalers before Waddell was convinced to cease operations by reports that the war was over.

Shenandoah then made her final run back to England, dodging U.S. warships and struggling to keep her crew dedicated to a suddenly pointless mission. Whittle, a southern gentleman to the end, declined a chance to escape from his ship as she lay in the Liverpool docks while British officials decided whether to turn her crew over to U.S. authorities aiming to try them for piracy. In the end, the Brits set them all free. A stirring adventure, smoothly recounted.

About the authors:
John Baldwin, a relative of Conway Whittle, is a magazine writer, lecturer, and the author of two novels. At seventeen, Baldwin was apprenticed to the ship’s carpenter on a merchant vessel sailing the ports of Africa.

Ron Powers, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is the author or coauthor of twelve previous books, among them the number one bestseller Flags of Our Fathers and the acclaimed biography Mark Twain, a finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Becoming Free in the Cotton South

by Susan E. O'Donovan

From the publisher:
Becoming Free in the Cotton South challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or the ending of the story, as most histories do, Susan O'Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of both the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.

This boldly argued work focuses on a small place--the southwest corner of Georgia--in order to explicate a big question: how did black men and black women's experiences in slavery shape their lives in freedom? The reality of slavery's demise is harsh: in this land where cotton was king, the promise of Reconstruction passed quickly, even as radicalism crested and swept the rest of the South. Ultimately, the lives former slaves made for themselves were conditioned and often constrained by what they had endured in bondage. O'Donovan's significant scholarship does not diminish the heroic efforts of black Americans to make their world anew; rather, it offers troubling but necessary insight into the astounding challenges they faced.

Becoming Free in the Cotton South is a moving and intimate narrative, drawing upon a multiplicity of sources and individual stories to provide new understanding of the forces that shaped both slavery and freedom, and of the generation of African Americans who tackled the passage that lay between.

From reviewers:
Susan O'Donovan details the major changes for the slave and free black population of Southwest Georgia in the years of settlement, of the Civil War, and of the economic and political adaptations to emancipation. Of particular importance are the different impacts these changes had upon black men and black women, and upon the relations between belief and behavior in slavery and then in freedom.
--Stanley L. Engerman, University of Rochester

The seismic shifts set in motion by the emancipation reached into every corner of the American South. In exploring one small corner, Becoming Free reveals how the earthquake that accompanied freedom's arrival shifted gender relations in the household, field, and hustings and in the process changed much more. Susan O'Donovan's small story is a big story, an original one, and an important one.
--Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone and Generations of Captivity

As an exposition of how land, labor, and gender structured a hard slavery and a 'hard' emancipation as well, O'Donovan's analytical narrative is hard to beat. An exceptionally rich and textured study that never loses sight of the larger stakes.
--James C. Scott, Yale University

With meticulous and probing scholarship, O'Donovan's work acutely demonstrates the tragic continuities between slavery and freedom in the American South. Her analysis of the intersection of ethno-racial, economic and gender domination immediately after slavery illuminates a crucial period in African American history and radically alters conventional scholarly interpretations of the development of the black family. This exquisitely accomplished and engagingly written work is surely one of the most important studies in African American and Southern histories to appear in years.
--Orlando Patterson, author of Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries

Becoming Free in the Cotton South

by Susan Eva O'Donovan

From the publisher:
Becoming Free in the Cotton South challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or the ending of the story, as most histories do, Susan O'Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of both the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.

This boldly argued work focuses on a small place--the southwest corner of Georgia--in order to explicate a big question: how did black men and black women's experiences in slavery shape their lives in freedom? The reality of slavery's demise is harsh: in this land where cotton was king, the promise of Reconstruction passed quickly, even as radicalism crested and swept the rest of the South. Ultimately, the lives former slaves made for themselves were conditioned and often constrained by what they had endured in bondage. O'Donovan's significant scholarship does not diminish the heroic efforts of black Americans to make their world anew; rather, it offers troubling but necessary insight into the astounding challenges they faced.

Becoming Free in the Cotton South is a moving and intimate narrative, drawing upon a multiplicity of sources and individual stories to provide new understanding of the forces that shaped both slavery and freedom, and of the generation of African Americans who tackled the passage that lay between.

Lincoln: And the American Manifesto

by Allen Jayne

From the publisher:
"I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy [nation] so long together. It was ... something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time ... that all should have an equal chance. That is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.... I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it." -Abraham Lincoln, February 22, 1861

In this compelling study of the moral principles that most influenced the thinking of Abraham Lincoln [Lincoln and the American Manifesto], historian Allen Jayne argues persuasively that Lincoln regarded the Declaration of Independence, above all other documents, as the most important embodiment of American principles. This "American manifesto," as Jayne calls it, with its eloquent expression of the ideals of individual liberty and government created to protect and preserve that liberty, was the script that Lincoln followed in his struggle to preserve the Union and extend individual liberties to African Americans. Moreover, Jayne demonstrates that Lincoln's philosophy was rooted, not in a Bible-based evangelical Christian perspective, but in the European Enlightenment and deism, which so profoundly influenced the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers.

Jayne begins with a chapter devoted to the influence of deism on Jefferson's formulation of the Declaration of Independence. Next, he discusses Lincoln's adoption of the deistic perspective and the crucial role that the Declaration played in his thoughts and actions. He also considers Lincoln's moral sense, based on deism's tolerance of different belief systems and universal moral idealism. Finally, he describes Lincoln's role as chief advocate for the Declaration's principles and how the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address reflect this underlying philosophy.

This insightful look into the thinking of one of our nation's greatest presidents during a time of crisis is highly relevant in today's climate of religious extremism and debates over the balance between individual liberty and national security.

From Publishers Weekly:
In this thorough examination of Abraham Lincoln's ideology, Jayne argues that Lincoln's greatest accomplishments-including his Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address-were heavily influenced by his unbending belief in the Declaration of Independence's primacy among the trappings of United States democracy. Tracing Lincoln's evolving and often contradictory views on slavery and race through pivotal historical moments such as the Dred Scott decision, Jayne demonstrates that Lincoln possessed a complex understanding of the ways slavery was entrenched in his nation, as well as a natural tendency toward prudence. Something of a "religious radical" himself, Lincoln's personal Christian theology-heavily influenced by deist thinkers like Theodore Parker-emphasized God above Jesus and placed great confidence in man's moral capacity; in Lincoln's eyes, that moral capacity formed the bedrock of democracy. Lincoln regarded the Declaration of Independence itself as a kind of national "ancient faith" and looked to it reverently, ultimately concluding that "those who deny freedom for others deserve it not for themselves," and, conversely, "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free." This volume will appeal as much to Civil War history buffs as to those who simply admire Lincoln as a singular leader and thinker.

From CWBN:
The idea that Lincoln gave primacy to the Declaration over the Constitution should be news to no one who has read Harry Jaffa. The politician Allan Keyes has built a mass movement around that insight.

Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink: Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs from the Red River Campaigns, 1863-1864

by Gary Joiner (ed.)

From the publisher:
Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink does more than just document the history of the Trans-Mississippi conflict of the Civil War. It goes much deeper, offering a profound, extended look into the innermost thoughts of the soldiers and civilians who experienced the events that took place in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. Gleaning from a rich body of rare journals, diaries, and letters, this groundbreaking book demonstrates the significant impact that military operations in this region had on the local population in years between 1863 and 1865.

Readers will be introduced to the many different individuals who were touched by the campaign, both Confederate and Union. Ably edited by Joiner, a leading expert on the Trans-Mississippi conflict, and others, some of these manuscripts are witty, others somber, some written by Harvard- and Yale-educated aristocrats, others by barely literate farmers. All profoundly reflect their feelings regarding the extraordinary circumstances and events they witnessed.

In Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink, readers will have access to the diary of James A. Jarratt, a Confederate sergeant whose cogent narratives dispute commonly held views of the Battle of Mansfield. Representing a much different point of view is the diary of Private Julius Knapp, whose lengthy diary sheds light on the life of a Northern soldier fighting in the ill-fated Union march through Louisiana in 1864. A rare glimpse into the diary of a Southern woman is offered through the fascinating and melancholy musings of plantation belle Sidney Harding. Readers will also encounter the private letters of a French prince turned Confederate officer; of Elizabeth Jane Samford Fullilove, the angst-ridden wife of a Confederate soldier; and many others.

These first-person narratives vividly bring to life the individuals who lived through this important, but often neglected, period in Civil War history. Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink will engross anyone interested in exploring the human side of the Civil War.

Gary Joiner is an assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University in Shreveport and the director of the Red River Regional Studies Center at LSUS. His books include One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 and Union Failure in the West and Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West. He is also the coeditor, with Marilyn S. Joiner and Clifton D. Cardin, of another volume in the Voices of the Civil War series, No Pardons to Ask, nor Apologies to Make: The Journal of William Henry King, Gray's 28th Louisiana Infantry Battalion.

Dissonance: The Turbulent Days Between Fort Sumter and Bull Run

by David Detzer

From the publisher:
April of 1865 has been referred to as the month that saved America but April of 1861 may have been just as vital if not more so. It was during this time that Washington DC sat completely surrounded by two states that were teetering on the verge of secession. Once Virginia did leave the Union only Maryland provided the federal government with a connection to the rest of the nation and it was a tenuous connection at best.

Abraham Lincoln was clearly out of his league in this early stage of the game and he leaned heavily on General Winfield Scott. For his part, Scott was keenly aware of the danger facing Washington and began to immediately call for any militia units that could get to DC quickly from loyal northern states. The problem was that these militia units would have to travel through Maryland, a slave state that might well consider these Yankee troops to be invaders and could easily be pushed into the Confederacy by such an affront to state sovereignty. It was also distinctly possible that these militia units might be attacked by not only the people of Maryland but also ultimately by the state militia.

In the meantime Virginia forces had seized the federal armory at Harper's Ferry and the Gosport navy yard near Hampton Virginia. Rumors are rampant in DC that the Virginia militia that had taken Harper's Ferry was preparing to move on Washington and many in the Federal City were in a state of panic.

The questions that arise from this drama involve the decision making process on both sides and the ultimate question is of course whether Washington DC was ever in any real danger. Did the Confederacy in fact lose it's only real chance for ultimate victory during this time period? David Detzer has done an admirable job in this book [Dissonance] of not only bringing this evolving drama to life but also of answering these questions in a clear and concise manner.

This book reads much like a great historical drama and the author's writing style is superbly readable. It is rare for the author of a history book to achieve such a sense of drama since the reader usually already knows the outcome. Detzer has accomplished this however and although I was keenly aware of what was about to happen at every turn I had a tough time putting the book down. This invigorating writing style is often derisively referred to as popular history but Detzer blows the sides off of that old mold by not only offering new information but also keen observations that cut directly to the heart of this eventful period of American history. No hero of American history is spared criticism when criticism is due and conversely even Ben Butler is praised when his actions merit it.

This is the story of those fateful days of April and May of 1861 and it is a story that is well told by this supremely able author. This book is well researched, very well written and the story is told from the point of view of both governments as well as the lowliest private in the Pennsylvania militia. It is a story upon which the fate of the United States once turned.

From CWBN:
David Detzer is one of those important new writers taking Civil War history out of the dreary conventions of the Centennial era (1960-1965); he does this by adding a fresh perspective to underlying primary sources neglected by most Civil War writers. This is vigorous writing in masterful English capable of changing your long-held views.

This is the pb reissue of a hb original.

Army of the Potomac: McClellan's First Campaign, March - May 1862

by Russel Beatie

From the publisher:
McClellan's First Campaign, the 3rd volume of Russel Beatie's masterful series, covers the pivotal early months of General George McClellan's Peninsula Campaign through the siege of Yorktown, the pursuit toward Richmond, and the fighting at Williamsburg. As he did in his first two volumes, Beatie tells the story largely through the eyes and from the perspective of high ranking officers, staff officers, and politicians. This study is based upon extensive firsthand research (including many previously unused and unpublished sources) that rewrites the history of Little Mac's inaugural effort to push his way up the peninsula and capture Richmond in one bold campaign.

In meticulous fashion, Beatie examines many heretofore unknown, ignored, or misunderstood facts and events and uses them to evaluate the campaign in the most balanced historical context to date. Every aspect of these critically important weeks is examined, from how McClellan's Urbanna plan unraveled and led to the birth of the expedition that debarked at Fort Monroe in March 1862, to the aftermath of Williamsburg. There were many reasons why the march to Richmond did not move as expeditiously as many hoped it would, though until now, few of these reasons have been satisfactorily (or even fairly) explored. President Abraham Lincoln's interference, both politically and militarily, argues the author, lengthened considerably McClellan's odds of success. Just one example was the president's tampering with the corps command structure. Lincoln's experiment undermined his army commander by elevating the wrong men to positions of importance, a sad fact amply demonstrated by the inept leadership displayed before Yorktown and during the important fighting at Williamsburg.Beatie is the first author to deeply investigate and expose the role of the Navy in the Yorktown episode. His sweeping and convincing conclusion is that if the Navy had done what it promised it would do-what it could have done, but refused to do-Yorktown would have fallen weeks sooner than it did. McClellan's First Campaign is a story about the men in command-their knowledge, intentions, successes, and failures. To capture the full flavor of their experiences, Beatie employs the "fog of war" technique, which puts the reader in the position of the men who led the Union army. The Confederate adversaries are always present but often only in shadowy forms that achieve firm reality only when we meet them face-to-face on the battlefield.

Well written, judiciously reasoned, and extensively footnoted, McClellan's First Campaign will be heralded as the seminal work on this topic. Civil War readers may not always agree with Beatie's conclusions, but they will concur that his account offers an original examination of the Army of the Potomac's role on the Virginia peninsula.

From CWBN:
One must read Beatie's Army of the Potomac series to understand the war in the Eastern Theatre. Built on a trove of unknown and neglected sources, his decades of research have produced an electrifying retelling of the Civil War marked by fairness to facts. Beatie makes his audiences feel intimate with events - not superior to them - and the gems of his original research are scattered like treats for the experienced reader. Thrilling, delightful,profound, each new volume in this series is a major event in Civil War publishing. After 40 years of reading Civil War nonfiction, I rate this the one title or series that is indispensible.

Ironclad Down: USS Merrimack-CSS Virginia from Design to Destruction

by Carl D. Park

From the publisher:
The result of more than fifteen years of research, Ironclad Down is a treasure trove of detailed information about one of history s most famous vessels. Describing the fascinating people--Stephen Russell Mallory, John Mercer Brooke, John Luke Porter, et al.--who conceived, designed and built one of the world's first ironclads as well as describing the ship itself, Carl Park offers both the most thoroughly detailed, in-depth analysis to date of the actual architecture of the Virginia and a fascinating, colorful chapter of Civil War history.

About the Author
After serving in the army, CARL D. PARK studied design at the Layton School of Art and majored in fine art at Lake Forrest College. He has worked as an art director and an exhibit designer and builder. Park has written and illustrated numerous articles for Fine Scale Modeler magazine.

Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters

by Elizabeth Brown Pryor

From the publisher:
Robert E. Lee’s war correspondence is well known, and here and there personal letters have found their way into print, but the great majority of his most intimate messages have never been made public. These letters reveal a far more complex and contradictory man than the one who comes most readily to the imagination, for it is with his family and his friends that Lee is at his most candid, most engaging, and most vulnerable. Over the past several years historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor has uncovered a rich trove of unpublished Lee materials that had been held in both private and public collections.

Her new book, a unique blend of analysis, narrative, and historiography, presents dozens of these letters in their entirety, most by Lee but a few by family members. Each letter becomes a departure point for an essay that shows what the letter uniquely reveals about Lee’s time or character. The material covers all aspects of Lee’s life—his early years, West Point, his work as an engineer, his relationships with his children and his slaves, his decision to join the South, his thoughts on military strategy, and his disappointments after defeat in the Civil War. The result is perhaps the most intimate picture to date of Lee, one that deftly analyzes the meaning of his actions within the context of his personality, his relationships, and the social tenor of his times.

Civil War Paintings of Mort Künstler: Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Gettysburg

by Mort Kunstler

From the publisher:
For nearly thirty years, Mort Künstler has focused his considerable talent on interpreting the Civil War. In crafting his work to reflect poignant moments or critical instances of the conflict, he has turned to leading historians and scholars -- such as Henry Steele Commager, James McPherson, William C. Davis, and James I. Robertson Jr. -- for informative details that he has then translated on canvas to create an indelible image of this defining ordeal in America's history. More than 160 of these images -- supplemented by preliminary sketches, early studies, and photographs of works in progress -- are the basis for the four volumes in this series.
Künstler has also explored the human side of this national struggle. Thus, he has produced thoughtful studies of leaders at decisive moments, instances of daily camp life for the soldiers, and those early romantic notions that it would be a bloodless war, predicated on the belief that a show of inner strength would prevail.

Historian James I. Robertson Jr. recently noted, "Among the handful who truly sense the human, indelible element of that war is Mort Künstler. That alone goes far in explaining why he is the premier Civil War artist of our time, if not all time. ...His subjects are widely appealing to the eye and to the mind. [He] pursues accuracy to an extent that would make some historians blush."

In the past twenty years, Künstler's portfolio has been published in twelve books, including companion pieces for the epic films Gettysburg and Gods and Generals. These paintings are reproduced here along with a lively history of the war.

A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy

by David C. Downing

From the publisher:
When the civil war began, there were outpourings of patriotic fervor in the North and the South. Both sides, however, soon discovered that not all of their citizens were in aggreement and they would have to deal with dissidents throughout the war. Lincoln had to contend with guerrillas in Kentucky and Missouri, violent mobs in Baltimore, draft riots in New York City, and Copperheads and Peace Democrats. At one time or another, the U.S. president censored or suppressed three hundred opposition newspapers in the Northern states.

A South Divided is an account of Southern dissidents in the Civil War, at times labeled as traitors, Tories, deserters, or mossbacks during the war and loyalists, Lincoln loyalists, and Unionists by historians of the war. In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in Southern dissenters among specific groups or communities. But A South Divided presents a panoramic overview of Southern dissent. What emerges is a complex pattern of dissent involving every state in the Confederacy and every year of the war.

A South Divided is the first book to tell these behind-the-battle-lines stories that have been largely overlooked by most historians of the war.

DAVID C. DOWNING is the R. W. Schlosser Professor of English at Elizabethtown College in central Pennsylvania and the author of six books, the most recent of which is Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. He has been an avid student of the Civil War for nearly twenty years and has walked many of the battlefields and led tours of Gettysburg.

Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer

by Mary Gorton Gorton McBride

From the Publisher:
Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana offers the first biography of one of Louisiana's most intriguing nineteenth-century politicians and a founder of Tulane University in Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer. Gibson (1832-1892) grew up on his family's sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish and was educated at Yale University before studying law at the University of Louisiana in New Orleans. He purchased a sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish in 1858 and became heavily involved in the pro-secession faction of the Democratic Party. Elected colonel of the Thirteenth Louisiana Volunteer Regiment at the start of the Civil War, he commanded a brigade in the Battle of Shiloh and fought in all of the subsequent campaigns of the Army of Tennessee, concluding in 1865 with the Battle of Spanish Fort.

As Gibson struggled to establish a law practice in postwar New Orleans, he experienced a profound change in his thinking and came to believe that the elimination of slavery was the one good outcome of the South's defeat. Joining Louisiana's Conservative political faction, he advocated for a postwar unification government that included African Americans. Elected to Congress in1874, Gibson was directly involved in the creation of the Electoral Commission that resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and peacefully solved the disputed 1876 presidential election. He crafted legislation for the Mississippi River Commission in 1879, which eventually resulted in millions of federal dollars for flood control.

Gibson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 and became Louisiana's leading "minister of reconciliation" with his northern colleagues and its chief political spokesman during the highly volatile Gilded Age. He deplored the growing gapbetween the rich and the poor and embraced a reformist agenda that included federal funding for public schools and legislation for levee construction, income taxes, and the direct election of senators. This progressive stance made Gibson one of the last patrician Democrats whose noblesse oblige politics sought common middle ground between the extreme political and social positions of his era. At the request of wealthy New Orleans merchant Paul Tulane, Gibson took charge of Tulane's educational endowment and helped design the university that bears Tulane's name, serving as the founding president of the board of administrators. Highly readable and thoroughly researched, Mary Gorton McBride's absorbing biography illuminates in dramatic fashion the life and times of a unique Louisianan.

Mary Gorton McBride was professor of English and dean of Liberal Arts at Louisiana State University at Shreveport and at Florida Atlantic University, where she also served as vice-president of the Broward County Campuses. She lives in Fairhope, Alabama.

From CWBN:
We assigned May 1 to this undated May release.

Peninsula and Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide

From the Publisher:
Often cited as one of the most decisive campaigns in military history, the Seven Days Battles were the first campaign in which Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia—as well as the first in which Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson worked together. In this guidebook, the acknowledged expert on the Seven Days Battles [Brian K. Burton] conducts readers, tourists, and armchair travelers through the history and terrain of this pivotal series of Civil War battles. Maps and descriptive overviews of the battles guide readers to key locales and evoke a sense of what participants on either side saw in 1862. From the beginning of George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, which culminated in the Seven Days, to the bloody battles that saved the Confederate capital from capture, this guide unfolds the strategies, routes, and key engagements of this critical campaign, offering today’s visitors and Civil War enthusiasts the clearest picture yet of what happened during the Seven Days.

Brian K. Burton is a professor of management, associate dean of the College of Business and Economics, and MBA program director at Western Washington University. He is the author of Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battles.

From CWBN:
Some notes on Burton appeared on Civil War Bookshelf.

Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg

From the publisher:
The Army was much embarrassed by the absence of the cavalry,” Robert E. Lee wrote of the Gettysburg campaign, stirring a controversy that has never died. Lee’s statement was an indirect indictment of General James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart, who was the cavalry. Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg reexamines the questions that have shadowed the legendary Confederate hero and offers a fresh, informed interpretation of his role at Gettysburg. Avoiding the partisan pros and cons characterizing previous accounts, Warren C. Robinson reassesses the historical record to come to a clearer view of Stuart’s orders for the crucial battle (as well as what was expected of him), of his actual performance, and of the impact his late arrival had on the outcome of the campaign. Though Stuart may not have disobeyed Lee’s orders, Robinson argues, he did abuse the general’s discretion by raiding Washington rather than scouting for the army at Gettysburg—a move that profoundly affected the Confederate fortunes and perhaps the war itself.

Warren C. Robinson, a professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, is the author and editor of numerous works in the field of economics and the author of many articles in the field of military history and policy. He is currently a free-lance writer and consultant based in Washington DC.

From CWBN:
Mr. Robinson's topic was anticipated in September of 2006 by Savas Beatie's release of Eric Wittenberg's and J. David Petruzzi's Plenty of Blame to Go Around. They reach different conclusions than Prof. Robinson. Note that on both Amazon and B&N, neither site offered a link to Plenty of Blame when Robinson's title was searched on. The algorithm for "if you liked this" is not connecting these topically similar works.

Amongst Immortals Raging, Gettysburg's Third Day Begins

by Marshall Conyers

From the publisher:
An epic poem about Gettysburg’s third day, told from various soldiers’ perspectives.

This story encompasses all the raging emotions of war, the doubt, fear, camaraderie, frustration, and innocence, as told by the participants of the events of the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The author examines the bravery, strength, and faith of the soldiers in both blue and gray who fought for duty and country in the face of impending death.

Marshall Conyers wrote this volume of poetry because he wanted readers to be privy to the thoughts of the brave men engaged in this historical attack. He is the author of the children’s book How Many Feathers Does It Take to Make an Eagle Fly?

Jim Lane: Scoundrel, Stateman, Kansan

by Robert Collins

From the publisher:
James Lane was one of the most visible faces of the Free State movement during the Territorial period of Kansas's history. He was the most powerful politician west of the Mississippi River during the Civil War. This book addresses Lane's early life, military and political careers, and his controversial reputation as a fanatic who was responsible for leading Kansas into the Civil War

Robert Collins has written and published magazine articles and books on subjects ranging from railroads to science fiction. His biography, General James G. Blunt: Tarnished Glory ($23.00), was also published by Pelican.