Stonewall Brigade in the Civil War

by Steve Smith

From the publisher:
This book is about the First Virginia--Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Brigade--through the Civil War, with order of battle charts, technical specifications of weapons, profiles of commanders, and illustrations.

Steve Smith started out in military publishing more than 20 years ago and his career has included work as author, editor, and publisher. He founded the military history publishing company Sarpedon, and has written many books on 20th century military topics under his own name—most recently 2nd Armored Division: Hell on Wheels—and Civil War titles under a pseudonym. He is currently managing editor for a military history publishing company.

Lincoln and the Court

by Brian McGinty

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

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

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

From the critics:
McGinty's engaging account, which treats a topic with obvious parallels to the present, will delight history buffs. - Publishers Weekly

A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray

by Edwad G. Longacre

From the publisher:
Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler served in two armies, playing a major role in the development of Confederate cavalry in the Civil War's western theater, and, more than thirty years afterwards, commanded troops in the Spanish-American War. After leaving the U.S. Army to join the Confederacy, Wheeler served in artillery and infantry units before joining the cavalry. Subsequently, he fought at Shiloh, the Battle of Murfreesboro, and other engagements. As a cavalry commander in the Army of Tennessee from mid-1862 almost to the war's end, he raided Gen. William T. Sherman's lines of communication and contested his advance in the final Carolinas campaign.

In addition to detailing Wheeler's Civil War experience, Edward Longacre discusses Wheeler's youth and education at West Point, his pre-Civil War service in the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, his postwar business, his political career as a congressman from Alabama, and his colorful service in Cuba as a major general of volunteers during the Spanish-American War. Longacre also seeks to correct errors and misconceptions about this Civil War figure that have become a part of the public record, making Joseph Wheeler's life and career accessible to a new generation of readers. A Soldier to the Last will be a valuable addition to the library of anyone interested in Civil War history and U.S. military history.

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race

by George M. Fredrickson

From the publisher:
“Cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves.” Abraham Lincoln was, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, “big enough to be inconsistent.” Big enough, indeed, for every generation to have its own Lincoln—unifier or emancipator, egalitarian or racist. In an effort to reconcile these views, and to offer a more complex and nuanced account of a figure so central to American history, this book focuses on the most controversial aspect of Lincoln’s thought and politics—his attitudes and actions regarding slavery and race. Drawing attention to the limitations of Lincoln’s judgment and policies without denying his magnitude, the book provides the most comprehensive and even-handed account available of Lincoln’s contradictory treatment of black Americans in matters of slavery in the South and basic civil rights in the North.

George Fredrickson shows how Lincoln’s antislavery convictions, however genuine and strong, were held in check by an equally strong commitment to the rights of the states and the limitations of federal power. He explores how Lincoln’s beliefs about racial equality in civil rights, stirred and strengthened by the African American contribution to the northern war effort, were countered by his conservative constitutional philosophy, which left this matter to the states. The Lincoln who emerges from these pages is far more comprehensible and credible in his inconsistencies, and in the abiding beliefs and evolving principles from which they arose. Deeply principled but nonetheless flawed, all-too-human yet undeniably heroic, he is a Lincoln for all generations.

The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War

by H. Robert Baker

From the publisher:

On March 11, 1854, the people of Wisconsin prevented agents of the federal government from carrying away the fugitive slave, Joshua Glover. Assembling in mass outside the Milwaukee courthouse, they demanded that the federal officers respect his civil liberties as they would those of any other citizen of the state. When the officers refused, the crowd took matters into its own hands and rescued Joshua Glover.

The federal government brought his rescuers to trial, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court intervened and took the bold step of ruling the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional.

The Rescue of Joshua Glover delves into the courtroom trials, political battles, and cultural equivocation precipitated by Joshua Glover's brief, but enormously important, appearance in Wisconsin on the eve of the Civil War. H. Robert Baker articulates the many ways in which this case evoked powerful emotions in antebellum America, just as the stage adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin was touring the country and stirring antislavery sentiments. Terribly conflicted about race, Americans struggled mightily with a revolutionary heritage that sanctified liberty but also brooked compromise with slavery. Nevertheless, as the Rescue of Joshua Glover demonstrates, they maintained the principle that the people themselves were the last defenders of constitutional liberty, even as Glover's rescue raised troubling questions about citizenship and the place of free blacks in America.

H. Robert Baker is a visiting assistant professor in history at Marquette University.

California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War

by Leonard L. Richards

From the publisher:
It has always been understood that the 1848 discovery of gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada influenced the battle over the admission of California to the Union. But now, in this revelatory study, award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards makes clear the links between the Gold Rush and many of the regional crises in the lead-up to the Civil War.

Richards explains how Southerners envisioned California as a new market for slaves and saw themselves importing their own slaves to dig for gold, only to be frustrated by California’s passage of a state constitution that prohibited slavery. Still, they schemed to tie California to the South with a southern-routed transcontinental railroad and worked to split off the southern half as a separate slave state.

We see how the Gold Rush influenced the squabbling over the Gadsden Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and various attempts to take Cuba and Nicaragua. We meet David Broderick, a renegade New York Democrat who became a force in San Francisco politics in 1849, and his archrival William Gwin, a major Mississippi slaveholder and politician who arrived in California with the intent of making it a slave state and himself one of its first senators. Richards recounts the Washington battles involving Taylor, Clay, Calhoun, Douglas, Davis, Webster, Fillmore, and others, as well as the fiery California political battles, feuds, duels, and perhaps outright murder as the state came shockingly close to being divided in two.

When war did break out efforts were made to push California to secede, but there was little general enthusiasm for secession, and many prominent Southerners wentoff to join the Confederate Army. And with the South out of the Union, the Pacific Railroad Act passed, insuring a comfortably northern route.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858

by James L. Huston (Author), Robert W. Johannsen (Editor)

From the publisher:
2008 marks the 150th Anniversary of the most famous political debate in U.S. history. Oxford is pleased to present Robert W. Johannsen's newly revised and thoroughly edited transcript of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Framed by a timely and relevant new introduction by James L. Huston, this series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas communicates the eloquence, urgency, and immediacy of its historical moment. As Lincoln and Douglas fiercely competed for the Illinois seat in the U.S. Senate, they debated many of the crucial and controversial issues--including slavery--that would later come to define Lincoln's political career. This invaluable resource also includes Douglas's Chicago speech and Lincoln's "House Divided" speech. With updated notes and suggestions for further reading, the new edition of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates continues to be the authoritative presentation of these lively, landmark orations.

Robert W. Johannsen is J. G. Randall Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Illinois. He is the author of Stephen A. Douglas (OUP, 1973; Francis Parkman Prize); To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (OUP, 1985); The Frontier, the Union,and Stephen A. Douglas; and Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension.

The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Reader

by Stanley Harrold

From the publisher:
This volume deals with two momentous and interrelated events in American history. The American Civil War is the country's largest and most significant war, as northern victory created national sovereignty and ended legal slavery. Reconstruction, although intricately linked to the Civil War, has a more complicated and darker legacy. During this era, the U.S. government undertook a limited effort in behalf of black citizenship, and--faced with violent resistance from white southerners--abandoned the effort. Emancipated and enfranchised after the Civil War, African Americans contributed to the economic, social, and political Reconstruction of the South only to see their efforts come to an end due to southern white resistance and northern indifference.

This reader provides students with a collection of more than sixty essential documentary sources for these periods, including presidential addresses, official reports, songs and poems, and a variety of eyewitness testimony concerning significant (and often dramatic) events. Contextualizing headnotes explain the importance of each document.

Harrold's introduction includes an explanation of how historians analyze, contextualize, and interpret a variety of primary sources related to the Civil War and Reconstruction, allowing students to acquire a better understanding of the raw materials with which historians create narratives of the past, and making this volume a valuable supplement to a variety of courses.

Two Brothers - One North, One South

by David H. Jones

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

Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, along with the personages that forged them, David H. Jones's novel spans four years in the midst of America s costliest and most commemorated war. The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended.

As fate has it, William's brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well. The reader is taken seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.

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

From CWBN:
We missed the true release date for this title, February 1.

The Civil War 100

by Michael L. Lanning

From the publisher:
The Civil War was the defining event in American history.
The Civil War 100 uses a truly novel approach to analyze the respective importance of the events, leaders and battles of America's most important war.

"Across this easily accessible reference, readers meet not only such icons as Lincoln and Lee, but also chronic fumblers whose tarnished reputations have most often sunk beneath the notice of the endless waves of Civil War histories. A recommended reference for the aficionado and the uninitiated alike. Those well-versed in Civil War lore will enjoy the intellectual challenge of supporting or debunking Lanning's rankings, while the merely curious will be exposed to an insightful world of detail that they may have otherwise missed." -ForeWord Magazine

Michael Lee Lanning retired from the U.S. Army after more than twenty years of service. He is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, where he served as an infantry platoon leader and company commander. Lanning has written fourteen books on military history, including The Battle 100. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

From CWBN:
The exact day of release for this February title is unknown.

Planting the Union Flag in Texas: The Campaigns of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks in the West

by Stephen A. Dupree

From the publisher:
Appointed by President Lincoln to command the Gulf Department in November 1862, Nathaniel Prentice Banks was given three assignments, one of which was to occupy some point in Texas. He was told that when he united his army with Grant's, he would assume command of both. Banks, then, had the opportunity to become the leading general in the West—perhaps the most important general in the war. But he squandered what successes he had, never rendezvoused with Grant's army, and ultimately orchestrated some of the greatest military blunders of the war. "Banks's faults as a general," writes author Stephen A. Dupree, "were legion."

The originality of Planting the Union Flag in Texas lies not just in the author's description of the battles and campaigns Banks led, nor in his recognition of the character traits that underlay Banks's decisions. Rather, it lies in how Dupree synthesizes his studies of Banks's various actions during his tour of duty in and near Texas to help the reader understand them as a unified campaign. He skillfully weaves together Banks's various attempts to gain Union control of Texas with his other activities and shines the light of Banks's character on the resulting events to help explain both their potential and their shortcomings.

In the end, readers will have a holistic understanding of Banks's "appalling" failure to win Texas and may even be led to ask how the post–Civil War era might have been different had he been successful. This fine study will appeal to Civil War buffs and fans of military and Texas history.

STEPHEN A. DUPREE is retired from Sandia National Laboratories, where he served as an expert in nuclear nonproliferation, international safeguards, and the detection and analysis of nuclear radiation. A lifelong interest in the Civil War, especially actions in the Southwest, led to the research for this book. Dupree holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Purdue University. He lives in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

From CWBN:
The exact day of release for this February title is unknown.

Abraham Lincoln, A Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President

by Joe L. Wheeler

From the publisher:
Undoubtedly the most revered leader in American history, Abraham Lincoln has had more books written about him than all ournation's presidents put together. But for all that's been written,little has focused on his faith and how this quality shaped the man who led our country during its most tumultuous years.

Author Joe Wheeler, historian and scholar, brings to the pages of this insightful book the knowledge gleaned from over ten years of study and more than sixty books on the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. Skillfully weaving his own narrative with direct quotes from Lincoln and poignant excerpts from other Lincoln biographers, Wheeler brings a refreshingly friendly rendition of Lincoln's life, faith, and courage.

The stories, historical details, and powerful quotes on the pages of this book will leave a lasting impression on your heart, your mind, and your life.

From CWBN:
This title is shown release on 29 January by Amazon and February 5th by Barnes & Noble. B&N show it published by Simon and Schuster; Amazon shows it published by the Howard Press.

The Gettysburg Diaries: War Journals of Two American Adversaries

by Mark Nesbitt

From CWBN:
We were unable to find a description of this release on the publisher's site; likewise there was no information on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

On the author's own site, the following notice appears,

It has come to our attention that the publisher of Mark’s book “35 Days to Gettysburg” sold the reprint rights to Gramercy, a division of Random House. Gramercy has reprinted the book under a new title and ISBN: “The Gettysburg Diaries: War Journals of Two American Adversaries.” The reprinted version is being released in February 2008. This is NOT a new book by Mark Nesbitt!

On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War

by Anthony W. Lee and Elizabeth Young

From the publisher:
Soon after Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book was published, in 1866, it became the Civil War's best-known visual record and helped define how viewers, then and in subsequent generations, would come to know the war. Gardner's classic also became foundational in the history of American photography, combining, for the first time, words and images in a sophisticated and moving account.

This book, written by the art historian Anthony W. Lee and the literary scholar Elizabeth Young, interprets the story of the war as told by Gardner, unraveling his careful choice of words and images and the complicated play between them, and understanding them against the backdrop of the literary and photographic cultures of the American antebellum and Reconstruction eras.

This book presents a unique study of a pivotal American historical document, approaching it from the perspective of visual studies as well as American literature and history.

"Anthony Lee and Elizabeth Young's deceptively slim volume is a complex, enlightening, and elegant study of a significant Civil War-era document that also greatly enhances our understanding of nineteenth-century visual culture. The analysis and format of this collaborative effort will serve as a model for cultural scholarship for years to come." - Joshua Brown, author of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America

The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails

by Erik Calonius

From the publisher:
On Nov. 28, 1858, a ship called the Wanderer slipped silently into a coastal channel and unloaded its cargo of over 400 African slaves onto Jekyll Island, Georgia, thirty eight years after the African slave trade had been made illegal. It was the last ship ever to bring a cargo of African slaves to American soil.

Built in 1856, the Wanderer began life as a luxury racing yacht, flying the pennant of the New York Yacht Club and cited as the successor to the famous yacht America. But within a year of its creation, the Wanderer was secretly converted into a slave ship, and, with the New York Yacht Club pennant still flying above as a diversion, sailed off to Africa. The Wanderer’s mission was meant to be more than a slaving venture, however. It was designed by its radical conspirators to defy the federal government and speed the nation’s descent into civil war.

The New York Times first reported the story as a hoax; however, as groups of Africans began to appear in the small towns surrounding Savannah, the story of the Wanderer began to leak out; igniting a fire of protest and debate that made headlines throughout the nation and across the Atlantic.

As the story shifts between Savannah, Jekyll Island, the Congo River, London, and New York City, the Wanderer's tale is played out in heated Southern courtrooms, the offices of the New York Times, The White House, the slave markets of Africa and some of the most charming homes Southern royalty had to offer. In a gripping account of the high seas and the high life in New York and Savannah, Erik Calonius brings to light one of the most important and little remembered stories of the Civil War period.

ERIK CALONIUS is a former reporter, editor and London-based foreign correspondent for the Wall St. Journal. He served as Miami Bureau Chief for Newsweek. This is his first book.

From the critics:
This is fast-paced narrative history, and Calonius has a terrific eye for atmospheric details. Still, one wishes he had provided more analysis of the larger themes in Southern, American and Atlantic history that this tragic episode illumines. - Publishers Weekly

Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows

by Gabor Boritt

From the publisher:
The literature of the Gettysburg Address tends to fall into one of two extremes. At one end are those books that maintain that Lincoln wrote his speech hastily, even on a scrap of paper on the train en route from Washington to Gettysburg. In this version, Lincoln delivered his remarks to an uncomprehending public, which applauded politely, failing to appreciate his genius. Many of the books that argued this point of view are out of print today, but the myths and legends live on.

At the other end of the spectrum are those books that argue that Lincoln's remarks were written with great care and that they altered the course of the Civil War, even of the country.

This point of view exalts the Gettysburg Address at the expense of the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been made public eleven months earlier.

Gabor Boritt, a Lincoln and Civil War scholar who teaches at Gettysburg College and lives in an old farmhouse adjacent to the battlefield, says that Lincoln's remarks were written rapidly, though not at the last minute, and they received attention, though not nearly so much attention as the lengthy remarks of the featured speaker, Edward Everett. But Lincoln's address was largely forgotten for decades afterward. It had no effect on the Civil War, and played no role in American history until the 20th century.

Boritt will narrate the events of the day, November 19, 1863, as well as the events preceding and following the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery, which was the occasion for Lincoln's remarks. He'll describe the conditions in Gettysburg in the aftermath of the battle - the stench of rotting corpses of horses and mules filling the air, woundedsoldiers occupying hospitals and houses everywhere, damage to roads and houses that was still being repaired when the cemetery was dedicated. He'll describe Lincoln's arrival by train, the cheering crowds that applauded the president that night before the ceremony, and the events of the great day itself, as well as the immediate aftermath of the ceremonies as the town tried to return to its pre-battle life.

Boritt's vivid narrative will be filled with colorful, little-known details. It will recreate the events, but it will also assess the significance of Lincoln's remarks and place them in their proper historical context as no book has before, showing how the remarks that were quickly forgotten took on a new life decades later and became the most famous speech in American history.

From CWBN:
This is the first paperback edition of a hardcover book.

The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion

by A. Wilson Greene

From CWBN:
As of this writing, there is no information offered on this title on the publisher's website, on Amazon or on Barnes & Noble.

Additionally, Amazon shows the publication date as February 1, B&N as February 28, and the publisher's site simply as "February."

The Artillery of Gettysburg

by Bradley M. Gottfried

From the publisher:
The battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 marked the turning point of the American Civil War. The apex of the Confederacy's final major invasion of the North, the devastating defeat also marked the end of the South's offensive strategy against the North. From this battle until the end of the war, the Confederate armies largely remained defensive. The Artillery of Gettsyburg is a thoughtful look at the role of the artillery during the July 1-3, 1863 conflict.

By the time of the Gettysburg campaign, artillery had gained respect in both armies. Used defensively, it could break up attacking formations and change the outcomes of battle. On the offense, it could soften up enemy positions prior to attack. And even if the results were not immediately obvious, the psychological effects to strong artillery support could bolster the infantry and discourage the enemy. Ultimately, infantry and artillery branches became codependent, for the artillery needed infantry support lest it be decimated by enemy infantry or captured.

The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had modified its codependent command system in February 1863. Prior to that, batteries were allocated to brigades, but now they were assigned to each infantry division, thus decentralizing its command structure and making it more difficult for Gen. Robert E. Lee and his artillery chief, Brig. Gen. William Pendleton, to control their deployment on the battlefield.

The Union Army of the Potomac had superior artillery capabilities in numerous ways. At Gettysburg, the Federal artillery had 372 cannons and the Confederates 283. To make matters worse, the Confederate artillery frequently was hindered by the quality of the fuses, which caused the shells to explode too early, too late, or not at all. When combined with a command structure that gave Union Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt more direct control than this Southern counterpart over his forces, the Federal army enjoyed a decided advantage in the countryside around Gettysburg.

Bradley M. Gottfried provides insight into how the two armies employed their artillery, how the different kinds of weapons functioned in battle, and the strategies for using each of them. He shows how artillery affected the ebb and flow of battle for both armies and thus provides a unique way of understanding the strategies of the Federal and Union commanders.

Bradley M. Gottfried is president of Sussex County Community College in New Jersey. He is the author of Brigades of Gettysburg, Kearny's Own: The History of the First New Jersey Brigade in the Civil War, The Roads to Gettysburg, Stopping Pickett: The History of the Philadelphia Brigade, and The Battle of Gettysburg: A Guided Tour and is the author of the forthcoming The Maps of Gettysburg. A frequent contributor to Gettysburg Magazine and Civil War Times, he had made numerous appearances on The History Channel. He lives in La Plata, Maryland.

Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West

by Steven E. Woodworth

From the publisher:
The verdict is in: the Civil War was won in the "West"--that is, in the nation's heartland, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Yet, a person who follows the literature on the war might still think that it was the conflict in Virginia that ultimately decided the outcome. Each year sees the appearance of new books aimed at the popular market that simply assume that it was in the East, often at Gettysburg, that the decisive clashes of war the took place.

For decades, serious historians of the Civil War have completed one careful study after another, nearly all tending to indicate the pivotal importance of what people during the war referred to as "the West." In this fast paced overview, Woodworth presents his case for the decisiveness of the theater. Overwhelming evidence now indicates that it was battles like Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Atlanta that sealed the fate of the Confederacy-not the nearly legendary clashes at Bull Run or Chancellorsville or the mythical "high-water mark" at Gettysburg.

The western campaigns cost the Confederacy vast territories, the manufacturing center of Nashville, the financial center of New Orleans, communications hubs such as Corinth, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, along with the agricultural produce of the breadbasket of the Confederacy. They sapped the morale of Confederates and buoyed the spirits of Unionists, ultimately sealing the northern electorate's decision to return Lincoln to the presidency for a second term and thus to see the war through to final victory. Detailing the "Western" clashes that proved so significant, Woodworth contends that it was there alone that the Civil War could be--and was--decided.

STEVEN E. WOODWORTH is Professor of History at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in history from Rice University in 1987 and has taught at colleges in Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia. He has authored, co-authored, or compiled twenty-six books, including Nothing but Victory; While God is Marching On; and Jefferson Davis and His Generals.

Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad

by Mary Kay Ricks

From the publisher:
On the evening of April 15, 1848, seventy-seven slaves attempted one of history's most audacious escapes--and put in motion a furiously fought battle over slavery in America that would consume Congress, the streets of the capital, and the White House itself. Setting sail from Washington, D.C., on a schooner named the Pearl, the fugitives began a daring 225-mile journey to freedom in the North. Mary Kay Ricks's unforgettable chronicle brings to life the Underground Railroad's largest escape attempt, the seemingly immutable politics of slavery, and the individuals who struggled to end it. All the while, Ricks focuses her narrative on the intimate story of two young sisters who were onboard the Pearl, and sets their struggle for liberation against the powerful historical forces that would nearly tear the country apart.

After a terrifyingly calm night, the wind came up as the sun rose the next morning, and the small schooner shot off down the Potomac River. Hours later, stunned owners--including a former first lady, a shipping magnate, a former congressman, a federal marshal, and a Baptist minister--raised the alarm. Authorities quickly formed a posse that chased the fugitives down the river. But with a head start and a robust wind that filled their sails, the Pearl raced ahead--unaware that a violent squall was moving into their path and would halt their bid for freedom.

Escape on the Pearl reveals the incredible odyssey of those who were onboard, including the remarkable lives of fugitives Mary and Emily Edmonson, the two sisters at the heart of the story, who would trade servitude in elite Washington homes for slave pens in three states. Through the efforts of the sisters' father and the northern "conductor" who had helped organize the escape, an abolitionist outcry arose in the North, calling for the two girls to be rescued. Ultimately, Mary and Emily would go on to stand shoulder to shoulder with such abolitionist luminaries as Frederick Douglass and attend Oberlin College under the sponsorship of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

A story of courage and determination, Escape on the Pearl revives one of the most poignant chapters of U.S. history. The Edmonsons, the other fugitives of the Pearl, and those who helped them can now take their rightful place as American heroes.

Mary Kay Ricks has written about Washington history in numerous publications including the Washington Post. A former attorney at the Department of Labor, Ricks is the founder of Tour DC (www.tourdc.com), which features in-depth walking tours in the nation's capital. Her walks have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Southern Living, Washingtonian, and many other publications. She lives with her husband and two children outside of Washington, D.C.