A hardcover copy of the draft, preliminary, and final versions of Abraham Lincoln's January 1, 1863 Executive Order, the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's slaves.

The diary of Anton Reiff Jr. (c. 1830-1916) is one of only a handful of primary sources to offer a firsthand account of antebellum riverboat travel in the American South. The Pyne and Harrison Opera Troupe, a company run by English sisters Susan and Louisa Pyne and their business partner, tenor William Harrison, hired Reiff, then freelancing in New York, to serve as musical director and conductor for the company's American itinerary. The grueling tour began in November 1855 in Boston and then proceeded to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, where, after a three-week engagement, the company boarded a paddle steamer bound for New Orleans. It was at that point that Reiff started to keep his diary. Diligently transcribed and annotated by Michael Burden, Reiff's diary presents an extraordinarily rare view of life with a foreign opera company as it traveled the country by river and rail. Surprisingly, Reiff comments little on the Pyne-Harrison performances themselves, although he does visit the theaters in the river towns, including New Orleans, where he spends evenings both at the French Opera and at the Gaiety. Instead, Reiff focuses his attention on other passengers, on the mechanics of the journey, on the landscape, and on events he encounters, including the 1856 Mardi Gras and the unveiling of the statue of Andrew Jackson in New Orleans's Jackson Square. Reiff is clearly captivated by the river towns and their residents, including the enslaved, whom he encountered whenever the boat tied up. Running throughout the journal is a thread of anxiety, for, apart from the typical dangers of a river trip, the winter of 1855-1856 was one of the coldest of the century, and the steamer had difficulties with river ice. Historians have used Reiff's journal as source material, but until now the entire text, which is archived in Louisiana State University's Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library, has only been available in its original state. As a primary source, the published journal will have broad appeal to historians and other readers interested in antebellum riverboat travel, highbrow entertainment, and the people and places of the South.

The smoke had just cleared from the last volley of musketry at Gettysburg. Nearly 70 percent of the First Minnesota regiment lay dead or dying on the field -- one of the greatest losses of any unit engaged in the Civil War. Pale Horse at Plum Run is the study of this single regiment at this crucial moment in American history. Through painstaking research of firsthand accounts, eyewitness reports, and official records, Brian Leehan constructs a narrative remarkable for its attention to detail and careful reportage. Word of the First's heroic act at Gettysburg quickly spread along Union lines and back to Minnesota. Their stand late on July 2, 1863, stopped a furious rebel assault and saved the day for the Union. Emerging from the chaos of battle, however, firsthand reports contradicted each other. Confused officers and frightened soldiers told very different stories of the day's hearsay and camp gossip for their sources of information. All of this leaves the historical investigator to ask, what really happened that day at Plum Run? In order to answer that question, Leehan performs superlative historical detective work. By focusing on the men themselves -- and their accounts of the engagement -- he weaves together a narrative of the First's action on July 2 and 3. Those who escaped the scythe of battle the first day lived to play a pivotal role the next in rebuffing the most famous infantry assault in American military history, Pickett's Charge. By tracking the movements of individual soldiers over the field of battle, Leehan reconstructs in amazing detail the story of this remarkable band of soldiers. In his investigation of the battle Leehan raises important questions about how we can really know the truth about the past. In cogent appended essays, the author muses on the lack of standardised timekeeping in the mid-nineteenth century, on the nature of Civil War weaponry, and on the emergence of a heroic mythology after the war.

THE BATTLE OF LITTLE ROUND TOP AS IT HAS NEVER BEFORE SEEN-THROUGH THE EYES OF THE SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT THERE
""Here is the real story of the epic fight for Little Round Top, shorn of the mythology long obscuring this pivotal Gettysburg moment. A vivid and eloquent book."" --Stephen W. Sears, author of Gettysburg
""Little Round Top has become iconic in Civil War literature and American memory. In the emotional recollection of our great war, if there was one speck on the landscape that decided a battle and the future of a nation, then surely this was it. The story of the July 2, 1863 struggle for that hill outside Gettysburg goes deeper into our consciousness than that, however. The men who fought for it then and there believed it to be decisive, and that is why they died for it. Glenn W. LaFantasie's Twilight at Little Round Top addresses that epic struggle, how those warriors felt then and later, and their physical and emotional attachment to a piece of ground that linked them forever with their nation's fate. This is military and social history at its finest."" --W.C. Davis, author of Lincoln's Men and An Honorable Defeat
""Few military episodes of the Civil War have attracted as much attention as the struggle for Little Round Top on the second day of Gettysburg. This judicious and engaging book navigates confidently through a welter of contradictory testimony to present a splendid account of the action. It also places events on Little Round Top, which often are exaggerated, within the broader sweep of the battle. All readers interested in the battle of Gettysburg will read this book with enjoyment and profit."" --Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Confederate War
""In his beautifully written narrative, Glenn LaFantasie tells the story of the battle for Little Round Top from the perspective of the soldiers who fought and died in July 1863. Using well-chosen quotes from a wide variety of battle participants, TWILIGHT puts the reader in the midst of the fight--firing from behind boulders with members of the 4th Alabama, running up the hillside into battle with the men of the 140th New York, and watching in horror as far too many men die. This book offers an elegy to the courage of those men, a meditation on the meaning of war, and a cautionary tale about the sacrifices nations ask of their soldiers and the causes for which those sacrifices are needed."" --Amy Kinsel, Winnrer of the 1993 Allan Nevins Prize for From These Honored Dead: Gettysburg in American Culture

Concerned with the logistical details of supplying the Army of the Potomac as it bogged down during the Peninsula campaign or of commandeering a steamboat to relieve the siege and get food to stranded soldiers at Chattanooga, Le Duc tells his story of mud-choked roads, incompetent commanders, and what he understands as the crucial factor necessary for the Union's success in battle: a well-supplied army. Through his close association with Generals McClellan and Meade, Hooker and Sherman, Le Duc learned to master the army's bureaucracy and overcome the hardships of trying to keep Union supplies on the move. His compelling memoir is unique in depicting the details of life in the Quartermaster Department. William G Le Duc (1823-1917) moved to the Minnesota Territory in 1850. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he volunteered into the Quartermaster Department and mustered out four years later as brevet brigadier general. He later served as the US Commissioner of Agriculture from 1877 until 1881 and retired to his home in Hastings, Minnesota.

Francis C. Barlow rose from lieutenant to general, suffered two serious wounds in combat, and played critical roles in such battles as Fair Oaks, Gettysburg (part of this battlefield is now named for him), and Spotsylvania. Barlow's war correspondence not only provide a rich description of his experiences in these actions but also offer insight into a civilian learning the realities of war as well as the burdens of command.Barlow was well connected with many eminent figures of his time, having spent part of his youth at Brook Farm, graduated in the Harvard College class of 1855, and had such friends as Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Ralph W. Emerson, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., and John M. Forbes to watch over and promote his career. Winslow Homer spent considerable time with Barlow while making engravings for Harper's Weekly and later immortalized his friend in the painting, Prisoners From the Front. Barlow's letters not only offer information concerning such people but more importantly, help fill a gap in Civil War scholarship by providing a valuable window into Northern intellectual responses to the war.Jacket CopyHISTORY"Through explanatory passages and extensive notes that accompany Barlow's letters, Christian G. Samito sheds new light on the life of a major general. The letters, which span the entire war, trace the development of Northern intellectuals' perspective on the war and military life. The book illustrates how a young man, unskilled in military science, eventually became one of the North's strongest combat leaders, and a postwar politician."-Civil War Book Review Originally untrained in military science, Francis Channing Barlow ended the Civil War as one of the North's premiercombat generals. He played decisive roles in historic campaigns throughout the War and his letters are classic accounts of courage combat, and the burdens of command as experienced by one of the Union's fiercest officers.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Barlow enlisted in April 1861 at the age of twenty six, commanded the 61st New York Infantry regiment by April 1862, and found himself a general in command of a division by 1863. He played a key role at Fair Oaks, Antietam, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg, suffered two serious wounds in combat, and was left for dead at Gettysburg, where part of the battlefield is named after him. Barlow's war correspondence not only provides a rich description of his experiences in these actions but also offers insight into a civilian learning the realities of war.As a young intellectual, Barlow was also well connected with many eminent figures of his time. He spent part of his youth at Brook Farm, graduated first in his Harvard College class, and became a successful New York City lawyer by the time he enlisted. Among his friends he counted Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., and Winslow Homer's family. Transformed by his experiences in the War, Barlow entered politics and served as New York's Secretary of State and Attorney General. Superbly edited by Christian G. Samito, Barlow's letters not only illuminate the life of a talented battlefield commander; they also fill a gap in Civil War scholarship by providing a valuable window into Northern intellectual responses to the War.Christian G. Samito is the editor of Commanding Boston's Irish Ninth: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Patrick R. Guiney, Ninth Massachusetts VolunteerInfantry and History of the Ninth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.Cover illustration: Cover design: Fordham University PressNew Yorkwww.fordhampress.com

Independence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York's frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has, almost unbelievably, been lost to history. Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. Desperate for good news, the North was soon riveted by reports of an incident that occurred a few hundred miles off the coast of New York, where the Waring had been overtaken by a marauding crew of Confederate privateers. While the white sailors became chummy with their Southern captors, free black man William Tillman was perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him in the ruthless, slave-filled ports south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stealthily biding his time until a moonlit night nine days after the capture, Tillman single-handedly killed three officers of the privateer crew, then took the wheel and pointed it home. Yet, with no experience as a navigator, only one other helper, and a war-torn Atlantic seaboard to contend with, his struggle had just begun. It took five perilous days at sea-all thrillingly recounted here-before the Waring returned to New York Harbor, where the story of Tillman's shipboard courage became such a tabloid sensation that he was not only put on the bill of Barnum's American Museum but also proclaimed to be the "first hero" of the Civil War. As McGinty evocatively shows, however, in the horrors of the war then engulfing the nation, memories of his heroism-even of his identity-were all but lost to history. As such, The Rest I Will Kill becomes a thrilling and historically significant work, as well as an extraordinary journey that recounts how a free black man was able to defy efforts to make him a slave and become an unlikely glimmer of hope for a disheartened Union army in the war-battered North.

In May 1861, Jefferson Davis issued a general call for volunteers for the Confederate Army. Men responded in such numbers that 200,000 had to be turned away. Few of these men would have attributed their zeal to the cause of states' rights or slavery. As All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South makes clear, most southern men saw the war more simply as a test of their manhood, a chance to defend the honor of their sweethearts, fiances, and wives back home.
Drawing upon diaries and personal letters, Stephen Berry seamlessly weaves together the stories of six very different men, detailing the tangled roles that love and ambition played in each man's life. Their writings reveal a male-dominated Southern culture that exalted women as "repositories of divine grace" and treasured romantic love as the platform from which men launched their bids for greatness. The exhilarating onset of war seemed to these, and most southern men, a grand opportunity to fulfill their ambition for glory and to prove their love for women--on the same field of battle. As the realities of the war became apparent, however, the letters and diaries turned from idealized themes of honor and country to solemn reflections on love and home.
Elegant and poetic, All That Makes a Man recovers the emotional lives of unsung Southern men and women and reveals that the fiction of Cold Mountain mirrors a poignant reality. In their search for a cause worthy of their lives, many Southern soldiers were disappointed in their hopes for a Southern nation. But they still had their women's love, and there they would rebuild.
All that Makes a Man was a finalist 2004 Peter Seaborg Award for Civil WarScholarship, George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War.

Focusing on middle-class women's contributions to the northern Civil War effort, Patricia Richard shows how women utilized their power as moral agents to shape the way men survived the ravages of war. Busy Hands investigates the ways in which white and African American women used images of family and domestic life in their relief efforts to counter the effects of prostitution, gambling, profanity, and drinking, threatening men's postwar civilian fitness.

Drawing on letters, diaries, and memoirs of Civil War nurses, sanitary workers, soldiers, and the soldiers' aid societies, Richard develops a new perspective on domestic influence on the war, as women sought to save soldiers from the dangers of the military world.

In this innovative book, Kyle Sinisi explores a little-known chapter in the history of American politics-the struggle between states and the federal government over the costs of fighting the Civil War. At stake was the disposition of some 8 million. Focusing on Kansas, Kentucky, and Missouri, Sinisi explores the process by which states were reimbursed by Washington in the most expensive intergovernmental contact of the 19th century. Recasting our understanding of governance, he shows that traditional sources of influence-courts and political parties-were less important in settling claims than adjutants general and private agents who fought for cash bonanzas. These power brokers helped shape the federal bureaucracy-and the process of state building.

Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party was the first party built on opposition to slavery to win on the national stage-but its victory was rooted in the earlier efforts of under-appreciated antislavery third parties. Liberty Power tells the story of how abolitionist activists built the most transformative third-party movement in American history and effectively reshaped political structures in the decades leading up to the Civil War. As Corey M. Brooks explains, abolitionist trailblazers who organized first the Liberty Party and later the more moderate Free Soil Party confronted formidable opposition from a two-party system expressly constructed to suppress disputes over slavery. Identifying the Whigs and Democrats as the mainstays of the southern Slave Power's national supremacy, savvy abolitionists insisted that only a party independent of slaveholder influence could wrest the federal government from its grip. A series of shrewd electoral, lobbying, and legislative tactics enabled these antislavery third parties to wield influence far beyond their numbers. In the process, these parties transformed the national political debate and laid the groundwork for the success of the Republican Party and the end of American slavery.

An in-depth study of non-elite white families in Alabama-from the state's creation through the end of the Civil War The Failure of Our Fathers: Family, Gender, and Power in Confederate Alabama examines the evolving position of non-elite white families in Alabama during one of the most pivotal epochs in the state's history. Drawing on a wide range of personal and public documents reflecting the state's varied regions and economies, Victoria E. Ott uses gender and family as a lens to examine the yeomanry and poor whites, a constituency that she collectively defines as "common whites," who identified with the Confederate cause. Ott provides a nuanced examination of how these Alabamians fit within the antebellum era's paternalistic social order, eventually identifying with and supporting the Confederate mission to leave the Union and create an independent, slaveholding state. But as the reality of the war slowly set in and the Confederacy began to fray, the increasing dangers families faced led Alabama's common white men and women to find new avenues to power as a distinct socioeconomic class. Ott argues that family provided the conceptual framework necessary to understand why common whites supported a war to protect slavery despite having little or no investment in the institution. Going to war meant protecting their families from outsiders who threatened to turn their worlds upside down. Despite class differences, common whites envisioned the Confederacy as a larger family and the state as paternal figures who promised to protect its loyal dependents throughout the conflict. Yet, as the war ravaged many Alabama communities, devotion to the Confederacy seemed less a priority as families faced continued separations, threats of death, and the potential for starvation. The construct of a familial structure that once created a sense of loyalty to the Confederacy now gave them cause to question its leadership. Ott shows how these domestic values rooted in highly gendered concepts ultimately redefined Alabama's social structure and increased class distinctions after the war.

Joshua L. Chamberlain of Maine and John B. Gordon of Georgia led the Union and Confederate armies, respectively, at the formal surrender ceremony at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia on April 12, 1865. In one of the most dramatic and memorable moments of the Civil War, as the Confederate soldiers marched through the Union lines to stack their weapons and flags, Chamberlain, moved by the historic moment and desiring to pay honour to a valiant, defeated foe, ordered his Union soldiers to salute Gordon's Confederates. Gordon, surprised but stirred by the same emotion, immediately responded, and ordered his men to return the salute. Both men had volunteered for military service, feeling a strong need to fight for the cause of their respective sections. They entered military service as low level officers with no formal military training. Repeatedly, they exhibited exceptional aptitude and responsibility, rising through the ranks as they received the glowing accolades of their superiors. Yet, they remained humble, continually demonstrating extraordinary courage, which earned them the respect of their men. Ultimately, their heroism and leadership culminated in their meeting as the commanders at the Appomattox Courthouse surrender. After the Civil War, Chamberlain and Gordon entered politics in their respective states.

Based on nearly five decades of research, this magisterial work is a biographical register and analysis of the people who most directly influenced the course of the Civil War, its high commanders. Numbering 3,396, they include the presidents and their cabinet members, state governors, general officers of the Union and Confederate armies (regular, provisional, volunteers, and militia), and admirals and commodores of the two navies. "Civil War High Commands" will become a cornerstone reference work on these personalities and the meaning of their commands, and on the Civil War itself.
Errors of fact and interpretation concerning the high commanders are legion in the Civil War literature, in reference works as well as in narrative accounts. The present work brings together for the first time in one volume the most reliable facts available, drawn from more than 1,000 sources and including the most recent research. The biographical entries include complete names, birthplaces, important relatives, education, vocations, publications, military grades, wartime assignments, wounds, captures, exchanges, paroles, honors, and place of death and interment.
In addition to its main component, the biographies, the volume also includes a number of essays, tables, and synopses designed to clarify previously obscure matters such as the definition of grades and ranks; the difference between commissions in regular, provisional, volunteer, and militia services; the chronology of military laws and executive decisions before, during, and after the war; and the geographical breakdown of command structures. The book is illustrated with 84 new diagrams of all the insignias used throughout the war and with 129 portraits of the most important high commanders.

Acclaimed historian Adam Fairclough chronicles the struggle of black Americans to achieve civil rights and equality in a society that, after the collapse of Reconstruction, sanctioned racial segregation, racial discrimination and political supremacy. Through his extensive research Fairclough reexamines many issues and balances the achievements of the Civil Rights movement against the persistance of racial and economic inequalities in an account that is articulate, accomplished and superbly written.

While conscientious objection in the twentieth century has been well documented, there has been surprisingly little study of its long history in America's early conflicts. Peter Brock, one of the foremost historians of American pacifism, seeks to remedy this oversight by presenting a rich and varied collection of documents, many drawn from obscure sources, that shed new light on American religious and military history. These include legal findings, church and meeting proceedings, appeals by non-conformists to government authorities, and illuminating excerpts from personal journals.One of the most striking features to emerge from these documents is the critical role of religion in the history of American pacifism. Brock finds that virtually all who refused military service in this period were inspired by religious convictions, with Quakers frequently being the most ardent dissenters. A dramatic, powerful portrait of early American pacifism, Liberty and Conscience presents not only the thought and practice of the objectors themselves, but also the response of the authorities and the general public.

Three years ago, in celebration of the publication of The Union Preserved: A Guide to the Civil War Records in the New York State Archives, the New York State Archives Partnership Trust, a program of the New York State Education Department, held a two-day symposium featuring research by leading scholars on New York's role in the Civil War. The symposium brought together a broad spectrum of attendees from the Lincoln Forum, Civil War re-enactors, Civil War Roundtable members, students, local historians, educators, and history enthusiasts. As the most populous state at the time of the Civil War, New York was central to winning the war. The state not only provided the most men and materiel, but was also the North's economic center as well as an important center of political and social activism. Inhabited by increasing numbers of immigrant groups, abolitionists, and an emerging free black community, New York's social and political environment was a microcosm of the larger social and political conflict being played out in the war. The symposium addressed these tensions by examining the role of women, blacks, Native Americans, and European immigrant groups in New York, particularly the various perspectives held by members of each group regarding the war effort. The symposium examined the difficulties Abraham Lincoln faced in keeping New York favorable to his policies. It revealed the tremendous sacrifice New York made in the military campaign, as well as the treatment of Confederate soldiers at New York's Elmira Prison Camp. The State of the Union is a compilation of the papers presented at the symposium. The essays included in the volume: Housekeeping on Its Own Terms: Abraham Lincoln in NewYork, by Harold Holzer The Volcano Under the City: The Significance of Draft Rioting in New York City and State, July 1863, by Iver Bernstein What's Gender Got to Do With It? New York in the Age of the Civil War, by Lillian Serece Williams In the Shadow of American Indian Removal: The Iroquois in the Civil War, by Laurance M. Hauptman Above the Law: Abitrary Arrest, Habeas Corpus, and the Freedom of the Press in New York, by Joseph M. Bellacosa and Frank J. Williams New York's "Andersonville: " The Elmira Military Prison, by Lonnie R. Speer The Continuing Conflict: New York and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, by Hans Trefousse

The first full account of Whitman's Civil War years sheds new light on the man, his poetry, and the treatment of the war's sick and wounded.

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity as they planted and harvested the fields. By night, they clandestinely took to the woods and swamps to trap opossums and turtles, to visit relatives living on adjacent plantations, and at times to escape slave patrols and escape to freedom. Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce. They saw the landscape as disposable, relocating to more fertile prospects once they had leached the soils and cut down the forests. On the leading edge of the frontier, slavery laid waste to fragile ecosystems, draining swamps, clearing forests to plant crops and fuel steamships, and introducing devastating invasive species. On its trailing edge, slavery left eroded hillsides, rivers clogged with sterile soil, and the extinction of native species. While environmental destruction fueled slavery's expansion, no environment could long survive intensive slave labor. The scars manifested themselves in different ways, but the land too fell victim to the slave owner's lash. Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice.

While the Civil War raged in the East and South, Dakota Indians in Minnesota erupted violently into action against white settlers, igniting the tragic Dakota War of 1862. Hemmed in on a narrow reservation along the upper Minnesota River, the Dakota (Sioux) were frustrated by broken treaties, angered by dishonest agents and traders, and near starvation because of crop failures and late annuity payments. Led by Little Crow, Dakota warriors attacked the Redwood and Yellow Medicine Indian agencies and all whites living on their former lands in south-western Minnesota. They killed more than 450 whites and took some 250 white and mixed-blood prisoners during the 38-day conflict. White civilians and military units commanded by Henry H. Sibley defended towns and forts, pursued warriors, and eventually forced the Indians to surrender or flee westward. The penalties imposed by vengeful whites were swift and devastating. The federal government hanged 38 Dakota men in the largest mass execution in US history, 300 were imprisoned, and the Dakota people were banished from the state. This is the most accessible and balanced account available which draws on a wealth of written and visual materials by white and Indian participants and observers to show the sources of the Dakotas' justified and bitter wrath -- and the terrible consequences of the conflict.

Few wartime cities in Virginia held more importance than Petersburg. Nonetheless, the city has, until now, lacked an adequate military history, let alone a history of the civilian home front. The noted Civil War historian A. Wilson Greene now provides an expertly researched, eloquently written study of the city that was second only to Richmond in size and strategic significance. Industrial, commercial, and extremely prosperous, Petersburg was also home to a large African American community, including the state's highest percentage of free blacks. On the eve of the Civil War, the city elected a conservative, pro-Union approach to the sectional crisis. Little more than a month before Virginia's secession did Petersburg finally express pro-Confederate sentiments, at which point the city threw itself wholeheartedly into the effort, with large numbers of both white and black men serving. Over the next four years, Petersburg's citizens watched their once-beautiful city become first a conduit for transient soldiers from the Deep South, then an armed camp, and finally the focus of one of the Civil War's most protracted and damaging campaigns. (The fall of Richmond and collapse of the Confederate war effort in Virginia followed close on Grant's ultimate success in Petersburg.) At war's end, Petersburg's antebellum prosperity evaporated under pressures from inflation, chronic shortages, and the extensive damage done by Union artillery shells. Greene's book tracks both Petersburg's civilian experience and the city's place in Confederate military strategy and administration. Employing scores of unpublished sources, the book weaves a uniquely personal story of thousands of citizens--free blacks, slaves and their holders, factory owners, merchants--all of whom shared a singular experience in Civil War Virginia.

Mastering Wartime A Social History of Philadelphia During the Civil War J. Matthew Gallman "This significant book is necessary reading for those who wish to understand the construction of public order and the transformation of urban institutions in the nineteenth century."--"American Historical Review" "Thanks in part to Gallman's efforts, we may well have an understanding of the meanings of the Civil War on the home front and in the localities that complements and enhances our understanding of its great significance for the nation as a whole."--"Reviews in American History" "Mastering Wartime" is the first comprehensive study of a Northern city during the Civil War. J. Matthew Gallman argues that, although the war posed numerous challenges to Philadelphia's citizens, the city's institutions and traditions proved to be sufficiently resilient to adjust to the crisis without significant alteration. Following the wartime actions of individuals and groups-workers, women, entrepreneurs-he shows that while the war placed pressure on private and public organizations to centralize, Philadelphia's institutions remained largely decentralized and tradition bound. Gallman explores the war's impact on a wide range of aspects of life in Philadelphia. Among the issues addressed are recruitment and conscription of soldiers, individual responses to wartime separation and death, individual and institutional benevolence, civic rituals, crime and disorder, government contracting, and long-term economic development. The book compares the wartime years to the antebellum period and discusses the war's legacies in the postwar decade. J. Matthew Gallman is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College and author of "Receiving Erin's Children: Philadelphia, Liverpool, and the Irish Famine Migration, 1845-1855." Pennsylvania Paperbacks 2000 368 pages 6 x 9 11 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1744-5 Paper $27.50s 18.00 World Rights History, American History Short copy: A pioneering study of a Northern city during the Civil War that challenges the long-held belief that the War was a "second American Revolution."

Vicksburg is the key. . . . Let us get Vicksburg, and all that country is ours.--President Abraham Lincoln, 1862
In a brilliantly constructed and powerfully rendered new account, James R. Arnold offers a penetrating analysis of Grant's strategies and actions leading to the Union victory at Vicksburg. Approaching these epic events from a unique and well-rounded perspective, and based on careful research, Grant Wins the War is fascinating reading for all Civil War and military history buffs.
Acclaim for Grant Wins the War
Nicely details the coordination of Union military and naval operations and the boldness and genius of General U. S. Grant that brought Union victory, and he offers an excellent discussion of the technology and tactics of siege warfare. . . . a good drums-and-bugle account of an important event.--Library Journal
A particular strength of this work is its demonstration that modern weapons left no shortcuts to victory, and little room for command virtuosity.--Publishers Weekly
Throughout, Arnold backs up his assessments with solid facts and sound reasoning, engagingly presented. He has produced a useful and enjoyable brief history of the Vicksburg campaign, helpful to scholars and general readers alike.--Journal of Military History
Powerfully and persuasively argues that the Union victory at Vicksburg in 1863 was in fact the actual turning point of the Civil War.--Helena (Mont.) Independent Record