This book explores the continuous British fascination with the American Civil War from the 1870s to the present. Analysing the War's place in British political discourse, military writing, intellectual life and popular culture, it traces the sources of Britons' appeal to the American conflict and their use of its representations at home and abroad.

During the American Civil War, more than one hundred thousand men fought on ships at sea or on one of America's great inland rivers. There were no large-scale fleet engagements, yet the navies, particularly the Union Navy, did much to define the character of the war and affect its length. The first hostile shots roared from rebel artillery at Charleston Harbor. Along the Mississippi River and other inland waterways across the South, Union gunboats were often the first to arrive in deadly enemy territory. In the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic seaboard, blockaders in blue floated within earshot of gray garrisons that guarded vital ports. And on the open seas, rebel raiders wreaked havoc on civilian shipping. In Faces of the Civil War Navies, renowned researcher and Civil War photograph collector Ronald S. Coddington focuses his considerable skills on the Union and Confederate navies. Using identifiable cartes de visite of common sailors on both sides of the war, many of them never before published, Coddington uncovers the personal histories of each individual who looked into the eye of the primitive camera. These unique narratives are drawn from military and pension records, letters, diaries, period newspapers, and other primary sources. In addition to presenting the personal stories of seventy-seven intrepid volunteers, Coddington also focuses on the momentous naval events that ushered in an era of ironclad ships and other technical innovations. The fourth volume in Coddington's series on Civil War soldiers, this microhistory will appeal to anyone with an interest in the Civil War, social history, or photography. The narratives and photographs in Faces of the Civil War Navies shed new light on a lesser-known part of our American story. Taken collectively, these "snapshots" remind us that the history of war is not merely a chronicle of campaigns won and lost, it is the collective personal odysseys of thousands of individual life stories.

The Forgotten "Stonewall of the West" for the first time rightly places Major General John Stevens Bowen into top ranking as one of the best division commanders who fought for the Confederacy. The case is made repeatedly throughout this book that Bowen, even more than General Pat Cleburne, was entitled to a lofty reputation - more indeed than any other Confederate general in the West. This book parallels the lives of Bowen and General Ulysses S. Grant. Bowen and Grant were West Pointers and St. Louis neighbors who faced each other both before the war and on some of the great battlefields during the war. Because General Bowen died of disease in July 1863 immediately after the fall of Vicksburg, his story, until now, has been almost forgotten. From Shiloh to Vicksburg, General Bowen was the type of bold commander - whether commanding a regiment, brigade, or division - who led his men at the head of the charge. In his first battle, for example, Bowen's closest brush with death came when he led his brigade's charge at Shiloh. And, like General Grant, Bowen's aggressive, hard-hitting style continued as he rose in rank, reaching a climax during the decisive Vicksburg campaign. While the legend of General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson made the Stonewall Brigade famous, Bowen played a key role in molding the First Missouri Confederate Brigade into a lethal fighting machine, which had a better combat record than the immortalized Virginians. But because the Missouri Brigade has for so long been ignored by historians, Bowen's reputation has likewise suffered in the historical memory.

This study describes the creation of the Primitive Baptist movement and discusses the main outlines of their thought. It also weaves the story of the Primitive Baptists with other developments in American Christianity in the Early Republic.

The sixteen essays in this volume, all previously unpublished, address the little considered question of the role played by religion in the American Civil War. The authors show that religion, understood in its broadest context as a culture and community of faith, was found wherever the war was found. Comprising essays by such scholars as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Drew Gilpin Faust, Mark Noll, Reid Mitchell, Harry Stout, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and featuring an afterword by James McPherson, this collection marks the first step towards uncovering this crucial yet neglected aspect of American history.

In 1832 Joseph Smith, Jr., the Mormons' first prophet, foretold of a great war beginning in South Carolina. In the combatants' mutual destruction, God's purposes would be served, and Mormon men would rise to form a geographical, political, and theocratic ""Kingdom of God"" to encompass the earth. Three decades later, when Smith's prophecy failed with the end of the American Civil War, the United States left torn but intact, the Mormons' perspective on the conflict - and their inactivity in it - required palliative revision. In The Civil War Years in Utah, the first full account of the events that occurred in Utah Territory during the Civil War, John Gary Maxwell contradicts the patriotic mythology of Mormon leaders' version of this dark chapter in Utah history. While the Civil War spread death, tragedy, and sorrow across the continent, Utah Territory remained virtually untouched. Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - and its faithful - proudly praise the service of an 1862 Mormon cavalry company during the Civil War, Maxwell's research exposes the relatively inconsequential contribution of these Nauvoo Legion soldiers. Active for a mere ninety days, they patrolled overland trails and telegraph lines. Furthermore, Maxwell finds indisputable evidence of Southern allegiance among Mormon leaders, despite their claim of staunch, long-standing loyalty to the Union. Men at the highest levels of Mormon hierarchy were in close personal contact with Confederate operatives. In seeking sovereignty, Maxwell contends, the Saints engaged in blatant and treasonous conflict with Union authorities, the California and Nevada Volunteers, and federal policies, repeatedly skirting open warfare with the U.S. government. Collective memory of this consequential period in American history, Maxwell argues, has been ill-served by a one-sided perspective. This engaging and long-overdue reappraisal finally fills in the gaps, telling the full story of the Civil War years in Utah Territory.

Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy when Virginia joined the Southern cause, marking the city as a prime target for the Union army. General McClellan was the first Union leader to lay siege to Richmond, and that was just the beginning. The attractive and genteel city of Richmond would be transformed into a refugee camp, a scene of riots, and a city-sized hospital before the war was over. Making use of diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts from the era, Wright brings readers face to face with the men and women who fought for the city, endured starvation, observed Lee's defeats and Grant's progress, and witnessed the Confederacy's last days.

One of the lesser-known stories of the Civil War is the role played by escaped slaves in the Union blockade along the Atlantic coast. From the beginning of the war, many African American refugees sought avenues of escape to the North. Due to their sheer numbers, those who reached Union forces presented a problem for the military. Fortunately, the First Confiscation Act of 1861 permitted the seizure of property used in support of the South's war effort, including slaves. Eventually regarded as contraband of war, the runaways became known as contrabands. In Bluejackets and Contrabands, Barbara Brooks Tomblin examines the relationship between the Union Navy and the contrabands. The navy established colonies for the former slaves, and, in return, some contrabands served as crewmen on navy ships and gunboats and as river pilots, spies, and guides. Tomblin presents a rare picture of the contrabands and casts light on the vital contributions of African Americans to the Union Navy and the Union cause.

This isn't an ordinary Civil War tale. It is the all-true but little-known story of Adam "Stovepipe" Johnson-Kentucky legend, Texas hero, and Confederate cavalry officer-who boldly led the first Confederate raid across the Mason-Dixon Line to capture the thriving river-port community of Newburgh, Indiana, during the American Civil War. Not a shot was fired.

With the politically divided landscape of Civil War Kentucky and the steamboat economy of the Ohio River as its backdrop, this is the historically accurate account of surprise nocturnal strikes, opportunistic military occupations, and a swashbuckling Rebel icon's daring daylight invasion into the Northern homeland that sealed the fate of western Kentucky for the remainder of the war.

Vivid, thorough, and painstakingly researched, "Thunder from a Clear Sky" documents five critical weeks of 1862 Civil War history and shares the untold tale of one man's immeasurable impact on a nation at war.

"A fascinating account of how a skilled former Indian fighter gathered a few Kentucky rebels and 'woke up' the slumbering Indiana Home Guard."
-"Evansville Courier & Press Book Reviews"

"An important and, until now, largely neglected story about the American Civil War... "Thunder from a Clear Sky" stands as a fresh and important contribution in a field long studied."-Professor Randy K. Mills, Ph.D., Oakland City University, author of "Jonathan Jennings: Indiana's First Governor "

"The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution. Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.

A compelling exploration of what real life was like for residents of Civil War-era Atlanta In 1845, Atlanta was the last stop at the end of a railroad line, the home of just twelve families and three general stores. By the 1860s, it was a thriving Confederate city, second only to Richmond in importance. A Changing Wind is the first history to explore the experiences of Atlanta's civilians during the young city's rapid growth, the devastation of the Civil War, and the Reconstruction era when Atlanta emerged as a "New South" city. A Changing Wind vividly brings to life the stories of Atlanta's diverse citizens-white and black, free and enslaved, well-to-do and everyday people. A rich and compelling account of residents' changing loyalties to the Union and the Confederacy, the book highlights the unequal economic and social impacts of the war, General Sherman's siege, and the stunning rebirth of the city in postwar years. The final chapter of the book focuses on Atlanta's historical memory of the Civil War and how racial divisions have led to separate commemorations of the war's meaning.

This set was written by distinguished men of the South, producing a work which truly portrays the times and issues of the Confederacy. It was edited by Gen. Clement A. Evans of Georgia. Two volumes--the first and the last--comprise such subjects as the justification of the Southern States in seceding from the Union and the honorable conduct of the war by the Confederate States government; the history of the actions and concessions of the South in the formation of the Union. There are also individual volumes for each state: Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas & Florida. An additional volume covers the Confederate Navy.

The larger-than-life image Abraham Lincoln projects across the screen of American history owes much to his role as the Great Emancipator during the Civil War. Yet this noble aspect of Lincoln's identity is precisely the dimension that some historians have cast into doubt. In a vigorous defense of America's sixteenth president, award-winning historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo refutes accusations of Lincoln's racism and political opportunism, while candidly probing the follies of contemporary cynicism and the constraints of today's unexamined faith in the liberating powers of individual autonomy. Redeeming the Great Emancipator enumerates Lincoln's anti-slavery credentials, showing that a deeply held belief in the God-given rights of all people steeled the president in his commitment to emancipation and his hope for racial reconciliation. Emancipation did not achieve complete freedom for American slaves, nor was Lincoln entirely above some of the racial prejudices of his time. Nevertheless, his conscience and moral convictions far outweighed political calculations in ultimately securing freedom for black Americans. Guelzo clarifies the historical record concerning what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not accomplish. As a policy it was imperfect, but it was far from ineffectual, as some accounts of African American self-emancipation imply. To achieve liberation required interdependence across barriers of race and status. If we fail to recognize our debt to the sacrifices and ingenuity of all the brave men and women of the past, Guelzo says, then we deny a precious part of the American and, indeed, the human community.

"The Union" meant meant many things to Americans in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War. Nagel's thesis is that the idea served as a treasure-trove of the values and images by which Americans tried to understand their nature and destiny. By tracing the idea of Union through the crucial, formative years of America's history, he makes clear the nature of the intellectual and emotional responses Americans have had to their country.