A collection of authentic Lowcountry folklore as directly told to the WPA field workers and captured through their written reports. Southern author Nancy Rhyne has assembled a cross section of writing that gives the reader an understanding of the stories and superstitions embraced by generations of former slaves and their families. Along with WPA reports, Rhyne also has added stories from personal interviews and detailed research. From former slaves to Charleston's social elite and the state's first governors, this is a diverse collection of tales, but all of them reveal a character and nature that is true to the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Found on monuments throughout the South, the sentiment aLest we forget!a represents the theme of Remembering Georgiaas Confederates. Dedicated to the men and women who served Georgia when her heart belonged to the Confederate States of America, this volume remembers the stateas Confederate pastaa time of passion, devotion, honor, courage, faith, perseverance, sacrifice, and loss. Georgia, rich in its heritage, boasts numerous locales to visit, learn about, and remember its role in the Confederacy: the battlefields and their interpretive centers, the coastal forts, the prison camp, the worldas largest painting, the worldas largest Confederate memorial, a pair of locomotive
engines, a number of Confederate cemeteries, and various homes, museums, and history centers.

Many earthen fortifications defended the city of Savannah and its numerous water approaches after the Civil War broke out. One of these defenses, Fort McAllister, protected the entrance to the Ogeechee River and the strategic railroad and highway bridges upstream. From November 1862 to March 1863 the U.S. Navy bombarded the fort seven different times without success. The fort finally fell to General Sherman in December 1864; ironically, the final threat the fort faced was not from an enemy trying to get up the river, but from one trying to get down the river to the sea. In the 1920s auto magnate Henry Ford renovated the fort and focused new attention on its history.

When the Boston and Lowell Railroad came through in 1835, Medford was a quiet town with fewer than two thousand residents. By the twentieth century, it had become a thriving city of eighteen thousand. In Victorian Medford, everything was new, from the Medford Opera House, the town hall, and the Mystic Lakes to the camera, the bicycle, and the gypsy moth. The shipbuilding, rum, and brickmaking industries gave way to new businesses, and traditional houses came to share neighborhoods with Queen Anne and Shingle-style architecture. In the mid-nineteenth century, there was great social change, as abolitionists Lydia Maria Child and George Luther Stearns spoke out against slavery and men went to the Civil War. James W. Tufts invented the soda fountain, Fannie Farmer wrote her first cookbook, and James Pierpont wrote "Jingle Bells."

Less than two decades after joining the Union, Florida became the third state to secede and join the newly formed Confederate States of America in 1861. After the firing on Fort Sumter the Florida peninsula became a battleground for both sides, a haven for deserters and Unionists, as well as a crucial source of supplies like salt and beef cattle. Union naval forces strove to strangle the state's wartime economy by seizing blockaderunners while Federal soldiers, who held much of northeastern Florida, played havoc on the civilian population. Under such pressures Floridians fought their own civil war against the blue-clad invaders and against Union sympathizers and Confederate renegades. Although the smallest in terms of population, Florida sent over 15,000 men to the Confederate army, and Florida regiments served in both the eastern and western theaters of war. They gave valiant service in battles from Shiloh and Chickamauga to Antietam and Gettysburg. Such fighting decimated the ranks of Florida units and caused anguish for those left behind at home. These home front Floridians--women, slaves, Seminoles, and Hispanics--shouldered the heavy burdens of keeping families together and supplied with food. Their story of silent heroism and contributions to the rebel war effort are too often overlooked. And while the names of such Florida figures as John Milton, Pleasants W. White, Jacob Summerlin, or J.J. Dickison seldom appear in larger histories of the war, it was because of their efforts that Tallahassee was the only state capital east of the Mississippi River to escape Union occupation during the course of the war.

Indiana in the Civil War: Doctors, Hospitals, and Medical Care is a unique visual history of the people and places most vital to the medical care of Indiana troops during America's darkest hour. From the guerilla warfare in Missouri to the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, Indiana men and women struggled to care for the sick and injured. Often finding even the best physicians could do little to cure diseases that were more deadly than enemy fire, doctors, nurses, and patients explain in their own words how they combated disease and survived horrific wounds during the War Between the States. Even with the strong support of Indiana's governor, Oliver P. Morton, caregivers still faced daunting obstacles, including court martials, their own disease and injury, and military red tape. Showcasing almost 200 vintage images and utilizing newspaper accounts written during the period by surgeons, patients, and hospital observers, this book provides new insight on Civil War medical care.

Sounding Forth the Trumpet brings to life one of the most crucial epochs in America's history--the events leading up to and precipitating the Civil War. In this enlightening book, readers live through the Gold Rush, the Mexican War, the skirmishes of Bleeding Kansas, and the emergence of Abraham Lincoln, as well as the tragic issue of slavery.

Overnight settlements, better known as 'Hell on Wheels, ' sprang up as the transcontinental railroad crossed Nebraska and Wyoming. They brought opportunity not only for legitimate business but also for gamblers, land speculators, prostitutes, and thugs. Dick Kreck tells their stories along with the heroic individuals who managed, finally, to create permanent towns in the interior West

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command is the most colorful and popular of Douglas Southall Freeman's works. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee.

The Confederacy won resounding victories throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties. Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who commanded -- among them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell -- developed as leaders and men. Lee's Lieutenants follows these men to the costly battle at Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the South's declining military might, and finally to the collapse of Lee's command and his formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation. Accessible at last in a one-volume edition abridged by noted Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears, Lee's Lieutenants is essential reading for all Civil War buffs, students of war, and admirers of the historian's art as practiced at its very highest level.

In this engrossing work of history, Lee Kennett brilliantly brings General Sherman's 1864 invasion of Georgia to life by capturing the ground-level experiences of the soldiers and civilians who witnesses the bloody campaign.  From the skirmish at Buzzard Roost Gap all the way to Savannah ten months later, Kennet follows the notorious, complex Sherman, who attacked the devastated the heart of the Confederacy's arsenal. Marching Through Georgia describes, in gripping detail, the event that marked the end of the Old South.

Why did Abraham Lincoln sneak into Washington for his inauguration? was the Gettysburg Address written on the back of an envelope? Where did the Underground Railroad run? Did General Sherman really say, "War is Hell"?

If you can't answer these questions, you're not alone. Millions of Americans, bored by dull textbooks, are in the dark about the most significant event in our history. Now New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes to the rescue, deftly sorting out the players, the politics, and the key events - Emancipation and Reconstruction, Shiloh and Gettysburg, Generals Grant and Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and much more. Drawing on moving eyewitness accounts, Davis includes a wealth of "hidden history" about the roles played by women and African Americans before and during the war, along with lesser-known facts that will enthrall even learned Civil War buffs. Vivid, informative, and hugely entertaining, Don't Know Much About the Civil War is the only book you'll ever need on "the war that never ended."

John T. Farnham, a sharpshooter in the Union Army, wrote a substantial diary entry nearly every day during his three-year enlistment, sent over 50 long articles to his hometown newspaper, and mailed some 600 letters home. He described training, battles, skirmishes, encampments, furloughs, marches, hospital life, and clerkships at the Iron Brigade headquarters and the War Department. He met Lincoln and acquired a blood-stained cuff taken from his assassinated body. He befriended freed slaves, teaching them to read and write and built them a school. He campaigned for Lincoln's re-election. He subscribed to three newspapers and several magazines and devoured 22 books. He attended 23 plays and six concerts during his service. He was gregarious and popular, naming in his diaries 108 friends in the service and 156 at home. Frail and sickly, he died of tuberculosis four years after his discharge. He paints a detailed portrait of the lives of ordinary soldiers in the Union Army, their food, living conditions, relations among officers and men, ordeals, triumphs, and tragedies. Nominated for the Gilder Lehrman Prize

When Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss opened his wholesale dry goods warehouse on the San Francisco waterfront in 1853, he likely had no inkling that his business would become one of the worlds largest clothing companies. Levi Strauss & Co. started with imported clothing, bedding, and notions to supply the many small stores serving the Gold Rush and the expanding American West. By 1873, he and partner Jacob Davis invented the very first blue jeans, which were soon worn by working men from Los Angeles to Laramie. Strauss parlayed his business acumen into social progress by giving back to his community and embedding a company culture committed to positively impacting society. In this spirit, the Levi Strauss Foundation was created after World War II, formalizing the philanthropic work started by Strauss himself a century earlier. All the while, the company has evolved with successive generations of family owners, expanding product lines to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers around the world.

When Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, no one doubted that a battle to control the Mississippi River was imminent. Throughout the war, the Federals pushed their way up the river. Every port and city seemed to fall against the force of the Union Navy. The capitol was forced to retreat from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. Many of the smaller towns, like Bayou Sara and Donaldsonville, were nearly shelled completely off the map. It was not until the Union reached Port Hudson that the Confederates had a fighting chance to keep control of the mighty Mississippi. They fought long and hard, under supplied and under manned, but ultimately the Union prevailed.

An in-depth look at the unique actions of the newly formed state of West Virginia during the Civil War While the taking of hostages by both the Union and the Confederacy was common during the Civil War, it was unique for an individual state government to engage in this practice. The Governor's Pawns examines the history that led to the taking of political prisoners in western Virginia, the implementation of a hostage law by Virginia's pro-Union government in 1863, and the adoption of that law by the newly recognized state of West Virginia. The roots of state hostage-taking took hold prior to the Civil War. Sectional politics between eastern and western Virginia and their local communities, as well as long-standing family rivalries, resulted in the extreme actions of secession and war. Randall Gooden uses genealogical sources to tell the fascinating stories of individuals swept up in the turmoil, including hostages and their captors, freedmen, and government and military officials. Gooden emphasizes the personal nature of civilian arrests and hostage-taking and describes the impact on communities and the families left scarred by this practice. The Governor's Pawns takes readers into the city streets, state and national capitol buildings, army camps, jails and military prisons, hospitals, and graveyards that accompanied the tit-for-tat style of pointedly personal warfare.