During the American Civil War, Maryland did not join the Confederacy but nonetheless possessed divided loyalties and sentiments. These divisions came to a head in the years that followed the war. In Loyalty on the Line, David K. Graham argues that Maryland did not adopt a unified postbellum identity and that the state remained divided, with some identifying with the state's Unionist efforts and others maintaining a connection to the Confederacy and its defeated cause. Depictions of Civil War Maryland, both inside and outside the state, hinged on interpretations of the state's loyalty. The contested Civil War memories of Maryland not only mirror a much larger national struggle and debate but also reflect a conflict that is more intense and vitriolic than that in the larger national narrative. The close proximity of conflicting Civil War memories within the state contributed to a perpetual contestation. In addition, those outside the state also vigorously argued over the place of Maryland in Civil War memory in order to establish its place in the divisive legacy of the war. By using the dynamics interior to Maryland as a lens for viewing the Civil War, Graham shows how divisive the war remained and how central its memory would be to the United States well into the twentieth century.

"In Becoming Confederates," Gary W. Gallagher explores loyalty in the era of the Civil War, focusing on Robert E. Lee, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, and Jubal A. Early--three prominent officers in the Army of Northern Virginia who became ardent Confederate nationalists. Loyalty was tested and proved in many ways leading up to and during the war. Looking at levels of allegiance to their native state, to the slaveholding South, to the United States, and to the Confederacy, Gallagher shows how these men represent responses to the mid-nineteenth-century crisis.
Lee traditionally has been presented as a reluctant convert to the Confederacy whose most powerful identification was with his home state of Virginia--an interpretation at odds with his far more complex range of loyalties. Ramseur, the youngest of the three, eagerly embraced a Confederate identity, highlighting generational differences in the equation of loyalty. Early combined elements of Lee's and Ramseur's reactions--a Unionist who grudgingly accepted Virginia's departure from the United States but later came to personify defiant Confederate nationalism.
The paths of these men toward Confederate loyalty help delineate important contours of American history. Gallagher shows that Americans juggled multiple, often conflicting, loyalties and that white southern identity was preoccupied with racial control transcending politics and class. Indeed, understanding these men's perspectives makes it difficult to argue that the Confederacy should not be deemed a nation. Perhaps most important, their experiences help us understand why Confederates waged a prodigiously bloody war and the manner in which they dealt with defeat.

The 57th Virginia Infantry was one of five regiments in General Lewis Armistead's Brigade in Pickett's Charge, at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. Prior to being Brigadier General, Armistead commanded the 57th Virginia. About 1,800 men joined the 57th, primarily from Franklin, Pittsylvania, Buckingham, Botetourt, and Albemarle County, but at least 15 bordering counties contributed men. Initial enlistments were from May-July of 1861, with the nucleus coming from 5 companies of Keen's Battalion. This publication gives detail on the battles, from Malvern Hill to Appomattox, and the prison camps many suffered through. The core of the book, however, is a quest for basic genealogical data on the men of the 57th Virginia, with a focus on their parents, wives, and location in 1860.

Released to mark the 150th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, this book provides general readers with a succinct examination of the Confederacy's last major triumph. There is renewed interest among Civil War historians and history buffs alike about events west of the Appalachian Mountains and their impact on the outcome of the conflict. In examining the Chickamauga campaign, this book provides a fresh analysis of the foremost Confederate victory in the Western theater. The study opens with a discussion of two commanders, William S. Rosecrans and Braxton Bragg, and the forces swirling around them when they clashed in September 1863. Drawing on both primary sources and recent Civil War scholarship, it then follows the specific aspects of the battle, day by day. In addition to interweaving analysis of the Union and Confederate commanders and the tactical situation during the campaign, the book also reveals how the rank and file dealt with the changing fortunes of war. Readers will see how the campaign altered the high commands of both armies, how it impacted the common soldier, and how it affected the strategic situation, North and South.

During the Civil War, cities, houses, forests, and soldiers' bodies were transformed into ""dead heaps of ruins,"" novel sights in the southern landscape. How did this happen, and why? And what did Americans-northern and southern, black and white, male and female-make of this proliferation of ruins? Ruin Nation is the first book to bring together environmental and cultural histories to consider the evocative power of ruination as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change. Megan Kate Nelson examines the narratives and images that Americans produced as they confronted the war's destructiveness. Architectural ruins-cities and houses-dominated the stories that soldiers and civilians told about the ""savage"" behaviour of men and the invasions of domestic privacy. The ruins of living things-trees and bodies-also provoked discussion and debate. People who witnessed forests and men being blown apart were plagued by anxieties about the impact of wartime technologies on nature and on individual identities. The obliteration of cities, houses, trees, and men was a shared experience. Nelson shows that this is one of the ironies of the war's ruination-in a time of the most extreme national divisiveness people found common ground as they considered the war's costs. And yet, very few of these ruins still exist, suggesting that the destructive practices that dominated the experiences of Americans during the Civil War have been erased from our national consciousness.

The Indian War of 1864 chronicles one of the bloodiest conflicts between the European settlers and military forces of the United States, and the Native American tribes. A shocking account of the bloodshed and damage wrought as white settlers moved relentlessly westward during the 19th century, this book lays bare the scale of the conflicts with the Native Americans. Furthermore it is authentic: a first-hand, somewhat biographical recollection of the conflict penned by a young American cavalryman posted to the Western frontier with the mission of securing it for settlers. The conflicts took place simultaneously with the American Civil War, and it was thus that rumors of the Confederacy joining with the Native American tribes in hindering the expansion of the United States are present. Despite its title, this book is not entirely about the skirmishes fought: it includes descriptions of the land, the fledgling frontier society of the 'Wild West' era, and members of the native tribes.