This highly original work explores a previously unknown financial conspiracy at the start of the American Civil War. The book explains the reasons for the puzzling intensity of Missouri's guerrilla conflict, and for the state's anomalous experience in Reconstruction. In the broader history of the war, the book reveals for the first time the nature of military mobilization in the antebellum United States.

Full of true stories more dramatic than any fiction, The Underground Railroad: A Reference Guide offers a fresh, revealing look at the efforts of hundreds of dedicated persons-white and black, men and women, from all walks of life-to help slave fugitives find freedom in the decades leading up to the Civil War. The Underground Railroad provides the richest portrayal yet of the first large scale act of interracial collaboration in the United States, mapping out the complex network of routes and safe stations that made escape from slavery in the American South possible. Kerry Walters' stirring account ranges from the earliest acts of slave resistance and the rise of the Abolitionist movement, to the establishment of clandestine "liberty lines" through the eastern and then-western regions of the Union and ultimately to Canada. Separating fact from legend, Walters draws extensively on first-person accounts of those who made the Railroad work, those who tried to stop it, and those who made the treacherous journey to freedom-including Eliza Harris and Josiah Henson, the real-life "Eliza" and "Uncle Tom" from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Original documents, from key legislation like The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to first-person narratives of escaping slaves Biographical sketches of key figures involved in the Underground Railroad, including Levi Coffin, William Lloyd Garrison, Robert Purvis, and Mary Ann Shadd

The last name spoken on their deathbeds by R. R. Lee and Stonewall Jackson was that of their great subordinate, A. P. Hill. Lee's final words, "Tell A. P. Hill to come up" keynote the story of the Culpeper redhead and his hard hitting light division. For the Light Division always did come up at the critical moment to save the day for the Army of Northern Virginia. The gallantry and dash of Powell Hill's Cavalier ancestors characterized his own career and death on the battlefield. He and his officers and men saw more frontline action than most of lee's army. But their dreadful losses and other vicissitudes of campaigning left a searing imprint on the former U.S. Army captain whose normally friendly spirit had to be submerged by the stern requirements of combat leadership. In less than three years he rose to the rank of corps commander and at the end was Lee's closets adviser. Hill's officers and men returned the loyalty and esteem which he game them and, responding to the flame of his unquenchable fighting s

One of the Confederacy's most loyal adherents and articulate advocates was Lieutenant General James Longstreet's aide-de-camp, Thomas Jewett Goree. Present at Longstreet's headquarters and party to the counsels of Robert E. Lee and his lieutenants, Goree wrote incisively on matters of strategy and politics and drew revealing portraits of Longstreet, Jefferson Davis, P. G. T. Beauregard, John Bell Hood, J. E. B. Stuart, and others of Lee's inner circle. His letters are some of the richest and most perceptive from the Civil War period. In addition to their inside view of the campaigns of the Confederacy, Goree's Civil War letters shed light on their remarkable author, a onetime lawyer whose growing interest in politics and desire for "immediate secession", as he wrote to his mother in 1860, led him in July 1861 to Virginia and a new career as Longstreet's associate. He stayed with Longstreet through the war, ultimately becoming a major and participating in nearly all the battles of the Army of Northern Virginia. His letters include vivid descriptions of many battles, including Blackburn's Ford, Seven Pines, Yorktown, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, the siege of Petersburg, and the surrender at Appomattox. Fortunate in war, he was exposed to constant fire for seven hours in the battle of Williamsburg. Although his saddle and accoutrements were struck seventeen times, he never received a wound. Thomas Cutrer has collected all of Goree's wartime correspondence to his family, as well as his travel diary from June - August 1865, in which he recorded his trip with Longstreet from Appomattox to Talledaga, Alabama. As a special feature Cutrer includes Goree's postwar letters to andfrom Longstreet and others that discuss the war and touch on questions regarding military operations. With its wide scope and rich detail, Longstreet's Aide represents an invaluable addition to the Civil War letter collections published in recent years. While Goree's letters will fascinate Civil War buffs, they also provide a unique opportunity for scholars of social and military history to witness from inside the workings of both an extended Southern family and the forces of the Confederacy.

The Comte de Paris' account of the battle of Gettysburg is widely acknowledged to be the fairest description of the battle ever written. An itinerary of the Army of the Potomac and cooperating forces in the Gettysburg campaign, June and July, 1863, has also been revised and enlarged from documents in the possession of the War Department.

What happened to a soldier's soul during the Civil War as he faced the horrors of war? Why did a man leave behind a wife and two very young children to serve in the army? Who was Samuel K. Miller before, during and after the Civil War? What was the Mounted Pioneer Corps, and what was their critical role in keeping an army moving? Why was he chosen to be in that unit? When a woman was left with children while her husband went off to the Civil War, what pressures did she face because he was away? How did the women manage their homes while their husbands were away?
What were the feelings of a Union soldier as he faced his "brothers" across the picket lines, the Confederates whom he came to know personally? What did they eat? Where did they live and sleep? What did they wear, and where did they get what they needed? What volunteer organizations sprung up to help the soldiers as they fought in the battlefields, either by providing physical help, or in aiding them to be in contact with their loved ones?
From his vantage point, somewhat unique because of the positioning of the Mounted Pioneer Corps during battles, what did he see of the battles? What were the forces for and against the war in his community back in Pennsylvania? Who were the Copperheads? What happened to his four Ellis family brothers-in-law who also served in the Union Army?
All these questions are answered in this book, "The Soul of a Soldier: the True Story of a Mounted Pioneer in the Civil War." At age 42, Samuel K. Miller volunteered for the 211th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in September 1864 and served until June 1865. During his nine months in the service, he wrote 46 letters to his wife and, through her, to their one and five year old sons at their home in the little town of Hartstown, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, population less than 200.
This book contains the 46 letters that Samuel wrote during his time in the service of the Union Army, first as an infantryman, then in the Mounted Pioneer Corps attached to the Headquarters of the Union Ninth Corps. Portions of those letters are organized into 17 thematic chapters, which provide the answers to the questions raised above.
Samuel's letters provide a penetrating look into his soul, because of the highly personal nature of his letters. His letters reveal his character, values, his aspirations. Demetrius, an ancient Greek orator, literary critic, rhetorician and governor of Athens for ten years, once wrote: "Everyone reveals his own soul in his letters. In every other form of composition it is possible to determine the writer's character, but in none so clearly as the epistolary the letters]." Demetrius' words apply to Samuel Miller, for Samuel revealed his soul in his letters.

Burke McCarty sets out a complex alternative theory regarding the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, namely the notion that the event was orchestrated by shadowy religious powers. McCarty gathers and presents correspondences and other documents; together these offer an alternate explanation for Lincoln's heinous murder. He alleges that a Treaty in Verona in 1822 was the start of a plot to kill an American President, a plot whose pieces would gradually fall into place in the four decades which followed. McCarty alleges involvement by the Pope and the Catholic church, plus other clandestine figures, pointing to what he considers coded references in letters. Modern historians and scholars consider alternative theories behind the death of President Lincoln as spurious conspiracy. The overwhelming evidence remains that John Wilkes Booth, a vain and agitated man with a craving for notoriety, acted alone in his scheme to murder Abraham Lincoln as the President watched a performance at Ford's Theater.

Early in May 1861, twenty-one-year-old Sam R. Watkins of Columbia, Tennessee, joined the First Tennessee Regiment, Company H, to fight for the Confederacy. Of the 120 original recruits in his company, Watkins was one of only seven to survive every one of its battles, from Shiloh to Nashville. Twenty years later, with a "house full of young 'rebels' clustering around my knees and bumping about my elbows," he wrote this remarkable account of "Co. Aytch" -- its common foot soldiers, its commanders, its Yankee enemies, its victories and defeats, and its ultimate surrender on April 26, 1865.

Co. Aytch is the work of a natural storyteller who balances the horror of war with an irrepressible sense of humor and a sharp eye for the lighter side of battle. Among Civil War memoirs, it is considered a classic -- a living testament to one man's enduring humanity, courage, and wisdom in the midst of death and destruction.

This reminiscence of daily life on a Southern plantation during the Civil War was originally published in 1888. The book is filled with vivid details of everything from methods of making dyes and preparing foods to race relations and the effects of the war. A Blockaded Family is an unusual and beautifully-written primary source of Southern life inside the blockade, told from a point of view that is decidedly different from most post-war accounts. Contents Include: Beginnings of the Secession Movement A Negro Wedding Devices Rendered Necessary by the Blockade How the South Met a Great Emergency War Time Scenes on an Alabama Plantation Southern Women Their Ingenuity and Courage How Cloth was Dyed How Shoes, Thread, Hats and Bonnets Were Manufactured Homespun Dresses Home-Made Buttons and Pasteboard Uncle Ben Aunt Phillis and her Domestic Trials Knitting around the Fireside Tramp, Tramp of the Spinners Weaving Heavy Cloth Expensive Prints "Blood Will Tell" Substitutes for Coffee Raspberry-Leaf Tea Home-Made Starch Putty, and Cement Spinning Bees Old-Time Hoopskirts How the Slaves Lived Their Barbecues Painful Realities of Civil Strife Straitened Condition of the South Treatment of Prisoners Homespun Weddings A Pathetic Incident Approach of the Northern Army Pillage and Plunder "Papa's Fine Stock" The South Overrun by Soldiers Return of the Vanquished Poverty of the Confederates Repairing Damages A Mother made Happy

Rhoda is just eighteen when her family arranges for her to marry a wealthy and powerful plantation owner from Quincy, Florida, in 1853. Rhoda quickly adjusts to life on a plantation with 160 slaves, but it takes more time getting used to her husband, William.

The couple grows closer with time, and William promises Rhoda she "can have the moon" if she gives him a son. On Jan. 15, 1858, she gives birth to Albert Waller Gilchrist, who will eventually become Florida's governor. Mary Elizabeth is born the next year. Not long after, however, Rhoda finds herself a young widow. While she is still coping with William's death, another tragedy strikes; Rhoda's daughter dies of illness two years after her husband.

In the fall of 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, she discovers a new love when she meets Captain James Barrow, who is fighting for the Southern cause. When he asks her to marry him, she stalls, but she already knows the answer will be "yes." Throughout her life, she never loses her fighting spirit, remembering where she comes from and stays true to her ideals.

Based on the true story of Rhoda Elizabeth Waller Kilcrease Gibbes, this biographical narrative describes how her life in and around Quincy, Florida, took her indomitable spirit to the heights of leadership in Florida society.

Know your Southern history sothat you can help to defend it. Ourheritage is too important to leave toYankee and Scalawag revisionist.

In America today most are proud toboast of their cultural backgroundwhether that be Irish, African, Hispanicor whatever. One of the largest segmentsof the American population is attackedfor displaying pride in their heritage, those with Confederate ancestors. Weare immediately classified as racist if wedisplay the battle flag that the Southernsoldier carried as he defended his homeand family from invasion. We have madesome progress in convincing othersthat our flag is meant to symbolizeheritage not hate but we have further togo. The author is one Southerner whofeels that his ancestors were like theirgrandfathers before them, simply fightingfor their right to self government. Theydid nothing to be pardoned for andwe do nothing wrong in being proudof them just as other Americans takepride in their ancestors. The best way todo this is to become familiar with ourhistory. In recent years many academichistorians have joined the attacks ofour Confederate heritage. We must notleave our history to be told by Yankeeand Scalawag revisionist historians.Everyone who feels the same way shouldread this outline of Southern history forUnreconstructed Southerners.