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

On a November afternoon in 1864, the weary Gen. John Bell Hood surveyed the army waiting to attack the Federals at Franklin, Tennessee. He gave the signal almost at dusk, and the Confederates rushed forward to utter devastation. This book describes the events and causes of the five-hour battle in gripping detail, particularly focusing on the reasons for such slaughter at a time when the outcome of the war had already been decided.
The genesis of the senseless tragedy, according to McDonough and Connelly, lay in the appointment of Hood to command the Army of Tennessee. It was his decision to throw a total force of some 20,000 men into an ill-advised frontal assault against the Union troops. The Confederates made their approach, without substantial artillery support, on a level of some two miles. Why did Hood select such a catastrophic strategy? The authors analyze his reasoning in full. Their vivid and moving narrative, with statements from eyewitnesses to the battle, make compelling reading for all Civil War buffs and historians.
James Lee McDonough is Justin Potter Professor of History at David-Lipscomb College and is the author of Shiloh and Stones River.
Thomas L. Connelly, professor of history at the university of South Carolina, is the author of Army of the Heartland, The Marble Man, and Autumn of Glory, a two-volume history of the Army of Tennessee.

Seven perspectives of a bloody Civil War encounter
The Battle of Stone's River (or Murfreesboro to give it its Confederate appellation) took place over the turn of the year between 1862 and 1863 in Tennessee within the Western theatre of the American Civil War. The outcome of the conflict was inconclusive though the Union forces under Rosecrans regained a measure of prestige after the debacle of Fredericksburg and strategic advantage as Confederate strategic objectives in Tennessee were confounded. The campaign was principally distinguished by the appallingly high casualty toll on both sides which bears the dubious distinction of being the highest in the war. Both Bragg and Rosecrans lost almost one third of their engaged forces. This unique book has brought together no less than seven individual accounts-both personal experiences and works of history-concerning this fascinating campaign and battle. Each one might possibly be too small to achieve individual publication in modern times, but together they make an essential volume for every student of the period and theatre.

This work is the first monograph which closely examines the role of the German minority in the American South during the Civil War. In a comparative analysis of German civic leaders, businessmen, militia officers and blockade runners in Charleston, New Orleans and Richmond, it reveals a German immigrant population which not only largely supported slavery, but was also heavily involved in fighting the war. A detailed appendix includes an extensive survey of primary and secondary sources, including tables listing the members of the all-German units in Virginia, South Carolina and Louisiana, with names, place of origin, rank, occupation, income, and number of slaves owned. This book is a highly useful reference work for historians, military scholars and genealogists conducting research on Germans in the American Civil War and the American South.

The ambitious self-made man who reached the pinnacle of American politics--only to be felled by an assassin's bullet and to die at the hands of his doctors
James A. Garfield was one of the Republican Party's leading lights in the years following the Civil War. Born in a log cabin, he rose to become a college president, Union Army general, and congressman--all by the age of thirty-two. Embodying the strive-and-succeed spirit that captured the imagination of Americans in his time, he was elected president in 1880. It is no surprise that one of his biographers was Horatio Alger.
Garfield's term in office, however, was cut tragically short. Just four months into his presidency, a would-be assassin approached Garfield at the Washington, D.C., railroad station and fired a single shot into his back. Garfield's bad luck was to have his fate placed in the care of arrogant physicians who did not accept the new theory of antisepsis. Probing the wound with unwashed and occasionally manure-laden hands, Garfield's doctors introduced terrible infections and brought about his death two months later.
Ira Rutkow, a surgeon and historian, offers an insightful portrait of Garfield and an unsparing narrative of the medical crisis that defined and destroyed his presidency. For all his youthful ambition, the only mark Garfield would make on the office would be one of wasted promise.

Covering both the great military leaders and the critical civilian leaders, this book provides an overview of their careers and a professional assessment of their accomplishments. Entries consider the leaders' character and prewar experiences, their contributions to the war effort, and the war's impact on the rest of their lives. The entries then look at how history has assessed these leaders, thus putting their longtime reputations on the line. The result is a thorough revision of some leaders' careers, a call for further study of others, and a reaffirmation of the accomplishments of the greatest leaders. Analyzing the leaders historiographically, the work shows how the leaders wanted to be remembered, how postwar memorists and biographers saw them, the verdict of early historians, and how the best modern historians have assessed their contributions. By including a variety of leaders from both civilian and military roles, the book provides a better understanding of the total war, and by relating their lives to their times, it provides a better understanding of historical revisionism and of why history has been so interested in Civil War lives.

Letting ordinary people speak for themselves, this book uses primary documents to highlight daily life among Americans-Union and Confederate, black and white, soldier and civilian-during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Focusing on routines as basic as going to school and cooking and cleaning, Voices of Civil War America: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life explores the lives of ordinary Americans during one of the nation's most tumultuous eras. The book emphasizes the ordinary rather than the momentous to help students achieve a true understanding of mid-19th-century American culture and society. Recognizing that there is no better way to learn history than to allow those who lived it to speak for themselves, the authors utilize primary documents to depict various aspects of daily life, including politics, the military, economics, domestic life, material culture, religion, intellectual life, and leisure. Each of the documents is augmented by an introduction and aftermath, as well as lists of topics to consider and questions to ask. Original materials from a wide range of sources, including letters, diaries, newspaper editorials, journal articles, and book chapters Detailed background for each of the 48 featured documents, placing the experiences and opinions of the authors into historical context

In the 1840s, engineers blasted through 175 feet of earth and bedrock at Allatoona Pass, Georgia, to allow passage of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Little more than twenty years later, both the Union and Confederate armies fortified the hills and ridges surrounding the gorge to deny the other passage during the Civil War. In October 1864, the two sides met in a fierce struggle to control the iron lifeline between the North and the recently captured city of Atlanta. Though small compared to other battles of the war, this division-sized fight produced casualty rates on par with or surpassing some of the most famous clashes. Join author Brad Butkovich as he explores the controversy, innovative weapons and unwavering bravery that make the Battle of Allatoona Pass one of the war's most unique and savage battles.

My interest in my grandfather's war history of the Gee-Johnson's 15th AR Infantry Regiment started with a conversation between myself and Dr. Robert Walz; a History professor at Southern Arkansas University, who had a friend, Dr. John Ferguson, an AR State Historian who found an article written by Benjamin F. Cooling, a park historian at Fort Donelson National Military Park. The only information I had of my grandfather's service was that he was in Johnson's AR 15th Company. So this began lots of studying and research. I have compiled some history for my decendants living in South Arkansas from 1861-1865, through four years of war and then the reconstruction the next twelve years. My goal is to leave my family with history of Colonel's Gee and Johnson and the 15th AR. This book contains the results of that research.

This appealing narrative history of one of the Civil War's most pivotal campaigns analyzes how the western Confederate army under John B. Hood suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of George H. Thomas's Union forces. Ideal for general readers interested in military history of the Civil War as well as those concentrating on the western campaigns, The 1864 Franklin-Nashville Campaign: The Finishing Stroke examines how the strategic and tactical decisions by Confederate and Union commanders contributed to the smashing Northern victories in Tennessee in November-December 1864. The book also considers the conflict through the lens of New Military History, including the manner in which the battles both affected and were affected by civilian individuals, the environment, and common soldiers such as Confederate veteran Sam Watkins. The result of author Michael Thomas Smith's extensive research into the Civil War and his recognition of inadequate coverage of the final western campaigns in the existing literature, this work serves to rectify this oversight. The book also questions the concept of the outcome of the Civil War as being essentially attributable to superior Northern organization and management-the "organized war to victory" theory as termed by its proponents. Emphasizes that the Northern high command suffered from serious dissension and divisions just as its Southern counterpart did-a historic reality often obscured by the ultimate Union victory Presents detailed information about the 1864 Franklin-Nashville campaign that suggests that Northern leadership was remarkably disorganized and often seriously at odds with one another, even during the war's last major campaign in the western theater Provides readers with rare insights into the often chaotic workings of the Civil War high commands, which suffered from deficiencies stemming from personal rivalries and honor-related conflicts as well as confused, ineffective organization and communication

Between 1861 and 1865 seven men commanded the North's Army of the Potomac. All found themselves, one by one, pitted against a soldier of consummate ability, Robert E. Lee. How did they react to this supreme test? What were their patterns of conduct in battle and at the conference table? This book takes the measure of each soldier at the crucial moment of his life and the life of the nation.

As a general, Ulysses S. Grant is routinely described in glowing terms - the man who turned the tide of the Civil War, who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and who had the stomach to see the war through to final victory. But his presidency is another matter - the most common word used to characterize it is "scandal." Grant is routinely portrayed as a man out of his depth, whose trusting nature and hands-off management style opened the federal coffers to unprecedented plunder. But that caricature does not do justice to the realities of Grant's term in office, as Josiah Bunting III shows in this provocative assessment of our eighteenth president. Grant came to Washington in 1869 to lead a capital and a country still bitterly divided by four years of civil war. His predecessor, Andrew Johnson, had been impeached and nearly driven from office, and the radical Republicans in Congress were intent on imposing harsh conditions on the Southern states before allowing them back into the Union. Grant made it his priority to forge the states into a single nation, and Bunting shows that despite the troubles that characterized Grant's terms in office, he was able to accomplish this most important task-very often through the skillful use of his own popularity with the American people. Grant was indeed a military man of the highest order, and he was a better president than he is often given credit for.

It was 1862, the second year of the Civil War, though Kansans and Missourians had been fighting over slavery for almost a decade. For the 250 Union soldiers facing down rebel irregulars on Enoch Toothman's farm near Butler, Missouri, this was no battle over abstract principles. These were men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry, and they were fighting for their own freedom and that of their families. They belonged to the first black regiment raised in a northern state, and the first black unit to see combat during the Civil War. "Soldiers in the Army of Freedom" is the first published account of this largely forgotten regiment and, in particular, its contribution to Union victory in the trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War. As such, it restores the First Kansas Colored Infantry to its rightful place in American history.
Composed primarily of former slaves, the First Kansas Colored saw major combat in Missouri, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. Ian Michael Spurgeon draws upon a wealth of little-known sources--including soldiers' pension applications--to chart the intersection of race and military service, and to reveal the regiment's role in countering white prejudices by defying stereotypes. Despite naysayers' bigoted predictions--and a merciless slaughter at the Battle of Poison Spring--these black soldiers proved themselves as capable as their white counterparts, and so helped shape the evolving attitudes of leading politicians, such as Kansas senator James Henry Lane and President Abraham Lincoln. A long-overdue reconstruction of the regiment's remarkable combat record, Spurgeon's book brings to life the men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry in their doubly desperate battle against the Confederate forces and skepticism within Union ranks.

Riding into battle with the Union Cavalry
This is a rare, valuable and invaluable book in every way. Difficult to find on the antiquarian book market, it has been published by Leonaur to enable today's students and enthusiasts of the history of the American Civil War to access its text at a reasonable price. Encapsulated within the pages of this very substantial volume is the story of the First Ohio Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. It is, of course, a regimental history, but it is also much more than that. In common with many regiments of the Civil War, this regiment had an active 'old comrades' association and it was this organisation which determined that the history be written under the guidance of the principal author who was also a serving officer with the regiment throughout most of the events recounted. What makes this book particularly special is the inclusion of many additional, often riveting accounts penned by those who experienced them in their entirety, covering specific actions or aspects of life on campaign. Naturally, this book is essential for all those interested in the American Civil War, the Union Army and its cavalry arm and those interested in the genealogy of the State of Ohio since many roles of serving soldiers are also included.

The Civil War acted like a battering ram on human beings, shattering both flesh and psyche of thousands of soldiers. Despite popular perception that doctors recklessly erred on the side of amputation, surgeons laboured mightily to adjust to the medical quagmire of war. And as Brian Craig Miller shows in Empty Sleeves, the hospital emerged as the first arena where southerners faced the stark reality of what amputation would mean for men and women and their respective positions in southern society after the war. Thus, southern women, through nursing and benevolent care, prepared men for the challenges of returning home defeated and disabled. Still, amputation was a stark fact for many soldiers. On their return, southern amputees remained dependent on their spouses, peers, and dilapidated state governments to reconstruct their shattered manhood and meet the challenges brought on by their newfound disabilities. It was in this context that Confederate patients based their medical care decisions on how comrades, families, and society would view the empty sleeve. In this highly original and deeply researched work, Miller explores the ramifications of amputation on the Confederacy both during and after the Civil War and sheds light on how dependency and disability reshaped southern society.