A major Civil War battle-and Lee's triumph
The Battle of Chancellorsville was one of the principal engagements of the American Civil War. It was fought between Hooker's Army of the Potomac and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia which was half the size of the enemy. Battle was joined in Spotsylvania County, Virginia on April 30th 1863 and it raged until May 6th. Irrespective of the eventual outcome of the war, Chancellorsville has remained a text book battle for military historians. Lee, always renowned for command capability, here showed military nerve and audacity by dividing his army in the face of a vastly numerically superior enemy. Further, he demonstrated the maxim of 'know your opponent' for he clearly had the measure of the timid prevaricating Hooker. The outcome was an overwhelming Confederate victory and won the accolade, 'Lee's Perfect Battle'. The edge was taken off the success by the death of 'Stonewall' Jackson-a military genius both Lee and the Confederate cause could ill afford to lose. Dodge's history, written from a Union perspective, provides interesting mitigating circumstances concerning Federal actions and personalities-usually absent from later histories-for the student of the period to evaluate.

This extensive two-way exchange of letters between Rufus Robbins and members of his family provides a highly personalized view of the life of a Union soldier, as well as life on the home front in South Abington, Massachusetts, an important source of war materiel. Enlisting in the Seventh Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment at the seasoned age of 31, Rufus carefully crafts letters that are articulate, graphic, and often witty and that contribute much to our understanding of the daily course of the war. Notes from home reflect the Robbins family's ever-present worry and concern for Rufus' well-being. His brothers detail their involvement in the sewing of army boots, an activity for which South Abington held a large contract.

As a confirmed Universalist, Rufus struggled to live a life of faith in the midst of war. His letters demonstrate the depth of his character, showing both maturity and confidence. However, as the war continued, one sees his belief in the righteousness of the Union cause, his confidence in God, and his sometimes naive simplicity replaced with a more realistic form of idealism. In this collection, those interested in military affairs can learn about the economic workings of the camps, the recreational outlets for the soldiers, and the grim realities of the Peninsula Campaign, while scholars focussing on civilian life will gain a greater understanding of the impact of the war on the families and friends left behind.

In 1859, a thirteen-year-old-girl began a diary, detailing the emotions and events of everyday life. Daily life in her small hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee was not destined to remain quiet and routine, however. When the Civil War began, the diary entries provide a firsthand account of the sorrows inflicted when the Civil War tore families apart in the border South. Myra, a staunch Confederate, gave a vivid account of the war, how it divided her community and left misery in its wake. Her diary became a bosom friend to whom she could confide her pain and grief. While she never knew the historical importance of her diary, her descendants did, and preserved this precious legacy.

Like the famous diary of Anne Frank, Myra Inman's diary begins with ordinary events and proceeds to tell the story of a child's view of the horrors of war. This book offers a unique perspective on the Civil War -- that of a child in the borderlands, where families were torn apart by differing loyalties.

This is one volume in a library of Confederate States history, in twelve volumes, written by distinguished men of the South, and edited by Gen. Clement A. Evans of Georgia. A generation after the Civil War, the Southern protagonists wanted to tell their story, and in 1899 these twelve volumes appeared under the imprint of the Confederate Publishing Company. The first and last volumes 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 and its policy in securing the territorial dominion of the United States; the civil history of the Confederate States; Confederate naval history; the morale of the armies; the South since the war, and a connected outline of events from the beginning of the struggle to its close. The other ten volumes each treat a separate State with details concerning its peculiar story, its own devotion, its heroes, and its battlefields. Volume 9 is Kentucky and Missouri.

This true and exciting story collection concerns a little known area of south Georgia, in Telfair County. The town of Milan (locally pronounced My-lan) and the countryside present a series of family dramas dating back to the early 1800's. Addie Garrison Briggs, the author, introduces her family saga in her own words: "Contrary to what one often reads in local histories and genealogies, our ancestors were not all saints. Neither were they all war heroes and most of them were far more likely to struggle along on a small farm than to own a large plantation. In short, one might say that our forebears failed to live up to our expectations. The trouble with these ancestors was that they were real people. Sometimes they were good, sometimes bad; sometimes they were wise, and sometimes foolish. Perhaps they were a bit like us, with one major difference. There seems to have been more of a spirited quality to their lives. Whatever a man's actions, whether funny, tragic, or decidedly wicked, he did it with a definite dash. Therefore, while their lives may embarrass us, they will at the same time unquestionably intrigue us."

The Civil War that so devastated the United States began a century and a half ago; even so, people continue to disagree on why the North and South went to war.

By examining President Abraham Lincoln's speeches, along with those of other politicians during the time period, it is possible to identify historical misrepresentations and distortions that have made their way into textbooks.

Author Jack Pennington, a historian and retired school teacher, seeks to answer three main questions: Were the lives of the blacks in the South better off following the war and Reconstruction? Are blacks still suffering from the remnants of Jim Crow laws? Would the natural time eradication of slavery, as predicted by Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and other leading figures, have been more effective in bringing about equality and racial tolerance?

Discover the true nature of Lincoln's actions and his primary motivations, and explore the politics and attitudes that led the North and South to split. Pennington seeks to explore the truth behind common misconceptions and illuminate The Real Cause of the Civil War.

This book presents the most accurate picture of the United States Marine Corps at the onset of the American Civil War and describes the actions of the Marines at the Battle of First Manassas, or as the Union called it, Bull Run. To tell the story of the actions of the U.S. Marines in the Manassas Campaign, distinguished Marine Corps historians Bruce H. Norton and Phillip Gibbons begin with Marine actions in October 1859 at Harpers Ferry, where they were instrumental in suppressing John Brown's raid on the town's Federal Armory and attempted slave insurrection. The Marines were the only professional fighting force that could respond immediately when the call for assistance came to retake the Armory, which Brown's men had seized. The Marines were led by highly professional and well-trained officers and non-commissioned officers who represented a decades-old standard of excellence well established by the eve of the Civil War. The book then discusses Marine actions at the Battle of First Manassas, the Civil War's first battle, on July 21, 1861, a story that has never been adequately or accurately told. In both engagements, the Marines proved that they were "at all times ready," as the Corps remains to this very day.

"The Port Royal Experiment" builds on classic scholarship to present not a historical narrative but a study of what is now called development and nation-building. The Port Royal Experiment was a joint governmental and private effort begun during the Civil War to transition former slaves to freedom and self-sufficiency. Port Royal Harbor and the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina were liberated by Union Troops in 1861. As the Federal advance began, the white plantation owners and residents fled, abandoning approximately 10,000 black slaves. Several private Northern charity organizations stepped in to help the former slaves become self-sufficient. Nonetheless, the Point Royal Experiment was only a mixed success and was contested by efforts to restore the status quo of white dominance. Return to home rule then undid much of what the experiment accomplished.

While the concept of development is subject to a range of interpretations, in this context it means positive, continuously improving, and sustained change across a variety of human social conditions. Clearly such an effort was at the heart of the Port Royal Experiment. While the term "nation-building" may seem misplaced given that no "nation" was the beneficiary of these efforts, the requirement to build institutions critical to nation-building operations was certainly a large part of the Port Royal Experiment and offers many lessons for modern efforts at nation building.

"The Port Royal Experiment" divides into ten chapters, each of which is designed to treat a particular aspect of the experience. Topics include planning considerations, philanthropic society activity, civil society, economic development, political development, and resistance. Each chapter presents the case study in the context of more recent developmental and nation-building efforts in such places as Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan and incorporates recent scholarship in the field. Modern readers will see that the challenges that faced the Port Royal Experiment remain relevant, even as their solutions remain elusive.

Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian is a comprehensive, multi-theater, war-long comparison of the commanding general skills of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Unlike most analyses, Bonekemper clarifies the impact both generals had on the outcome of the Civil War - namely, the assistance that Lee provided to Grant by Lee's excessive casualties in Virginia, the consequent drain of Confederate resources from Grant's battlefronts, and Lee's refusal and delay of reinforcements to the combat areas where Grant was operating. The reader will be left astounded by the level of aggression both generals employed to secure victory for their respective causes, demonstrating that Grant was a national general whose tactics were consistent with achieving Union victory, whereas Lee's own priorities constantly undermined the Confederacy's chances of winning the war. Building on the detailed accounts of both generals' major campaigns and battles, this book provides a detailed comparison of the primary military and personal traits of the two generals. That analysis supports the preface discussion and the chapter-by-chapter conclusions that Grant did what the North needed to do to win the war: be aggressive, eliminate enemy armies, and do so with minimal casualties (154,000), while Lee was too offensive for the undermanned Confederacy, suffered intolerable casualties (209,000), and allowed his obsession with the Commonwealth of Virginia to obscure the broader interests of the Confederacy. In addition, readers will find interest in the 18 clean-cut and lucid battle maps as well as a comprehensive set of appendices that describes the casualties incurred by each army, battle by battle.

With the collapse of the Confederate defences at Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, the entire Tennessee Valley was open to Union invasion and control. These Northern victories set up the 1864 Atlanta Campaign that cut the Confederacy in two. Had Confederate planning and leadership been better, no one can say what difference it might have made to the Civil War in the West and the outcome of the war itself. Where The South Lost The War is a fascinating and comprehensive analysis of the Fort Henry-Fort Donelson Campaign. Kendall D. Gott examines in detail the preparation, logistics and events that led to a large Confederate surrender and to the eventual defeat of the entire Confederate force. About the Author Kendall D. Gott is a military historian for the Combat Studies Institute at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is the author of several articles and studies on American military history, including In Glory's Shadow: The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment during the Persian Gulf War, 1990-1991.

Examining refugees of Civil War-era North Carolina, Driven from Home reveals the complexity and diversity of the war's displaced populations and the inadequate responses of governmental and charitable organisations as refugees scrambled to secure the necessities of daily life. In North Carolina, writes David Silkenat, the relative security of the Piedmont and mountains drew pro- Confederate elements from across the region. Early in the war, Union invaders established strongholds on the coast, to which their sympathisers fled in droves. Silkenat looks at five groups caught up in this flood tide of emigration: enslaved African Americans who fled to freedom; white Unionists; pro-Confederate whites-both slave owners (who often forced their slaves to migrate with them) and non-slave owners; and young women, often from more besieged areas of the South, who attended the state's many boarding schools. From their varied experiences, a picture emerges of a humanitarian crisis driven by mobility, shaped by unprecedented economic pressures and disease vectors, and exacerbated by governments unwilling or unable to provide meaningful relief. For anyone seeking context to current refugee crises, Driven from Home has much to say about the crushing administrative and logistical challenges of aid work, the illusory nature of such concepts as home fronts and battle lines, and the ongoing debate over links between relief and dependence.

This book fills a gap in Civil War literature on the strategies employed by the Union and Confederacy in the East, offering a more integrated interpretation of military operations that shows how politics, public perception, geography, and logistics shaped the course of military operations in the East. For all the literature about Civil War military operations and leadership, precious little has been written about strategy, particularly in what has become known as the eastern theater. Yet it is in this theater where the interaction of geography and logistics, politics and public opinion, battlefront and home front, and the conduct of military operations and civil-military relations can be highlighted in sharp relief. With opposing capitals barely 100 miles apart and with the Chesapeake Bay/tidewater area offering Union generals the same sorts of opportunities sought by Confederate leaders in the Shenandoah Valley, geography shaped military operations in fundamental ways: the very rivers that obstructed Union overland advances offered them the chance to outflank Confederate-prepared positions. If the proximity of the enemy capital proved too tempting to pass up, generals on each side were aware that a major mishap could lead to an enemy parade down the streets of their own capital city. Presidents, politicians, and the press peeked over the shoulders of military commanders, some of who were not reluctant to engage in their own intrigues as they promoted their own fortunes. The Civil War in the East does not rest upon new primary sources or an extensive rummaging through the mountains of material already available. Rather, it takes a fresh look at military operations and the assumptions that shaped them, and offers a more integrated interpretation of military operations that shows how politics, public perception, geography, and logistics shaped the course of military operations in the East. The eastern theater was indeed a theater of decision (and indecision), precisely because people believed that it was important. The presence of the capitals raised the stakes of victory and defeat; at a time when people viewed war in terms of decisive battles, the anticipation of victory followed by disappointment and persistent strategic stalemate characterized the course of events in the East.

This is one volume in a library of Confederate States history, in twelve volumes, written by distinguished men of the South, and edited by Gen. Clement A. Evans of Georgia. A generation after the Civil War, the Southern protagonists wanted to tell their story, and in 1899 these twelve volumes appeared under the imprint of the Confederate Publishing Company. The first and last volumes 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 and its policy in securing the territorial dominion of the United States; the civil history of the Confederate States; Confederate naval history; the morale of the armies; the South since the war, and a connected outline of events from the beginning of the struggle to its close. The other ten volumes each treat a separate State with details concerning its peculiar story, its own devotion, its heroes, and its battlefields. Volume 5 is South Carolina.

The Civil War devastated the South, and the end of slavery turned Southern society upside down. How did the South regain social, economic, and political stability in the wake of emancipation and wartime destruction, and how did the South come together with its former enemies in the North? Why did the South not slip back into chaos? This book holds the keys to the answers to these tantalizing questions. Author Joseph Ranney explodes the myth of a unified South and exposes just how complex and fragile the postwar recovery was. The end of slavery and the emergence of a radically new social order raised a host of thorny legal issues: What place should newly freed slaves have in Southern society? What was the proper balance between states' rights and a newly powerful federal government? How could postwar economic distress be eased without destroying property rights? Should new civil rights be extended to women as well as blacks? Southern states addressed these issues in surprisingly different ways. Ranney also shatters the popular myth that a new legal system was imposed upon the South by the victorious North during Reconstruction. Southern states took an active hand in shaping postwar changes, and Southern courts often defended civil rights and national reunification against hostile Southern legislators. How did that come about? Ranney provides some surprising answers. He also profiles judges and other lawmakers who shaped Southern law during and after Reconstruction, including heretofore little-known black leaders in the South. These extraordinary individuals created a legal heritage that assisted leaders of the second civil rights revolution a century after Reconstruction ended. This bookadds immeasurably to our knowledge not only of Southern history, but also of American legal and social history.

A Union Army at war against the Confederacy
The Army of the Cumberland was one of the principal armies of the Union Army. It was first commanded by Rosecrans who commanded it through its first significant engagement at Stones River and then subsequently during the Tullahoma campaign and at Chickamauga where it received a savaging which was instrumental in causing it to become besieged in Chattanooga. Grant, uncertain of its morale, gave the Cumberland, now under Thomas, a minor role at Missionary Ridge but his concerns were unfounded because, after achieving its primary objective, four divisions stormed the main enemy positions helping to complete the victory. Thomas commanded to the end of the war, but not before the Army of the Cumberland fought in the Atlanta Campaign, at Peachtree Creek, Franklin and finally at the decisive Battle of Nashville where with it crushed Confederate forces under Hood. This is a well rounded unit history. Essential reading for every student of the period. Available in soft cover and cloth bound hard back with dust jacket, head and tail bands and gold foil lettering to the spine.