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 3 is Virginia.

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.

Charles Dew's Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states' secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The fifteen years since the original publication of Apostles of Disunion have seen an intensification of debates surrounding the Confederate flag and Civil War monuments. In a powerful new afterword to this anniversary edition, Dew situates the book in relation to these recent controversies and factors in the role of vast financial interests tied to the internal slave trade in pushing Virginia and other upper South states toward secession and war.

The transformation of agriculture was one of the most far-reaching developments of the modern era. In analyzing how and why this change took place in the United States, scholars have most often focused on Midwestern family farmers, who experienced the change during the first half of the twentieth century, and southern sharecroppers, swept off the land by forces beyond their control. Departing from the conventional story, this book focuses on small farm owners in North Carolina from the post-Civil War era to the post-Civil Rights era. It reveals that the transformation was more protracted and more contested than historians have understood it to be. Even though the number of farm owners gradually declined over the course of the century, the desire to farm endured among landless farmers, who became landowners during key moments of opportunity. Moreover, this book departs from other studies by considering all farm owners as a single class, rejecting the widespread approach of segregating black farm owners. The violent and restrictive political culture of Jim Crow regime, far from only affecting black farmers, limited the ability of all farmers to resist changes in agriculture. By the 1970s, the vast reduction in the number of small farm owners had simultaneously destroyed a Southern yeomanry that had been the symbol of American democracy since the time of Thomas Jefferson, rolled back gains in landownership that families achieved during the first half century after the Civil War, and remade the rural South from an agrarian society to a site of global agribusiness.

This book details Lee's life from Gettysburg to his death just five years after the South's surrender at Appomattox. Rather than retreating bitterly from life, Lee sought to heal the nation, even meeting with his rival, Ulysses S. Grant, while the former Union general occupied the White House. Leaving his military life behind, Lee went on to become president of Washington College, where he was revered for his fairness as well as his willingness to help struggling students.

Often Civil War histories embody stories about politicians and generals. Ordinary soldiers, wives, mothers, children, slaves, farmers, merchants, Unionists, and deserters are only occasionally mentioned. To convey a comprehensive history is to include a wide array of sources. Newly discovered material expand our understanding.. The 1863 Gaston County tax list defines people's lives economically and socially, and diaries, soldier letters, and other previously unpublished documents tell the story of the war from each perspective. Wives and mothers, children, soldiers, politicians, deserters, and slaves communicate their feelings, reflect their fears and aspirations. The 1863 Tax List transcription delineates what taxpayers owned, describe slaves by name, age and monetary value, and defines the ownership of luxury items. The tax document communicates a first of its kind portrait of a county. Soldiers' and family letters, letters to the governor, cotton mill operations, political disagreements, and the lives of slaves are described in this microscopic study of a typical Piedmont county. The rationale for soldier enlistments, reasons for desertion, and economic struggles on the home front are examined. Many engaging and newly discovered historical revelations await the reader. Your perception of the times and its people will be expanded through their words and actions.

The chief nurse of the Union Hospital in Washington, D.C., describes life and stress in the hospital and comments on notable persons of power.

In June 1864, General Ulysses Grant ordered his cavalry commander, Philip Sheridan, to conduct a raid to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad between Charlottesville and Richmond. Sheridan fell short of his objective when he was defeated by General Wade Hampton's cavalry in a two-day battle at Trevilian Station. The first day's fighting saw dismounted Yankees and Rebels engaged at close range in dense forest. By day's end, Hampton had withdrawn to the west. Advancing the next morning, Sheridan found Hampton dug in behind hastily built fortifications and launched seven dismounted assaults, each repulsed with heavy casualties. As darkness fell, the Confederates counterattacked, driving the Union forces from the field. Sheridan began his withdrawal that night, an ordeal for his men, the Union wounded and Confederate prisoners brought off the field and the hundreds of starved and exhausted horses that marked his retreat, killed to prevent their falling into Confederate hands.