For two years, Tyree H. Bell (1814-1902) served as one of Nathan Bedford Forrest's most trusted lieutenants in the Civil War. Forrest's legendary exploits and charisma often eclipsed the contributions of his subordinates, as his story was told and retold by admiring soldiers and historians. Bell, however, stood out from others who served with Forrest. He was neither a professional soldier nor an attorney-politician; he was, instead, a farmer with no previous military experience, a model of the citizen-soldier. Using Bell's unpublished autobiography and other primary materials, including Confederate letters, diaries, and official correspondence, author Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., worked with Connie Walton Moretti and Jim Browne, two of Bell's great-great-great grandchildren, to augment Bell's manuscript and to write the first full-length biography of this significant Confederate soldier. Born in Kentucky, Bell grew up on a Tennessee plantation and became a farmer and stock raiser. At the outbreak of war, his neighbors asked him to be captain of a company of volunteers they were raising for the Provisional Army of Tennessee. In 1861, he entered service with the Twelfth Tennessee Infantry and quickly became its lieutenant colonel. He distinguished himself in the battle of Belmont, where he commanded the regiment, and continued his steady performance at Shiloh. By the following year he was promoted to colonel and led the Twelfth Tennessee in the Kentucky campaign, rejoining Kirby Smith's army for battles at Cumberland Gap, Richmond, and Perryville. After obtaining permission to leave the Army of Tennessee, he became a brigade commander under Forrest. Bell lad half of Forrest's forces in the attack at Fort Pillow as well as in numerous other battles and expeditions. After the war, Bell returned to Sumner County to resume farming and eventually moved his family to California. In addition to giving insight into the man whose courage and leadership earned him the nickname "Forrest's Right Arm," the authors explore Bell's early years in Tennessee and his adventurous postwar career in business and land speculation. This portrait of Bell is one of an unsung leader who risked much to fight for the Confederacy. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., is the author of a number of books, including The Pride of the Confederate Artillery: The Washington Artillery in the Army of Tennessee, and General William J. Hardee, C.S.A He is also coauthor of Theodore O'Hara: Poet-Soldier of the Old South and coeditor of Military Memoirs of Brigadier General William Passmore Carlin, U.S.A. He lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

For two years, Tyree H. Bell (1814-1902) served as one of Nathan Bedford Forrest's most trusted lieutenants in the Civil War. Forrest's legendary exploits and charisma often eclipsed the contributions of his subordinates, as his story was told and retold by admiring soldiers and historians. Bell, however, stood out from others who served with Forrest. He was neither a professional soldier nor an attorney-politician; he was, instead, a farmer with no previous military experience, a model of the citizen-soldier. Using Bell's unpublished autobiography and other primary materials, including Confederate letters, diaries, and official correspondence, author Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., worked with Connie Walton Moretti and Jim Browne, two of Bell's great-great-great grandchildren, to augment Bell's manuscript and to write the first full-length biography of this significant Confederate soldier. Born in Kentucky, Bell grew up on a Tennessee plantation and became a farmer and stock raiser. At the outbreak of war, his neighbors asked him to be captain of a company of volunteers they were raising for the Provisional Army of Tennessee. In 1861, he entered service with the Twelfth Tennessee Infantry and quickly became its lieutenant colonel. He distinguished himself in the battle of Belmont, where he commanded the regiment, and continued his steady performance at Shiloh. By the following year he was promoted to colonel and led the Twelfth Tennessee in the Kentucky campaign, rejoining Kirby Smith's army for battles at Cumberland Gap, Richmond, and Perryville. After obtaining permission to leave the Army of Tennessee, he became a brigade commander under Forrest. Bell lad half of Forrest's forces in the attack at Fort Pillow as well as in numerous other battles and expeditions. After the war, Bell returned to Sumner County to resume farming and eventually moved his family to California. In addition to giving insight into the man whose courage and leadership earned him the nickname "Forrest's Right Arm," the authors explore Bell's early years in Tennessee and his adventurous postwar career in business and land speculation. This portrait of Bell is one of an unsung leader who risked much to fight for the Confederacy.

One of nineteenth-century America's most controversial military figures, Gideon Johnson Pillow gained notoriety early in the Civil War for turning an apparent Confederate victory at Fort Donelson into an ignominious defeat. Dismissed by contemporaries and historians alike as a political general with dangerous aspirations, his famous failures have overshadowed the tremendous energy, rare talent, and great organizational skills that also marked his career. In this exhaustive biography, Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer Jr. look beyond conventional historical interpretations to provide a full and nuanced portrait of this provocative and maligned man.
While noting his arrogance, ambition, and very public mistakes, Hughes and Stonesifer give Pillow his due as a gifted attorney, first-rate farmer, innovator, and man of considerable political influence. One of Tennessee's wealthiest planters, Pillow promoted scientific methods to improve the soil, preached crop diversification to reduce the South's dependence on cotton, and endorsed railroad construction as a means to develop the southern economy. He helped secure the 1844 Democratic nomination for his friend and fellow Tennessean James K. Polk and was rewarded after Polk's victory with an appointment as brigadier general. While his role in the Mexican War earned him a reputation for recklessness and self-promotion, his organization of what would become the Army of Tennessee put him at the forefront of the Confederate war effort. After the disaster at Donelson, he spent the rest of the war directing Confederate conscription in the West and leading Rebel cavalry forces--a role of continuing service which, the authors show, has been insufficiently acknowledged.
Updated with a new foreword by noted Civil War scholar Timothy D. Johnson, "The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow "portrays a colorful, enigmatic general who moved just outside the world of greatness he longed to enter.
Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. is the author or editor of twenty books relating to the American Civil War, including "Refugitta of Richmond; Brigadier General Tyree H. Bell, C.S.A.: Forrest's Fighting Lieutenant"; and "Yale's Confederates." The late Roy P. Stonesifer Jr. was a professor of history at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.

The battle of Belmont was the first battle in the western theater of the Civil War and, more importantly, the first battle of the war fought by Ulysses S. Grant. It set a pattern for warfare not only in the Mississippi Valley but at Fort Donelson and Shiloh as well. Grant's 7 November 1861 strike against the Southern forces at Belmont, in southeastern Missouri on the Mississippi River, made use of the newly outfitted Yankee timberclads and all the infantry available at the staging area in Cairo, Illinois.

The Confederates, led by Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow, had the advantages of position and superior numbers. They hoped to smash Grant's expeditionary force on the Missouri shore and cut off the escape of the Illinois and Iowa troops from their boats. The confrontation was a bloody, all-day fight that a veteran of a dozen major battles would later call "frightful to contemplate." At first successful, the Federals were eventually driven from the field and withdrew up the Mississippi to safety. The battle cost some twenty percent of his troops, but as a result of this engagement he became known as an audacious fighting general.

Using diaries and letters of participants, official documents, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Nathaniel Hughes provides the only full-length tactical study of the battle that catapulted Grant into prominence. Throughout the narrative, Hughes draws sketches of the lives and fates of individual soldiers who fought on both sides, especially of the colorful and enormously dissimilar principal actors, Grant and Polk.

Nathaniel Hughes offers a full-length tactical study of the battle of Bentonville, the only major Civil War battle fought in North Carolina and the Confederacy's last attempt to stop the devastating march of Sherman's army north through the Carolinas. In careful detail, Hughes lays out Confederate and Union troop movements and places the engagement within the larger military framework of the last months of the war. Analyzing the reasons for the initial success and eventual failure of General Joseph E. Johnston's offensive, Hughes maintains that Sherman showed great restraint by remaining committed to the larger goal of reaching Goldsboro rather than stopping to pursue or destroy the defeated Confederates.