Showing titles in American Civil War

April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage, and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford's Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, "Burn the place down!" This is the untold story of Lincoln's assassination: The forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night.

The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but two weeks later, deep in central Virginia along the line of the Rappahannock. Once Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the swollen Potomac back to Virginia, the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit - and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high, wooded terrain.

A fascinating narrative, and a bold new thesis in the study of the Civil War, that suggests Robert E. Lee had a heretofore undiscovered strategy at Gettysburg that, if successful, could have crushed the Union forces and changed the outcome of the war.

John Bell Hood had done his job too well. In the fall of 1864, the commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee had harassed Federal forces in North Georgia so badly that the Union commander, William T. Sherman, decided to abandon his position. During his subsequent “March to the Sea”, Sherman’s men lived off the land and made Georgia howl. Rather than confront the larger Federal force directly, Hood chose instead to strike northward into Tennessee.

First published in 1961, John Hope Franklin’s revelatory study of the Reconstruction Era is a landmark work of history, exploring the role of former slaves and dispelling longstanding popular myths about corruption and Radical rule. Looking past dubious scholarship that had previously dominated the narrative, Franklin combines astute insight and careful research to provide an accurate, comprehensive portrait of the era.

The consensus view of the Civil War - that it was first and foremost a war to restore the Union, and an antislavery war only later when it became necessary for Union victory - dies here. James Oakes’s groundbreaking history shows how deftly Lincoln and congressional Republicans pursued antislavery throughout the war, pragmatic in policy but steadfast on principle. In the disloyal South the federal government quickly began freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines.

Reminiscences of the Civil War is John Brown Gordon’s firsthand account of the war as seen through the eyes of the prominent officer. Gordon was trusted and admired by many, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The work begins with him being elected as the commander of the “Raccoon Roughs” and his recollection of the Battle of Manassas. He also describes the South’s surrender at Appomattox, in which he participated. He recounts his role in individual battles such as Antietam, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and Gettysburg.

Once below the Potomac River, the Union troopers raced down the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains but were unable to prevent General Lee's wounded Army of Northern Virginia from reaching Culpeper. The balance of 1863 was a series of maneuvers, raids, and fighting that witnessed the near-destruction of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade at Buckland Mills and the indecisive and frustrating efforts of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run campaigns. Alfred Pleasonton's controversial command of the mounted arm ended abruptly, only to be replaced by the more controversial Philip H. Sheridan.

Born to wealth that the Civil War ravaged, held captive by renegade Comanche, and rejected by family and friends, Mary Elizabeth (“Libby”) Haley ran away from home at the age of 14. Libby learned to navigate the dangerous and volatile Old West and made a name for herself as Squirrel Tooth Alice. Given her moniker because of a gap in her front teeth and her passion for raising ground squirrels as pets, Libby made the best of a difficult situation.

Between the end of May and the beginning of August 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee oversaw the transition between the Overland Campaign - a remarkable saga of maneuvering and brutal combat - and what became a grueling siege of Petersburg that many months later compelled Confederates to abandon Richmond.

In the fall of 1865, the United States Army executed Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson for his role in murdering fifty-three loyal citizens of Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War. Long remembered as the most unforgiving and inglorious warrior of the Confederacy, Ferguson has often been dismissed by historians as a cold-blooded killer. Here, biographer Brian D. McKnight demonstrates how such a simple judgment ignores the complexity of this legendary character.

Fitzhugh Lee was a Confederate cavalry general during the Civil War. He was the nephew of Robert E. Lee, and the author of the most famous biography of his uncle.

At the outset of the Battle of the Wilderness, General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia remained capable of defeating the Army of the Potomac. After two days of relentless fighting in dense Virginia woods, Robert E. Lee was never again able to launch offensive operations against Grant's army. This battle was one of the most gruesome in American history. The impenetrable forest and gunfire smoke made it impossible to view the enemy. Officers couldn't see their own men during the fighting. The incessant gunfire caused the woods to catch fire, resulting in hundreds of men burning to death.

"We were as brothers," William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship with Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and the deep friendship that made it possible.

In February 1865, the end was clearly in sight for the Confederate government. Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg had dashed the hopes of the Confederate army, and Grant’s victory at Vicksburg had cut the South in two. An Honorable Defeat is the story of the four months that saw the surrender of the South and the assassination of Lincoln by Southern partisans.

In 1861 a Scotsman living in Louisiana took up the Confederate Flag. William Watson presents a narrative of his observations and experience in the Southern States, both before and during the American Civil War. Prior to the War, Watson lived in the hot, fertile state of Louisiana. With Lincoln in office, and the secession of the southern states, North and South was plunged in a violent Civil War. Watson recounts the widespread lack of political interest until the country reached this point.

Frazier has made use of previously untapped primary sources, allowing him to present new interpretations of the famous Civil War battles in the Southwest. Using narratives of veterans of the campaign and official Confederate and Union documents, the author explains how this seemingly far-fetched fantasy of building a Confederate empire was an essential part of the Confederate strategy.

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality - in the face of murderous violence - in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and 13 years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively.

The battle of Fredericksburg is usually remembered as the most lopsided Union defeat of the Civil War. It is sometimes called “Burnside’s folly”, after Union Commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside who led the Army of the Potomac to ruin along the banks of the Rappahannock River. But the battle remains one of the most misunderstood and misremembered engagements of the war. Burnside started with a well-conceived plan and had every reason to expect victory. How did it go so terribly wrong?

During the Battle of Gettysburg, General Chamberlain recounted the story of how he and his 20th Maine Regiment Volunteers saved the crucially strategic Little Round Top from the Confederates. By thwarting repeated enemy assaults, through daring and innovation, he was able to save the day and preserve this vital segment of the battlefield for the Army of the Potomac and ultimately the Union.