Showing titles in American Civil War

In this personal account of the Civil War, William G. Stevenson was impressed into the Confederate Army, serving in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama in the hospital service from mid-1861 until June 1862, when he escaped to the North. This is a "narrative of personal adventures in the infantry, ordnance, cavalry, courier, and hospital services, with an exhibition of the power, purposes, earnestness, military despotism, and demoralization of the South". First published in 1862. 

Shiloh: Two Days in Hell outlines the battle and explains how it came about. You will meet the main participants, understand Union and Confederate troop movements, and learn more about the rise of Sherman and Grant. It's not the complete story, but enough to bring you up to speed, understand the issues of the day, and maybe encourage you to explore more on your own.

William Watson (1826-1906) was a Scottish native who enlisted in the Confederate Army. Watson recounts life in a volunteer corps of the Confederate army. He provides his personal views on the causes of the war, and the conduct of both sides. Detailing the lives of the soldiers, he describes their living conditions, daily rations, and the levels of destruction and death.

Abraham Lincoln has long been admired for his leadership, honesty, and eloquence. But despite his somber reputation, the 16th president was quite funny. With an uncanny ability to mimic others and an irresistible midwestern twang, Lincoln, in fact, could be downright hilarious. Brimming with his funniest quips, jokes, and stories, Lincoln's Gift explores the crucial role humor played throughout his tumultuous professional and private life.

On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led the 7th U.S. Cavalry into the valley of the Little Bighorn. By sunset, Custer and five of his companies lay dead - killed in battle against Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Through the passage of time, Custer’s last fight has come to overshadow the rest of his military career, which had its brilliant beginning in the American Civil War. Plucked from obscurity by Maj. Gen. George McClellan, Custer served as a staff officer through the early stages of the war.

Despite the fact that the Civil War was fought nearly 150 years ago, it remains a polarizing topic for the country to this day, and Americans continue to debate who the greatest generals of the war were, arguing the pros and cons and battle records of the men who fought. Although Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and JEB Stuart have long been the most celebrated men of the South, in April 1861, the man of the hour was P.G.T. Beauregard, the South’s hero of Fort Sumter. 

More than most men in history, Sam Houston was a contradictory individual. He was born in the United States while George Washington was in office, and in an era when the native people who were gradually being subjugated were considered savages, he called them friends and even lived among them. He had a storied career both in times of war and peace, and he proved to be a stubborn but canny politician who represented multiple states. Sam Houston: The Life and Legacy of the Man Who Led the Texas Revolution looks at how he became one of the Southwest’s most important figures.

In the most popular narratives of the Civil War, Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman are celebrated as the Union’s most successful generals and men who revolutionized total warfare with the use of scorched earth tactics. Sherman’s March to the Sea continues to be one of the most famous campaigns of the war, and he is still widely reviled in the South because of it. Lost in this common narrative is the fact that Sherman’s March was preceded by a scorched-earth campaign that made Virginia howl, led by "Little Phil" Sheridan. The 5'5" Sheridan was one of the smallest and toughest fighters in the Union Army.

During the Civil War, the eyes of the nation usually stayed fixed to the Eastern theater, but one of the bright spots in the West for the Confederacy was Irish immigrant Patrick Cleburne, whose successes earned him the nickname "Stonewall of the West". Where so many Confederates were failing, Cleburne's strategic tactics and bold defensive fighting earned him fame and recognition throughout the South, even leading Lee to call him "a meteor shining from a clouded sky."

Volume Four begins in March, 1865 with Lee's starving soldiers facing annihilation at the hands of Grant's enormous army. Surrounded, with all avenues of escape cut off, Lee honorably surrendered the remnants of his valiant Army of Northern Virginia at Appamattox on April 9. Having done his military duty to his people, Lee next asked himself, "What is now my duty?" Declining handsome financial rewards for the use of his name in commercial ventures, Lee decided to share the misery of the people of Virginia and the South.

Volume three opens in May 1863 as Lee assessed his situation after the great Confederate victory at Chancellorsville and the loss of General Jackson. Lee quickly reorganized his army and headed north, hoping to inflict a war-ending defeat on the Union. But absent Jackson, his army was not the same.

Over the last 150 years, historians and Americans have endlessly debated over the Civil War, including its causes and the best and worst generals. Nowhere has there been a sharper debate than over the career and legacy of George McClellan, with a majority viewing him as the North's biggest goat and a small but vocal minority insisting that McClellan was a very good general who was made a scapegoat by the Lincoln Administration and its supporters.

Winfield Scott Hancock was an intimidating figure who impressed friends, foes, and fellow generals alike. Known as Hancock the Superb after McClellan described his performance as such during the Battle of Williamsburg in the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Hancock eventually rose to become the Army of the Potomac's greatest corps commander. Though his reputation and legacy gradually faded over time, Hancock was one of the North's foremost war heroes by the end of the war, and he nearly became president in 1880.

During the Civil War, one of the tales that was often told among Confederate soldiers was that Joseph E. Johnston was a crack shot who was a better bird hunter than just about everyone else in the South. However, as the story went, Johnston would never take the shot when asked to, complaining that something was wrong with the situation that prevented him from being able to shoot the bird when it was time.

Of all the Civil War generals, none have been mythologized like Stonewall Jackson, whose quirks and piety have made him a subject of study among military historians and Christians alike. This audiobook closely examines Jackson’s military career and discusses the legends and mystique that have since surrounded his legacy, but it also humanizes the devoutly religious and tender husband who humored his students at Virginia Military Institute.

Porter Alexander spent 1861 as an intelligence officer, and he served as part of a signal guard, but he soon became chief of ordnance for Joseph Johnston's army near Richmond. Half a year later, Johnston would be injured during the Peninsula Campaign at the Battle of Seven Pines, after which he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. Over the course of 1862, Porter Alexander took on more roles in the Army of Northern Virginia's artillery branch, particularly under James Longstreet's 1st Corps.

When historians are asked to list the most influential people of the last 200 years, a handful of names might vary, but there is no question that the list will include Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), the most successful French leader since Charlemagne and widely acknowledged one of the greatest generals ever.

Before July 3, 1863, George Pickett was best known among his comrades for finishing last in his class at West Point, being a jocular but courageous soldier, and his carefully perfumed locks. As part of West Point's most famous Class of 1846, Pickett was classmates with men like Stonewall Jackson and George McClellan, and despite his poor class standing he distinguished himself fresh out of school during the Mexican-American War.

The battlefield reputation of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, long recognized as a formidable warrior, has been shaped by one infamous wartime incident. At Fort Pillow in 1864, the attack by Confederate forces under Forrest's command left many of the Tennessee Unionists and Black soldiers garrisoned there dead in a confrontation widely labeled as a "massacre".

Between the Monday after Abraham Lincoln was shot until the following week, Tom Jones hid John Wilkes Booth in the wilds of Maryland and then helped him get across the Potomac River to Virginia.