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Henry E. Handerson, a tutor from the Western Reserve of Ohio, fifteen miles east of Cleveland, enlisted in the Confederate army on June 17, 1861...Handerson was not an ordinary soldier. His memoir is the account of a Northerner—who after only two years of residency in antebellum Louisiana decided to cast his lot with the Confederacy. ...Already a member of a local home guard company, the twenty-four-year-old Ohio-born Handerson was quickly enrolled as a private in the Stafford Guards, later Company B, of the Ninth Louisiana Infantry. The Ninth was first bloodied at the Battle of Front Royal, Virginia, on May 23, 1862, in a brisk fight with the Union First Maryland Infantry. As part of Ston...
Residents of antebellum northwest Louisiana held strong pro-Union sentiments, and the Pierson family of Bienville Parish, Louisiana, were no exception, opposing secession in 1861. Yet once war began, the region contributed its full share of support to the southern army, and four of William H. Pierson's eight sons enlisted. Ranging from the early battles of the Trans-Mississippi to the epic battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, and from the brutal trenches of Vicksburg to provost guard duty in north Louisiana, this extensive collection of Civil War letters, written by three of the Pierson brothers, offers riveting glimpses of almost every variety of experience faced by Confederate soldiers. Prolific letter writers, the Piersons were educated, observant, and well placed to comment not only on the battles and campaigns of their regiments but also on their commanding officers, the effect of political activity on soldier morale, being taken captive, and, most of all, their entire family's understanding of and commitment to the Confederate cause.
What happened to the hundreds of thousands of men in the Union and Confederate armies after they lay down their arms? According to William Holberton, many of these men had miles to travel before they were discharged from service, and the passage of these miles included some rather unique situations and experiences. As always, there was bureaucratic red tape and mishandled orders, and in some cases, tragic accidents, such as the Sultana disaster. Beginning with the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the author takes the reader through all the aspects and phases of demobilization, including the Grand Review in Washington, the desertions of soldiers overly eager to return home, the differences between Union and Confederate demobilization, the repatriation of prisoners of war, and the deferred demobilization of many black troops. The late William Holberton was a retired priest living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He spent the years since his retirement researching and writing Homeward Bound, his first book. He had previously published related articles in magazines such as Civil War Times Illustrated.
Using widely scattered and previously unknown primary sources, Parrish's biography of Confederate general Richard Taylor presents him as one of the Civil War's most brilliant generals, eliciting strong performances from his troops in the face of manifold obstacles in three theaters of action.
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest famously declared. The Civil War was fundamentally a matter of Americans killing Americans. This undeniable reality is what Jonathan Steplyk explores in Fighting Means Killing, the first book-length study of Union and Confederate soldiers’ attitudes toward, and experiences of, killing in the Civil War. Drawing upon letters, diaries, and postwar reminiscences, Steplyk examines what soldiers and veterans thought about killing before, during, and after the war. How did these soldiers view sharpshooters? How about hand-to-hand combat? What language did they use to describe killing in combat? What cultural and societal factors influenced their attitudes? And what was the impact of race in battlefield atrocities and bitter clashes between white Confederates and black Federals? These are the questions that Steplyk seeks to answer in Fighting Means Killing, a work that bridges the gap between military and social history—and that shifts the focus on the tragedy of the Civil War from fighting and dying for cause and country to fighting and killing.
At 12:00 a.m. on May 4, 1864, Ulysses s. Grant and George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac began crossing the Rapidan River in an effort to turn the strategic right flank of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Confederate reaction was swift. Richard E. Ewell’s Second Corps and Ambrose P. Hill’s Third Corps moved to meet the advancing Union infantry, artillery, and cavalry in the heavy terrain known simply as “The Wilderness,” a sprawling area of second growth scrub oak, brush, and gullies, interspersed with meandering creeks. Inside this difficult terrain one of the largest and bloodiest battles would consume two days and thousands of men. Nowhere to Run is the story of the ...
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