Civil War Military History

This work is a narrative of Zachary Taylor’s Mexican War campaign, from the formation of his army in 1844 to his last battle at Buena Vista in 1847, with emphasis on the 163 men in his “Army of Occupation” who became Confederate or Union generals in the Civil War. It clarifies what being a Mexican War veteran meant in their cases, how they interacted with one another, how they performed their various duties, and how they reacted under fire.

Nathan Raab, America’s preeminent rare documents dealer, delivers a “diverting account of treasure hunting in the fast lane” (The Wall Street Journal) that recounts his years as the Sherlock Holmes of historical artifacts, questing after precious finds and determining their authenticity.

On the North American continent, Native American tribes carried out abductions against the new European settlers from the time they first set foot on eastern shores. Some of the women taken in the colonial to early American period went on to become respected figures in their new environments, while others lived out their lives as slaves.

Two great battles, two historic outcomes: Defeat in either would have changed the destiny of America and Israel. In this riveting comparative history, From Gettysburg to Golan, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Spielman shows for the first time the extraordinary similarities between the battles of Gettysburg (1863) and Golan Heights (1973).

The high command of the Army of the Potomac was a changeable, often dysfunctional band of brothers, going through the fires of war under seven commanding generals in three years, until Grant came east in 1864. The men in charge all too frequently appeared to be fighting against the administration in Washington instead of for it, increasingly cast as political pawns facing down a vindictive congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers.

Despite all that has been published on the American Civil War, one aspect that has never received the in-depth attention it deserves is the widespread use of landmines across the Confederacy. These “infernal devices” dealt death and injury in nearly every Confederate state and influenced the course of the war. Kenneth R. Rutherford rectifies this oversight with America’s Buried History: Landmines in the Civil War, the first book devoted to a comprehensive analysis and history of the fascinating and important topic.

This book examines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the Black experience in the region until now.

Though he barely escaped expulsion from West Point, John Bell Hood quickly rose through the ranks of the Confederate army. With bold leadership in the battles of Gaines' Mill and Antietam, Hood won favor with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. But his fortunes in war took a tragic turn when he assumed command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. After the fall of Atlanta, Hood marched his troops north in an attempt to draw Union army general William T. Sherman from his devastating "March to the Sea." But the ploy proved ruinous for the South.

The Mexican Revolution was a defining moment of the 20th century. The Mexican fight for democracy, equality, and justice sent shockwaves around the world. No other episode in its history has left a deeper mark. It is a three-act drama full of politics, persecution, and war, not to mention earthquakes, signs in the sky, and even spiritualist sessions, while being populated by larger-than-life villains, international spies, and the universally known figures of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.

Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. But this is one of the clearest and most informative ever put into audio. As a commander in Stonewall Jackson's brigade, John Casler experienced all the horrors and comedy of the American Civil War. His time was not so different from his countrymen on the other side, with the exception of point of view.

A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Scott Shane. Flee North tells the story for the first time of an American hero all but lost to history.

A magnificent history of the opening years of the Civil War by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bruce Catton. The first book in Bruce Catton's Pulitzer Prize-winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln's Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan.

By the early 19th century, several European nations had banned slavery, but while the United States had banned the international slave trade, slavery was still legal in the country itself. As a result, there was still a strong financial motive for merchants and slave traders to attempt to bring slaves to the Western hemisphere, and a lot of profits to be gained from successfully sneaking slaves into the American South and the Caribbean by way of locations like Havana, Cuba.

Civil War Battles is an informative introduction to the subject. For four straight years, the people of the United States fought against one another in a brutal civil war that resulted in the deaths of approximately 620,000 men in uniform. Between 1861 and 1865, more Americans died during this bloody conflict than in all other American wars combined. With fighting across the South and in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Kentucky, some battles proved to be key in the overall outcome of the war.

In a frightening incident, Elsie's husband, Edward Travilla, narrowly survives an accidental shooting when friends tease son Edward, Jr. into firing a loaded pistol. The shot grazes Edward's head, and he survives with only minor damage. Soon life in the Travilla household returns to its calm routine.

From mid-August to mid-September 1863, Union major general William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland maneuvered from Tennessee to north Georgia in a bid to rout Confederate general Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee and blaze the way for further Union advances. Meanwhile, Confederate reinforcements bolstered the numbers of the Army of Tennessee, and by the time the two armies met at the Battle of Chickamauga, in northern Georgia, the Confederates had gained numerical superiority.

Most accounts of California’s role in the Civil War focus on the northern part of the state, San Francisco in particular. In Los Angeles in Civil War Days, John W. Robinson looks to the southern half and offers an enlightening sketch of Los Angeles and its people, politics, and economic trends from 1860 to 1865. Drawing on contemporary reports in the Los Angeles Star, Southern News, and other sources, Robinson shows how the war came to Los Angeles.

Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.

Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.