Civil War Military History

Was the Civil War really about slavery? Or was it a war fought over money? Civil War historian Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., (Vicksburg, Bust Hell Wide Open) opens his fascinating new book, It Wasn't About Slavery, with Dr. Grady McWhiney's claim that "what passes as standard American history is really Yankee history written by New Englanders or their puppets to glorify Yankee heroes and ideals".

A Military History of Texas is designed to be accessible and interesting to a broad range of listeners. It will find a welcome place in the collections of amateur or professional military historians, devoted fans of all things Texan, and newcomers to military history.

In late September 1863, the Confederates began laying siege to the Union Army of the Cumberland around Chattanooga. It would be their last gasp for supremacy in the West. Following the devastating Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 20, the army and its shaken commander, General William S. Rosecrans, began digging in around the city and waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

The Second Battle of Bull Run (August 28-30, 1862) was one of the most decisive battles fought during the Civil War, and it was also one of the most unlikely. Less than three months before the battle, Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Northern Virginia had been pushed back nearly all the way to Richmond by George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac, so close that Union soldiers could see the church steeples of the Confederate capital.

In any telling of military history, people can be easily seduced by straightforward explanations that say why one side won and the other was doomed, but in the Civil War, no greater epic of war tests that like the Vicksburg campaign. The Greatest Civil War Battles: The Vicksburg Campaign comprehensively covers the events that led up to the siege, the fighting itself, and the aftermath of the campaign.

As Sherman began his infamous march to the sea, Lincoln instructed Grant to redirect General George H. Thomas' efforts back to Tennessee to protect Union supply lines and stop the offensive mounted by Confederate general John Bell Hood. With Sherman marching east toward the sea, he directed Thomas to try to block Hood around Nashville....

On November 30, the Union army began digging in around Franklin, and that afternoon John Bell Hood ordered a frontal assault on the Union army, which deeply upset his own officers. Hood stressed the necessity of defeating John Schofield's forces before General George H. Thomas could arrive, though some historians believe his decision to mount a frontal attack was a rash decision made out of fury at the fact that Schofield had escaped his grasp.

A former editor of American Heritage, Stephen W. Sears has collected a wealth of new sources for this definitive portrait of one of the most dramatic battles of the Civil War. Using scores of letters and diaries written by soldiers from both Union and Confederate armies, Sears’ narrative history seeks to strip away the gloss of later commentary and restore the battle of Chancellorsville to its original voices.

Esta fascinante guía cuenta la historia de la campaña de Gettysburg, desde la decisión de Lee de invadir hasta su retirada del campo de batalla. En estas páginas, leerá sobre actos de heroísmo, tácticas brillantes en el campo de batalla y decisiones horribles que cambiaron el rumbo de la guerra.

In 2001, while vacationing on Panama’s Pacific coast, maritime archaeologist James P. Delgado came upon the hulk of a mysterious iron vessel, revealed by the ebbing tides in a small cove at Isla San Telmo. He learned that the wreck was the remains of one of the first successful deep-diving submersibles, built in 1864 by Julius H. Kroehl, an innovator during the Civil War. Delgado chronicles the confluence of technological advancement, entrepreneurial aspiration, American capitalist ambition, and ignorance of the physiological effects of deep diving in this compelling narrative.

The dominant narrative about the causes of the Civil War is the work of historians obsessed with social activism instead of history.

The Civil War involved the entire population in a way paralleled by no other conflict since the Revolution. Photographs of war deaths and almost instantaneous reports from the front by telegraph made the war years difficult for both parents and children. The War of Southern Secession, a civil war, had come to America. It would be one of the most tragic events in the nation's history, resulting from a dispute among its citizens over just what the new country should look like.

The secession of the South was one of the seminal events in American history, but it also remains one of the most controversial. The election of Abraham Lincoln was the impetus for secession, but that was merely one of many events that led up to the formation of the Confederacy and the start of the Civil War.

The task for those in charge of professionalizing the military in the first half of the nineteenth century and transforming it from a militia-led army to a highly disciplined standing army was a difficult job. Americans had long supported a tradition of militia and distrusted professional soldiers.

The American Civil War, which took place from 1861 to 1865, stands as one of the most defining and transformative periods in American history. Rooted in complex issues such as slavery, states' rights, and regional differences, the war pitted the Union, composed of Northern states, against the Confederacy, consisting of Southern states that sought to secede from the Union. The conflict tore the nation apart, resulting in devastating casualties and leaving an indelible mark on American society.

The focus of this selection concerns both the Federal and Confederate efforts to disable or maintain the railroads within the active theaters of the war. Real railroads of iron and steam and ribbons of steel vanishing into the horizon quickly became a strategic objective of both armies in the Civil War. Raiders and protectors were deployed both North and South. The damage inflicted on roadways and rolling stock was not always easy to accomplish.

The Library of Congress Timeline of the Civil War is an authoritative and engaging narrative of the domestic conflict that determined the course of American history. A detailed chronological timeline of the war captures the harrowing intensity of nineteenth-century warfare in firsthand accounts from soldiers, nurses, and front-line journalists.

Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world.

History has not been kind to Jefferson Davis. Many Americans of his own time and in later generations considered him an incompetent leader, not to mention a traitor. Not so, argues James M. McPherson. In Embattled Rebel, McPherson shows us that Davis might have been on the wrong side of history, but that it is too easy to diminish him because of his cause’s failure. Gravely ill throughout much of the Civil War, Davis nevertheless shaped and articulated the principal policy of the Confederacy—the quest for independent nationhood—with clarity and force.

Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada's role in the bloody conflict that claimed more than 600,000 lives. A surprising 20,000 Canadians went south to take up arms on both sides of the conflict, while thousands of enslaved people, draft dodgers, deserters, recruiters, plotters, and spies fled northward to take shelter in the attic that is Canada. Though many escaped slavery and found safety through the Underground Railroad, they were later joined by KKK members wanted for murder.