English Civil War

Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their "liberator" as a "homely" man who did not hold himself apart; Southerners felt a nostalgia for Abraham Lincoln as a humble "conciliator". Later, educators glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood to help assimilate poor immigrants. Monument makers focused not only on a gigantic body but also on a nationalist "union", downplaying "emancipation". Among both Black and White liberals in the 1960s and 1970s, Lincoln was derided or fell out of fashion.

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.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little-known aspects of the Civil War: The stories of four courageous women - a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow - who were spies. After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

Terrible Swift Sword (Vol. 2): The dismissal of George McClellan and the rise of Ulysses S. Grant.

Not everyone sensed it right away, but after McClellan was dethroned in the fall of 1862, the focus of the war had shifted ever so subtly. Before that, the war was about reconciliation and bringing the two sides back together - with or without slavery. After Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation, there was no going back. The purpose of the war had changed. It was no longer about reuniting the two sides but about total victory, crushing the South, and eliminating slavery.

Abraham Lincoln began his presidency admitting that he knew "but little of ships," but he quickly came to preside over the largest national armada to that time, not eclipsed until World War I. Naval historian Craig L. Symonds' Lincoln and His Admirals unveils an aspect of Lincoln's presidency unexamined by historians until now, revealing how he managed the men who ran the naval side of the Civil War, and how the activities of the Union Navy ultimately affected the course of history.

Late on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of 18 raiders descended on Harpers Ferry at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house. The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown's raiders were five African Americans whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and, even today, are little remembered.

Louisa Caldecott, a progressive woman and independent business owner in 1880 Kansas, is principled, strong-willed, passionate, and generous to a fault. Satisfied with her comfortable life, she's happy to live in her sister Lily's shadow. Until Lou meets John Rock Davis, Civil War veteran and man with a past. Until everything she loves is put at risk. Until she is forced to take a stand that threatens her safety, her happiness, and her future. Then all hell - but heaven, too - breaks loose, and self-sufficient Lou finally understands the cost of courage and the power of love.

What was it like to meet our 16th president? Was he really as kind and honest as we perceive him to be today? This astonishing new book is an inspiring and eye-opening collection of stories, anecdotes, and quotes from people who sought out Lincoln for his wisdom, his help, or just his irresistible wit. He offered a patient ear to almost anyone who came to see him, and his compassion and understanding bettered the lives of hundreds who crossed his threshold.

Bull Run was the site of the first battle of the Civil War. This book creates an intimate tapestry of stories from blacks and whites, adults and children, leaders and families from the North and South. Broken dreams and bloodshed take you back to the front lines of the Battle of Bull Run.

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century - but they've never been as intense as they are today. In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them.

Drawing on the letters and records of individual soldiers, this compelling audio course invites you to explore the relationship between events on the battlefield and life on the home front. With more than 600,000 casualties, the Civil War cannot be understood by looking exclusively at famous figures like Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Ulysses S. Grant. As you’ll see, ordinary people — volunteer soldiers, runaway slaves, civilians in both the North and South — shaped the course of history.

It is July 10, 1863, and Baltimore is in the hands of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee. Shattered remnants of the Army of the Potomac have fallen back into Washington, digging in, preparing to make a desperate stand. Six days earlier, General Ulysses S. Grant and his army of 60,000 had taken Vicksburg. The last telegram out of Washington before the rebels cut the line changed all that.

In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln's vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before. In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately.

In hindsight, we can say no one man or event served as a catalyst for the Civil War. It was not the John Brown Raid, no matter how many historians say it was the pivotal event. It was not the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the war was not about slavery - not in the beginning anyway. The Civil War got its start 73 years earlier when the Founding Fathers set aside the hot potato that was slavery - so they could ratify the Constitution. The signers knew they were passing the issue on to a future generation. Their hope was their progeny could answer the questions they could not.

Groundbreaking, compelling, and poignant, The Slaves' War delivers an unprecedented vision of the nation's bloodiest conflict. An acclaimed historian of 19th-century and African American history, Andrew Ward gives us the first narrative of the Civil War told from the perspective of those whose destiny it decided.

Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people.

Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered. Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.

The year is 1861, the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. For Kate Warn, the first female private detective in American history, the only assignment tougher than exposing a conspiracy to assassinate the new president is training her new mentee, Hattie MacLaughlin, in the art of detection. The two women’s mission to save the president takes them from the granges of rural Maryland to the heart of secessionist high society, and sets them on a collision course that could alter the course of history.