While fighting his way toward Atlanta, William T. Sherman encountered his biggest roadblock at Kennesaw Mountain, where Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee held a heavily fortified position. The opposing armies confronted each other from June 19 to July 3, 1864. Hess explains how this battle, with its combination of maneuver and combat, severely tried the patience and endurance of the common soldier and why Johnston's strategy might have been the...

"In addition to tracking the evolution of the black Confederate myth, Levin explores the roles that African Americans performed in the army with a particular focus on the relationship between officers and their personal body servants or camp slaves. In contrast to claims that these men served as soldiers in racially integrated regiments, Levin demonstrates that regardless of the dangers faced in camp, on the march and on the battlefield their legal...

"The Union Army of the Potomac was a hotbed of political activity during the Civil War. It proved a source of constant frustration for Abraham Lincoln, and its commander, George B. McClellan, even secured the Democratic nomination for president in 1864. In this innovative book, Zachery A. Fry uses untapped sources to recast our understanding of soldier ideology and presents the most comprehensive view yet of the army's political story. His work recounts...

Known today as "the other speaker at Gettysburg," Edward Everett had a distinguished and illustrative career at every level of American politics from the 1820s through the Civil War. In this new biography, Matthew Mason argues that Everett's extraordinarily well-documented career reveals a complex man whose shifting political opinions, especially on the topic of slavery, illuminate the nuances of Northern Unionism. In the case of Everett--who once...

"Here Earl J. Hess offers an in-depth military history of a critical phase of the long federal campaign to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Civil War. Hess focuses on the period from May 18-23, 1863, comprising the end of Ulysses S. Grant's overland march to the rear of the city and the beginning of his siege. These five days were a watershed in the development of Grant's eight months-long campaign to capture the Gibraltar of the Confederacy....

"Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg campaign was the Civil War's longest and among its most complex. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee squared off for more than nine months in their struggle for Petersburg, the key to the Confederate capital at Richmond"--

If, as many have argued, the Civil War is the most crucial moment in our national life and Gettysburg its turning point, then the climax of the climax, the central moment of our history, must be Pickett's Charge. But as Carol Reardon notes, the Civil War saw many other daring assaults and stout defenses. Why, then, is it Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg--and not, for example, Richardson's Charge at Antietam or Humphreys's Assault at Fredericksburg--that...

Joshua L. Chamberlain of Maine was an academic and theologian by training, but he led his regiment to glory at Gettysburg, where he ordered the brilliant charge that avoided a Union catastrophe. He was held in such high esteem by his superiors that Grant accorded him the honor of receiving the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

When Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 prompted several Southern states to secede, the North was sharply divided over how to respond. In this groundbreaking and highly praised book, McClintock follows the decision-making process from bitter partisan rancor to consensus. From small towns to big cities and from state capitals to Washington, D.C., McClintock highlights individuals both powerful and obscure to demonstrate the ways ordinary citizens,...