"...Here, within a radius of 17 miles, occurred over 100,000 American casualties in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House, all involving strategy and tactics beyond the understanding of the average soldier. The park preserves and interprets some of the scenes of those four great Civil War battles. The quiet, peaceful woods and fields are a constant reminder of how much we owe to the sacrifice of...

In the spring of 1864, President Lincoln feared that he might not be able to save the Union. The Army of the Potomac had performed poorly over the previous two years, and many Northerners were understandably critical of the war effort. Lincoln assumed he'd lose the November election, and he firmly believed a Democratic successor would seek peace immediately, spelling an end to the Union. A Fire in the Wilderness tells the story of that perilous time...

"Wartime is often thought of through the eyes of those who fought on the battlefield, but war affects everyone in a nation-including kids! This volume covers what life was like for kids who lived through the American Civil War. Readers learn about Civil War-era clothes, schools, and the differences of life in the Northern and Southern states. Historical images complement the age-appropriate content and language to aid comprehension. Fact boxes add...

"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. In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the...

Silas T. Grisamore was born in Indiana in 1825 and moved to Louisiana in 1846, settling first in Napoleonville and then in Thibodaux. He engaged in a variety of occupations but found most success as a merchant, selling goods from a flatboat that plied the waterways of the southern part of the state. When the Civil War began, Grisamore enlisted with the Lafourche Creoles, soon to become Company G of the 18th Louisiana Infantry Regiment. Because of...

Soldiers in the Union Army volunteered for many reasons--to reunite the country, to put down the southern rebellion. For most, however, slavery was a peripheral issue. Sympathy for slaves often came only after the soldiers actually witnessed their plight. In November 1863, thirty-eight men of the Minnesota Ninth Regiment responded to a fugitive slave's desperate plea by holding a train at gunpoint and liberating his wife, five children, and three...

Early in the Civil War, Louisiana's Confederate government sanctioned a militia unit of black troops, the Louisiana Native Guards. Intended as a response to demands from members of New Orleans' substantial free black population that they be permitted to participate in the defense of their state, the unit was used by Confederate authorities for public display and propaganda purposes but was not allowed to fight. After the fall of New Orleans, General...

"In the pre-dawn hours of April 12, 1861 James Chesnut Jr. hand-delivered a message to Major Robert Anderson, the U.S. Army commander at Fort Sumter. Chesnut informed Anderson that Confederate guns would commence the bombardment of the fort within the hour. Chesnut then piloted a small skiff across the dark waters of Charleston Harbor and delivered a fateful order to the batteries stationed on James Island. They were to open fire on Fort Sumter. Chesnut...

Guerrilla warfare, border fights, and unorganized skirmishes are all too often the only battles associated with Missouri during the Civil War. Combined with the state's distance from both sides' capitals, this misguided impression paints Missouri as an insignificant player in the nation's struggle to define itself. Such notions, however, are far from an accurate picture of the Midwest state's contributions to the war's outcome. Though traditionally...