In The Review Queue: American Civil Wars

American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873

By Alan Taylor

A masterful history of the Civil War and its reverberations across the continent by a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

In a fast-paced narrative of soaring ideals and sordid politics, of civil war and foreign invasion, the award-winning historian Alan Taylor presents a pivotal twenty-year period in which North America’s three largest countries―the United States, Mexico, and Canada―all transformed themselves into nations. The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.

The outbreak of the Civil War created a continental power vacuum that allowed French forces to invade Mexico in 1862 and set up an empire ruled by a Habsburg archduke. This inflamed the ongoing power struggle between Mexico’s Conservatives―landowners, the military, the Church―and Liberal supporters of social democracy, led ably by Benito Juarez. Along the southwestern border Mexico’s Conservative forces made common cause with the Confederacy, while General James Carleton violently suppressed Apaches and Navajos in New Mexico and Arizona. When the Union triumph restored the continental balance of power, French forces withdrew, and Liberals consolidated a republic in Mexico.

Canada was meantime fending off a potential rupture between French-speaking Catholics in Quebec and English-speakers in Ontario. When Union victory raised the threat of American invasion, Canadian leaders pressed for a continent-wide confederation joined by a transcontinental railroad. The rollicking story of liberal ideals, political venality, and corporate corruption marked the dawn of the Gilded Age in North America.

About the Author

Alan Taylor, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History, is the author of American Revolutions and American Republics, prior volumes in his acclaimed continental history of the United States. He is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

ISBN 978-1324035282, W. W. Norton & Company, © 2024, Hardcover, 560 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $39.99. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: A Day In September

A Day in September: The Battle of Antietam and the World It Left Behind

By Stephen Budiansky

Release Date: September 3, 2024

A panoramic account of the fateful Civil War battle and its far-reaching consequences for American society and culture.

The Battle of Antietam, which took place on September 17, 1862, remains the single bloodiest day in America’s history: more than 3,600 men died in twelve hours of savage fighting, and more than 17,000 were wounded. As a turning point in the Civil War, the narrow Union victory is well-known as the key catalyst for Lincoln to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.

Yet Antietam was not only a battle that dramatically changed the fortunes and meaning of the war; it also changed America in ways we feel today. No army in history wrote so many letters or kept as many diaries as the soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and Stephen Budiansky draws on this rich record to re-create the experiences of those whose lives were forever changed, whether on the battlefield or in trying to make sense of its horrors in the years and decades to follow. Antietam would usher in a new beginning in politics, military strategy, gender roles, battlefield medicine, war photography, and the values and worldview of the postwar generation.

A masterful and fine-grained account of the battle, built around the intimate experiences of nine people whose lives intersected there, A Day in September is a story of war but also, at its heart, a human history, one that encompasses Antietam’s enduring legacy.

About The Author

Stephen Budiansky is a historian, biographer, and journalist, the author of 18 books exploring intellectual and creative lives, military and intelligence history, and science and the natural world. He is the former Washington Editor of the scientific journal Nature and a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal. He lives on a small farm in northern Virginia.

ISBN 978-1324035756, W. W. Norton & Company, © 2024, Hardcover, 304 pages, Photographs and Maps, Appendix, Notes On Sources, Bibliography & Index. $32.50. To purchase this book click HERE.

In the Review Queue: Voices of the Army of the Potomac

Voices of the Army of the Potomac:

Personal Reminiscences of Union Veterans

By Vincent L. Burns

Finalist, 2021 Army Historical Foundation

Distinguished Writing Awards

As historian David W. Bright noted in Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, "No other historical experience in America has given rise to such a massive collection of personal narrative 'literature' written by ordinary people." This "massive collection" of memoirs, recollections and regimental histories make up the history of the Civil War seen through the eyes of the participants. This work is an overview of what Civil War soldiers and veterans wrote about their experiences. It focusses on what veterans remembered, what they were prepared to record, and what they wrote down in the years after the end of the war. In an age of increased literacy many of these men had been educated, whether at West Point, Harvard or other establishments, but even those who had received only a few years of education chose to record their memories.

The writings of these veterans convey their views on the cataclysmic events they had witnessed but also their memories of everyday events during the war. While many of them undertook detailed research of battles and campaigns before writing their accounts, it is clear that a number were less concerned with whether their words aligned with the historical record than whether they recorded what they believed to be true. This book explores these themes and also the connection between veterans writing their personal war history and the issue of veterans’ pensions. Understanding what these veterans chose to record and why is important to achieving a deeper understanding of the experience of these men who were caught up in this central moment in American life.

About the Author

Vincent Burns has a Bachelor's and Master's degree in American History from the University of Memphis. His previously published titles include The Fifth New York Cavalry in the Civil War (McFarland, 2014) and a novel entitled Moonlight in Vermont. He is retired from IBM Corp. and also from the semiconductor equipment industry and now lives in Idaho.

ISBN 978-1636240725, Casemate, ©2021, Hardcover, 384 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, Bibliography, End Notes & Index. $37.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Lincoln and the Fight for Peace

Lincolnand the Fight for Peace

By John Avlon

A groundbreaking, revelatory history of Abraham Lincoln’s plan to secure a just and lasting peace after the Civil War—a vision that inspired future presidents as well as the world’s most famous peacemakers, including Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a story of war and peace, race and reconciliation.

As the tide of the Civil War turned in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln took a dangerous two-week trip to visit the troops on the front lines accompanied by his young son, seeing combat up close, meeting liberated slaves in the ruins of Richmond, and comforting wounded Union and Confederate soldiers.

The power of Lincoln’s personal example in the closing days of the war offers a portrait of a peacemaker. He did not demonize people he disagreed with. He used humor, logic, and scripture to depolarize bitter debates. Balancing moral courage with moderation, Lincoln believed that decency could be the most practical form of politics, but he understood that people were more inclined to listen to reason when greeted from a position of strength. Ulysses S. Grant’s famously generous terms of surrender to General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox that April were a direct expression of the president’s belief that a soft peace should follow a hard war.

While his assassination sent the country careening off course, Lincoln’s vision would be vindicated long after his death, inspiring future generations in their own quests to secure a just and lasting peace. As US General Lucius Clay, architect of the post-WWII German occupation, said when asked what guided his decisions: “I tried to think of the kind of occupation the South would have had if Abraham Lincoln had lived.”

Lincoln and the Fight for Peace reveals how Lincoln’s character informed his commitment to unconditional surrender followed by a magnanimous peace. Even during the Civil War, surrounded by reactionaries and radicals, he refused to back down from his belief that there is more that unites us than divides us. But he also understood that peace needs to be waged with as much intensity as war. Lincoln’s plan to win the peace is his unfinished symphony, but in its existing notes, we can find an anthem that can begin to bridge our divisions today.

About the Author

John Avlon is a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN. He is an award-winning columnist and the author of Independent Nation, Wingnuts, and Washington’s Farewell. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast and served as chief speechwriter for the Mayor of New York during the attacks of 9/11. He lives with his wife Margaret Hoover and their two children in New York.

ISBN 978-1982108120, Simon & Schuster, ©2022, Hardcover, 368 pages, Photographs &  Illustrations, Selected Bibliography, End Notes & Index. $30.00. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: The Black Man's President

The Black Man's President:
Abraham Lincoln, African Americans,
and the Pursuit of Racial Equality

by Michael Burlingame

Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president” as well as “the first who rose above the prejudice of his times and country.” This narrative history of Lincoln’s personal interchange with Black people over the course his career reveals a side of the sixteenth president that, until now, has not been fully explored or understood.

In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Lincoln's assassination, Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president," the "first to show any respect for their rights as men.”  To justify that description, Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln's official acts and utterances, like the Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural Address, but also to the president’s own personal experiences with Black people. Referring to  one of his White House visits, Douglass said: "In daring to invite a Negro to an audience at the White House, Mr. Lincoln was saying to the country: I am President of the black people as well as the white, and I mean to respect their rights and feelings as men and as citizens.”

But Lincoln’s description as “emphatically the black man’s president” rests on more than his relationship with Douglass or on his official words and deeds. Lincoln interacted with many other African Americans during his presidency  His unfailing cordiality to them, his willingness to meet with them in the White House, to honor their requests, to invite them to consult on public policy, to treat them with respect whether they were kitchen servants or leaders of the Black community, to invite them to attend receptions, to sing and pray with them in their neighborhoods—all those manifestations of an egalitarian spirit fully justified the tributes paid to him by Frederick Douglass and other African Americans like Sojourner Truth, who said: "I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln.”

Historian David S. Reynolds observed recently that only by examining Lincoln’s “personal interchange with Black people do we see the complete falsity of the charges of innate racism that some have leveled against him over the years.”

ISBN 978-1643138138, Pegasus Books, ©2021, Hardcover, 320 pages, Photographs &  Illustrations, Appendix, End Notes & Index. $29.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Crosshairs on the Capital

Crosshairs on the Capital:

Jubal Early’s Raid on Washington, D.C.,

July 1864 - Reasons, Reactions, and Results

By James H. Bruns

In an era of battlefield one-upmanship, the raid on the Nation’s Capital in July 1864 was prompted by an earlier failed Union attempt to destroy Richmond and free the Union prisoners held there. Jubal Early’s mission was in part to let the North have a taste of its own medicine by attacking Washington and freeing the Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout in southern Maryland. He was also to fill the

South’s larder from unmolested Union fields, mills and barns. By 1864 such southern food raids had become annual wartime events. And he was to threaten and, if possible, capture Washington. This latter task was unrealistic in an age when the success of rifle fire was judged to be successful not by accuracy, but by the amount of lead that was shot into the air. Initially, the Union defenders of the city were larger former slaves, freemen, mechanic, shopkeepers and government clerks, as well as invalids. They might not have known much about riflery and accuracy, but they were capable of putting ample lead on the long until Regular Union regiments arrived. Jubal Early hesitated in attacking Washington, but he held the City at bay while his troops pillaged the countryside for the food Lee’s Army needed to survive.

This new account focuses on the reasons, reactions and results of Jubal Early’s raid of 1864. History has judged it to have been a serious threat to the capital, but James H. Bruns examines how the nature of the Confederate raid on Washington in 1864 has been greatly misinterpreted—Jubal Early’s maneuvers were in fact only the latest in a series of annual southern food raids. It also corrects some of the thinking about Early’s raid, including the reason behind his orders from General Lee to cross the Potomac and the thoughts behind the proposed raid on Point Lookout and the role of the Confederate Navy in that failed effort. It presents a new prospective in explaining Jubal Early’s raid on Washington by focusing on why things happened as they did in 1864. It identifies the cause-and-effect connections that are truly the stuff of history, forging some of the critical background links that oftentimes are ignored or overlooked in books dominated by battles and leaders.

ISBN 978-1636240114, Casemate, © 2021, Hardcover, 256 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Maps,End Notes & Index. $34.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Hold at All Hazards (A Novel)

Hold at All Hazards:

Bigelow's Battery at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863

By David H. Jones

Captain John Bigelow's efforts to sharpen up a slovenly light artillery battery make him unpopular with the men, but his efforts will bear fruit when the men are told to hold their position at Gettysburg no matter what.

_______________

By late January of 1863, the 9th Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery has been stationed within the Washington, D.C. defenses the entirety of its five-month existence. The soldiers are badly demoralized, inadequately trained and poorly disciplined. When the inept captain of the battery believes that he’s about to be fired, he hastily resigns, and the governor of Massachusetts promptly selects a twenty-three-year-old artillery officer with battlefield experience to take command.

Captain John Bigelow institutes strict discipline and rigorous training which causes the men, including Chief Bugler Charles Wellington Reed, to consider him to be a heartless tyrant. However, Captain Bigelow’s methods rapidly improve their capabilities and Reed reluctantly gains respect for the new captain. Nevertheless, subtle conflict between captain and bugler remains in a manner only constrained by military protocol.

In late June of 1863 the battery is collected by the Army of the Potomac as it passes the Washington defenses to thwart an invasion by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. After days of hard marching, Bigelow’s Battery arrives on the Gettysburg battlefield in the forenoon of July 2, 1863. Within hours they are immersed in violent combat during which the officers and men of the battery fight like veterans against the Confederates. Unbeknownst to Charlie, he will twice disobey a direct order from Captain Bigelow before the day is out.

When furious fighting reaches a crescendo, the inexperienced light artillery battery is ordered to hold its position at all hazards, meaning until it’s overrun. Without hesitation the batterymen stand to their guns and sacrifice their life’s blood to gain the time necessary for a second line of artillery to be formed behind them, thus helping to prevent a disastrous defeat for the Federal Army on Northern soil. Charlie saves his captain’s life and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

About the Author

David H. Jones is author of the award-winning novel Two Brothers: One North, One South. He is a former U.S. Navy officer and business executive, born in West Virginia and always engrossed in the study of American history.

ISBN 978-1636240602, Casemate, © 2021, Paperback, 272 pages. $22.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: The Horse at Gettysburg

The Horse at Gettysburg:

Prepared for the Day of Battle

By Chris Bagley

Horses are one of the many unsung heroes of the American Civil War. These majestic animals were impressed into service, trained, prepared for battle, and turned into expendable implements of war.

There is more to this story, however. When an army’s means and survival is predicated upon an animal whose instincts are to flee rather than fight, a bond of mutual trust and respect between handler and horse must be forged. Ultimately, the Battle of Gettysburg resulted in thousands of horses killed and wounded. Their story deserves telling, from a time not so far removed.

About the Author

Chris Bagley hails from Canton, Ohio, where he resides with his wife Becky. Chris has been a Registered Nurse for 31 years and currently works as a surgical nurse. He became a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park in 2016. He always had a love and fascination of horses from childhood which continues to this day.

ISBN 978-0999304969, Gettysburg Publishing, © 2021, Paperback, 224 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Maps, Appendix: Order of Battle, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $26.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Lincoln and Native Americans

Lincoln and Native Americans

By Michael S. Green

President Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution of Indigenous people in American history, following the 1862 uprising of hungry Dakota in Minnesota and suspiciously speedy trials. He also issued the largest commutation of executions in American history for the same act. But there is much more to the story of Lincoln’s interactions and involvement, personal and political, with Native Americans, as Michael S. Green shows. His evenhanded assessment explains how Lincoln thought about Native Americans, interacted with them, and was affected by them.

Although ignorant of Native customs, Lincoln revealed none of the hatred or single-minded opposition to Native culture that animated other leaders and some of his own political and military officials. Lincoln did far too little to ease the problems afflicting Indigenous people at the time, but he also expressed more sympathy for their situation than most other politicians of the day. Still, he was not what those who wanted legitimate improvements in the lives of Native Americans would have liked him to be.

At best, Lincoln’s record is mixed. He served in the Black Hawk War against tribes who were combating white encroachment. Later he supported policies that exacerbated the situation. Finally, he led the United States in a war that culminated in expanding white settlement. Although as president, Lincoln paid less attention to Native Americans than he did to African Americans and the Civil War, the Indigenous population received considerably more attention from him than previous historians have revealed.

In addition to focusing on Lincoln’s personal and familial experiences, such as the death of his paternal grandfather at the hands of Indians, Green enhances our understanding of federal policies toward Native Americans before and during the Civil War and how Lincoln’s decisions affected what came after the war. His patronage appointments shaped Indian affairs, and his plans for the West would also have vast consequences. Green weighs Lincoln’s impact on the lives of Native Americans and imagines what might have happened if Lincoln had lived past the war’s end. More than any many other historians, Green delves into Lincoln’s racial views about people of color who were not African American.

About the Author

Michael S. Green, an associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is the author or editor of three books on the Civil War, including Lincoln and the Election of 1860 (Southern Illinois University Press) and Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War, and several books on Nevada, as well as dozens of articles and essays. He is on the editorial advisory board of the University of Nevada Press and is the executive director of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

ISBN 978-0809338252, Southern Illinois University Press, © 2021, Hardcover, 176 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $24.63. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Matchless Organization, The Confederate Army Medical Department

Matchless Organization:
The Confederate Army Medical Department

By Guy R. Hasegawa

Despite the many obstacles it had to overcome—including a naval blockade, lack of a strong industrial base, and personnel unaccustomed to military life—the Richmond-based Confederate Army Medical Department developed into a robust organization that nimbly adapted to changing circumstances. In the first book to address the topic, Guy R. Hasegawa describes the organization and management of the Confederate army’s medical department. At its head was Surgeon General Samuel Preston Moore, a talented multitasker with the organizational know-how to put in place qualified medical personnel to care for sick and wounded Confederate soldiers.

Hasegawa investigates how political considerations, personalities, and, as the war progressed, the diminishing availability of human and material resources influenced decision-making in the medical department. Amazingly, the surgeon general’s office managed not only to provide care but also to offer educational opportunities to its personnel and collect medical and surgical data for future use, regardless of constant and growing difficulties.

During and after the war, the medical department of the Confederate army was consistently praised as being admirably organized and efficient. Although the department was unable to match its Union counterpart in manpower and supplies, Moore’s intelligent management enabled it to help maintain the fighting strength of the Confederate army.

About the Author

Guy R. Hasegawa, a retired pharmacist and editor, is the author of Villainous Compounds: Chemical Weapons and the American Civil War and Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs.

ISBN 978-0809338290, Southern Illinois University Press, © 2021, Paperback, 282 pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Appendixes, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $26.50. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Lincolnomics

Lincolnomics: How President Lincoln

Constructed the Great American Economy

by John F. Wasic

Lincolnomics puts The Great Emancipator in his other rightful place as The Great Builder of American infrastructure, revealing Lincoln’s untold legacy as the developer of an economic ladder to democracy through national transportation, public education, and market access.

The only biography of its kind, Lincolnomics freshly explores the foundational ideas and policies on infrastructure rooted in society and government by America’s sixteenth president.

Lincoln’s view of the right to fulfill one’s economic destiny was at the core of his governing philosophy―but he knew no one could climb that ladder without strong federal support. Some of his most enduring policies came to him before the Civil War, visions of a country linked by railroads running ocean to ocean, canals turning small towns into bustling cities, public works bridging farmers to market.

Author John F. Wasik tracks Lincoln from his time in the 1830s as a young Illinois state legislator pushing for internal improvements; through his work as a lawyer representing the Illinois Central Railroad in the 1840s; to his presidential fight for the Transcontinental Railroad; and his support of land-grant colleges that educated a nation. To Lincoln, infrastructure meant not only the roads, bridges, and canals he shepherded as a lawyer and a public servant, but also much more.

These brick-and-mortar developments were essential to how the nation could lift citizens above poverty and its isolating origins. Lincolnomics revives the disremembered history of how Lincoln paved the way for Eisenhower’s interstate highways and FDR’s social amenities. With an afterword addressing the failure of American infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how Lincoln’s policies provide a guide to the future, Lincolnomics makes the case for the man nicknamed “The Rail Splitter” as the Presidency's greatest builder.

About the Author

John F. Wasik is the author of nineteen books, including Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla. His columns, blogs, and articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Forbes, and Bloomberg News. In 2018, Wasik was named an Illinois Road Scholar for the Illinois Humanities Council. His speaking engagements on technology, history, investing, and innovation reach global audiences. He lives in Grayslake, IL.

ISBN 978-1635766936, Diversion Books, © 2021, Hardcover, 320 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, End Notes & Index. $31.99.  To purchase click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Civil War Alabama

Civil War Alabama

by Christopher Lyle McIlwain Sr.

Christopher McIlwain’s Civil War Alabama is a landmark book that sheds invigorating new light on the causes, the course, and the outcomes in Alabama of the nation’s greatest drama and trauma. Based on twenty years of exhaustive research that draws on a vast trove of primary sources such as letters, newspapers, and personal journals, Civil War Alabama presents compelling new explanations for how Alabama’s white citizens came to take up arms against the federal government.

 A fledgling state at only forty years old, Alabama approached the 1860s with expanding populations of both whites and black slaves. They were locked together in a powerful yet fragile economic engine that produced and concentrated titanic wealth in the hands of a white elite. Perceiving themselves trapped between a mass of disenfranchised black slaves and the industrializing and increasingly abolitionist North, white Alabamians were led into secession and war by a charismatic cohort who claimed the imprimatur of biblical scripture, romanticized traditions of chivalry, and the military mantle of the American Revolution.

And yet, Alabama’s white citizens were not a monolith of one mind. McIlwain dispels the received wisdom of a white citizenry united behind a cadre of patriarchs and patriots. Providing a fresh and insightful synthesis of military events, economic factors such as inflation and shortages, politics and elections, the pivotal role of the legal profession, and the influence of the press, McIlwain’s Civil War Alabama illuminates the fissiparous state of white, antebellum Alabamians divided by class, geography, financial interests, and political loyalties.

Vital and compelling, Civil War Alabama will take its place among the definitive books about Alabama’s doomed Confederate experiment and legacy. Although he rigorously dismantles idealized myths about the South’s “Lost Cause,” McIlwain restores for contemporary readers the fervent struggles between Alabamians over their response to the epic crisis of their times.

About the Author

Christopher Lyle McIlwain Sr. is an attorney in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who has spent the last twenty-five years researching nineteenth-century Alabama, focusing particularly on law, politics, and the Civil War. His article “United States District Judge Richard Busteed and the Alabama Klan Trials of 1872” appeared in the Alabama Review.

ISBN 978-0817318949, University Alabama Press, © 2016, Hardcover, 456 pages, Maps, Photographs & Illustrations, Endnotes, Bibliography & Index. $59.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: These Rugged Days, Alabama in the Civil War

These Rugged Days:

Alabama in the Civil War

by John S. Sledge

The Civil War has left indelible marks on Alabama’s land, culture, economy, and people. Despite its lasting influence, this wrenching story has been too long neglected by historians preoccupied by events elsewhere. In These Rugged Days: Alabama in the Civil War, John S. Sledge provides a long overdue and riveting narrative of Alabama’s wartime saga.

Focused on the conflict’s turning points within the state’s borders, this book charts residents’ experiences from secession’s heady early days to its tumultuous end, when 75,000 blue-coated soldiers were on the move statewide. Sledge details this eventful history using an impressive array of primary and secondary materials, including official records, diaries, newspapers, memoirs, correspondence, sketches, and photographs. He also highlights such colorful personalities as Nathan Bedford Forrest, the “Wizard of the Saddle”; John Pelham, the youthful Jacksonville artillerist who was shipped home in an iron casket with a glass faceplate; Gus Askew, a nine-year-old Barbour County slave who vividly recalled the day the Yankees marched in; and Augusta Jane Evans, the young novelist who was given a gold pen by a daring blockade runner.

Sledge offers a refreshing take on Alabama’s contributions to the Civil War that will intrigue anyone who is interested in learning more about the state’s war efforts. His narrative is a dramatic account that will be enjoyed by lay readers as well as students and scholars of Alabama and the Civil War. These Rugged Days is an enthralling tale of action, courage, pride, and tragedy, making clear the relevance of many of the Civil War’s decisive moments for the way Alabamians live today.

About the Author

John S. Sledge is a senior architectural historian for the Mobile Historic Development Commission and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He is the author of Cities of Silence: A Guide to Mobile’s Historic Cemeteries and The Mobile River. He and his wife, Lynn, live in Fairhope, Alabama.

ISBN 978-0817319601, University Alabama Press, © 2017, Hardcover, 296 pages, Maps, Photographs & Illustrations, Endnotes, Bibliography & Index. $34.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In the Review Queue: A War State All Over

A War State All Over:

Alabama Politics and the Confederate Cause

by Ben H. Severance

Alabama’s military forces were fierce and dedicated combatants for the Confederate cause.In his study of Alabama during the Civil War, Ben H. Severance argues that Alabama’s electoral and political attitudes were, in their own way, just as unified in their support for the cause of southern independence. To be sure, the civilian populace often expressed unease about the conflict, as did a good many of Alabama’s legislators, but the majority of government officials and military personnel displayed pronounced Confederate loyalty and a consistent willingness to accept a total war approach in pursuit of their new nation’s aims. As Severance puts it, Alabama was a “war state all over.”

In A War State All Over: Alabama Politics and the Confederate Cause, Severance examines the state’s political leadership at multiple levels of governance—congressional, gubernatorial, and legislative—and orients much of his analysis around the state elections of 1863. Coming at the war’s midpoint, these elections provide an invaluable gauge of popular support for Alabama’s role in the Civil War, particularly at a time when the military situation for Confederate forces was looking bleak. The results do not necessarily reflect a society that was unreservedly prowar, but they clearly establish a polity that was committed to an unconditional Confederate victory, in spite of the probable costs.

Severance’s innovative work focuses on the martial character of Alabama’s polity while simultaneously acknowledging the widespread angst of Alabama’s larger culture and society. In doing so, it puts a human face on the election returns by providing detailed character sketches of the principal candidates that illuminate both their outlook on the war and their role in shaping policy.

About The Author.

Ben. H. Severance is professor and hair of history at Auburn University at Montgomery.  He is author of Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War and Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and its Role in Reconstruction, 1867-1869.

ISBN 978-0817320591, University Alabama Press, © 2020, Hardcover, 264 pages, Endnotes, Bibliography & Index. $49.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Gettysburg National Military Park

Gettysburg National Military Park

by Jared Frederick

The picturesque Gettysburg Battlefield has long been memorialized as an iconic landscape of America s national identity. The tumultuous Civil War battle and Abraham Lincoln s subsequent address transformed the country in profound ways that continue to echo throughout the ages. In the aftermath of the struggle, Gettysburg National Military Park was embraced by citizens not only as a shrine of commemoration but also as a public space utilized for leisure, education, politics, and discovery. This compelling photographic history documents the park from the post World War II era onward, chronicling the dramatic evolutions the battlefield has undergone in the wake of modern tourism. Exploring the fascinating issues of historical memory, preservation, and popular culture, the book paints a vivid picture of a national park at work for the benefit of the people."

About The Author

Jared Frederick has a lifelong passion for American History. His books include "Images of Modern America: Gettysburg National Military Park" and "Dispatches of D-Day: A People's History of the Normandy Invasion." Prior to his career in academia, Frederick served as a park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. 

Jared has long been involved in the world of Public History, including historical interpretation and development at numerous sites. He has completed projects in conjunction with a multitude of non-profit, state, and national organizations. In addition, he has appeared on C-SPAN, PBS, the Pennsylvania Cable Network, National Park Service productions, and various online documentaries. In 2019, he acted as a guest host on Turner Classic Movies for the channel’s 25th anniversary.

Frederick currently serves as an Instructor of History at Penn State Altoona, where he specializes in various realms of American History and civic engagement. Jared is available to present a broad range of historical lectures and presentations. Visit www.jaredfrederick.com to learn more.

ISBN 978-1531698577, Arcadia Publishing, © 2016, Hardcover, 98 pages, Photographs. $28.99. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Slavery & the Underground Railroad in South Central Pennsylvania

Slavery & the Underground Railroad in South Central Pennsylvania

By Cooper H. Wingert

Much like the rest of the nation, South Central Pennsylvania struggled with slavery. The institution lingered locally for more than fifty years, although it was virtually extinct everywhere else within Pennsylvania.

Gradually, anti-slavery views prevailed. The Appalachian Mountains and the Susquehanna River provided natural cover for fleeing slaves, causing an influx of travel along the Underground Railroad. Locals like William Wright and James McAllister assisted these runaways while publicly advocating to abolish slavery. Historian Cooper Wingert reveals the struggles between slavery and abolition in South Central Pennsylvania.

About the Author

Cooper H. Wingert is the author of ten books and numerous articles on slavery and the American Civil War. He is the recipient of the 2012 Dr. James I. Robertson Jr. Literary Award for Confederate History, in recognition for his book The Confederate Approach on Harrisburg.

ISBN 978-1467119733, The History Press, © 2016, Hardcover, 162 pages, Maps, Photographs, Illustrations, Endnotes, Bibliography & Index. $28.99. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: She Came to Slay

She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman

by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

In the bestselling tradition of The Notorious RBG comes a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history—Harriet Tubman—a heroine whose fearlessness and activism still resonates today.

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee Erica Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography, illustrations, photos, and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Tubman as never before.

Not only did Tubman help liberate hundreds of slaves, she was the first woman to lead an armed expedition during the Civil War, worked as a spy for the Union Army, was a fierce suffragist, and was an advocate for the aged. She Came to Slay reveals the many complexities and varied accomplishments of one of our nation’s true heroes and offers an accessible and modern interpretation of Tubman’s life that is both informative and engaging.

Filled with rare outtakes of commentary, an expansive timeline of Tubman’s life, photos (both new and those in public domain), commissioned illustrations, and sections including “Harriet By the Numbers” (number of times she went back down south, approximately how many people she rescued, the bounty on her head) and “Harriet’s Homies” (those who supported her over the years), She Came to Slay is a stunning and powerful mix of pop culture and scholarship and proves that Harriet Tubman is well deserving of her permanent place in our nation’s history.

About the Author

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her first book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, was published by Yale University Press in 2008. Her second book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and a winner of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Award.

ISBN 978-1982139599, 37 Ink, © 2019, Hardcover, 176 pages, Maps, Photographs, Illustrations & Endnotes. $23.99. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: Stolen

Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery

and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home

by Richard Bell

A gripping and true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice, reminiscent of Twelve Years a Slave and Never Caught.

Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.

Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

Impeccably researched and breathlessly paced, Stolen tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America.

About the Author

Richard Bell teaches Early American history at the University of Maryland. He has received several teaching prizes and major research fellowships including the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. His first book, We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States, was published in 2012. He is also the author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home.

ISBN 978-1501169434, 37 Ink, © 2019, Hardcover, 336 pages, Maps, Photographs & Illustrations, Endnotes, Key Sources & Index. $27.00. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: The Lincoln Conspiracy

The Lincoln Conspiracy:

The Secret Plot to Kill

America's 16th President

—and Why It Failed

by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch

The bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy, which covers the secret plot against George Washington, now turn their attention to a little-known, but true story about a failed assassination attempt on President Lincoln

Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, D.C., for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn’t want an antislavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in Baltimore as Lincoln’s inauguration train passed through en route to the Capitol. The plot was investigated by famed detective Allan Pinkerton, who infiltrated the group with undercover agents, including one of the first female private detectives in America. Had the assassination succeeded, there would have been no Lincoln Presidency, and the course of the Civil War and American history would have forever been altered.

About the Authors

BRAD MELTZER is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Escape Artist, The Inner Circle, and ten other bestselling thrillers, as well as the Ordinary People Change the World series. He is also the host of the History Channel TV shows Brad Meltzer’s Decoded and Brad Meltzer’s Lost History, which he used to help find the missing 9/11 flag that the firefighters raised at Ground Zero.

JOSH MENSCH is a New York Times bestselling author and documentary television producer with a focus on American history and culture. He is coauthor with Brad Meltzer of The First Conspiracy: the Secret Plot to Kill George Washington. For television he has written, directed, and been a showrunner on nonfiction series for PBS, the History Channel, National Geographic, and many other networks. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and children.

ISBN 978-1250317476, Flatiron Books, © 2020, Hardcover, 448 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, Endnotes, Selected Bibliography & Index. $29.99. To purchase this book click HERE.

In The Review Queue: The Cornfield

The Cornfield:

Antietam's Bloody Turning Point

by David A. Welker

Antietam. For generations of Americans this word—the name of a bucolic stream in western Maryland—held the same sense of horror and carnage that the simple date 9/11 does for modern America. But Antietam eclipses even this modern tragedy as America's single bloodiest day, on which 22,000 men became casualties in a war to determine our nation’s future.

Antietam is forever burned into the American psyche, a battle bathed in blood that served no military purpose, brought no decisive victory. This much Americans know. What they didn't know is why this is so—until now. The Cornfield: Antietam's Bloody Turning Point tells for the first time the full story of the exciting struggle to control “the Cornfield,” the action on which the costly battle of Antietam turned, in a thorough yet readable narrative. It explains what happened in Antietam’s Cornfield and why. Because Federal and Confederate forces repeatedly traded control of the spot, the fight for the Cornfield is a story of human struggle against fearful odds, of men seeking to do their duty, of simply trying to survive. Many of the included firsthand accounts have never been revealed to modern readers and never have they been assembled in such a comprehensive, readable form.

At the same time, The Cornfield offers fresh views of the battle as a whole, arguing that it turned on events in the Cornfield because of two central facts — Union General George McClellan’s linear thinking demanded that the Cornfield must be taken and, because of this, the repeated failure by the generals McClellan charged with fulfilling this task created a self-reinforcing cycle of disaster that doomed the Union's prospects for success—at the cost of thousands of lives.

The Cornfield offers new perspectives that may be controversial—particularly to those who accept unchallenged the views of the battle's first historians and its generals, who too often sought to shape our understanding for their own purposes—but which are certain to change modern understanding of how the battle of Antietam was fought and its role in American history.

About the Author

David Welker is a professional historian and military analyst for the Federal Government. He holds a master's degree in International Affairs from American University and a bachelor's in History and Political Science from Westminster College.

ISBN 978-1612008325, Casemate, © 2020, Hardcover, 384 pages, Photographs & Illustrations, Maps, Appendices: Order of Battle, Union & Confederate Casualties at Antietam, Endnotes, Bibliography & Index. $34.95. To purchase this book click HERE.