Winner of the 2025 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing AwardsLate in 1862, amid the horrors of the U.S. Civil War, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, with President Lincoln’s approval, authorized the recruitment of Black soldiers for the Union cause. In January of 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was born. On February 7, 1863, Massachusetts governor John Andrew commissioned Boston-bred John W. M. Appleton the first of the white officers in ...

Dee Brown’s history of the incredible Civil War raid that led to the Siege of VicksburgFor two weeks in the spring of 1862, Colonel Benjamin Grierson and 1,700 Union cavalry troopers conducted a raid from Tennessee to Louisiana. It was intended to divert Confederate attention from Ulysses S. Grant’s army crossing the Mississippi River, a maneuver that would set the stage for the Siege of Vicksburg. Led by a former music teacher whose role in the Union cavalry was b...

**Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award, the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize, and the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award“A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive Civil War campaign—the Siege of Vicksburg in Vicksburg, Mississippi—which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses...

This account of McClellan's 1862 campaign is "a wonderful book" (Ken Burns) and "military history at its best" ( The New York Times Book Review).From "the finest and most provocative Civil War historian writing today," To the Gates of Richmond is the story of the one of the conflict's bloodiest campaigns ( Chicago Tribune). Of the 250,000 men who fought in it, only a fraction had ever been in battle before—and one in four was killed, woun...

A main selection in History Book-of-the-Month Club and alternate selection in Military Book-of-the-Month Club. In the spring of 1862, many Americans still believed that the Civil War, "would be over by Christmas." The previous summer in Virginia, Bull Run, with nearly 5,000 casualties, had been shocking, but suddenly came word from a far away place in the wildernesses of Southwest Tennessee of an appalling battle costing 23,000 casualties, most of them during a single day. It was more than...

All for the Union is the eloquent and moving diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, featured throughout Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. Rhodes enlisted into the Union Army as a private in 1861 and left it four years later as a twenty-three-year-old colonel after fighting hard and honorably in battles from Bull Run to Appomattox. Anyone who heard these diaries excerpted in The Civil War will recognize his accounts of those campaigns, which remain outstanding for t...

No single group of men at West Point--or possibly any academy--has been so indelibly written into history as the class of 1846. The names are legendary: Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, George B. McClellan, Ambrose Powell Hill, Darius Nash Couch, George Edward Pickett, Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox, and George Stoneman. The class fought in three wars, produced twenty generals, and left the nation a lasting legacy of bravery, brilliance, and bloodshed.This fascinating, remarkably intimate chro...

The revised and updated groundbreaking study of the most extensive military operation of the Civil War—from the author of Bloody Roads South.The Petersburg campaign began on June 9, 1864, and ended on April 3, 1865, when Federal troops at last entered the city. It was the longest and most costly siege ever to take place on North American soil, yet it has been overshadowed by other actions that occurred at the same time period, most notably Sherman's famous ...

An in-depth look at a Confederate general and the first blood spilled at Gettysburg, with maps, photos, and a guide to historic sites.This book examines the key role played by Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell's Second Corps during the final days in June. It is the first in-depth study of these crucial summer days that not only shaped the course of the Gettysburg Campaign but altered the course of our nation's history.In two powerful columns, Ewell's Corps swept towar...

A comprehensive, deeply researched history of the pivotal 1863 American Civil War battle fought in northern Virginia.June 1863. The Gettysburg Campaign is underway. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia pushes west into the Shenandoah Valley and then north toward the Potomac River. Only one significant force stands in its way: Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy's Union division of the Eighth Army Corps in the vicinity of Winchester and Berryville, Virginia. What happens...

"An exhaustive compilation of first-hand accounts of the Gettysburg battlefield in the days, weeks, and months following the fight . . . heartbreaking." — Austin Civil War Round TableGettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) was the largest battle fought on the American continent. Remarkably few who study it contemplate what came after the armies marched away. Who would care for the tens of thousands of wounded? What happened to the thousands of dead men, horses, and ton...

The story of the brave Vermont brigade that helped win the Civil War.On the Fourth of July, 1863, reporting on the aftermath of the Civil War’s most crucial battle, the New York Times wrote: “A Vermont brigade held the key position at Gettysburg and did more than any other body of men to gain the triumph which decided the fate of the Union.” The citizen soldiers led by General George J. Stannard helped stabilize the line, and then shattered the right flank...