A fully illustrated account of the Vicksburg Campaign, including modern color photography and covering the river war, inland battles, seige operations, and more.By the end of March 1863, Major General Ulysses S. Grant was at a crossroads in his military career. His bold attempts in the late fall 1862 and winter of 1862/63 had all come up fall short of his objective: get his army on high ground north and east of Vicksburg and capture the last major obstacle on the M...

A fully illustrated account of the Vicksburg Campaign, including modern color photography and covering the river war, inland battles, seige operations, and more.The 14-month campaign to regain the control of Mississippi River by capturing Vicksburg, Mississippi, stands as the prime example of how the Civil War would be fought and won. The Federal government’s policy of blockading the southern ports and controlling the inland waterways would only be successful with ...

“The man to whom the country is most indebted for the great measure of independence is Mr. John Adams. . . . I call him the Atlas of American independence.”So attested one of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress, moved to support independence in July 1776 after months of angst, indecision, dithering, and fear. Thomas Jefferson called Adams “our colossus on the floor,” arguing with power, passion, and persuasive force of reason why America needed to take the extraordinar...

A Civil War historian recounts the first battle between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—a bloody and horrifying conflict in the Wilderness of Virginia.Known simply as the Wilderness, soldiers called the seventy square miles of dense Virginian forest one of the "waste places of nature" and "a region of gloom." Yet here, in the spring of 1864, the Civil War escalated to a new level of horror.Ulysses S. Grant, commanding all Federal armies, opened the Overlan...

"A comprehensive, eminently readable, lavishly illustrated, and historically accurate account" of this important yet overlooked Civil War battle ( Civil War News).Jackson, Mississippi, was the third Confederate state capital to fall to Union forces. When Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captured the important rail junction in May 1863, however, he did so almost as an afterthought. Drawing on dozens of primary sources, contextualized by the latest scholarship on G...

The Civil War historian and author of A Season of Slaughter continues his engaging account of the Overland Campaign in this vivid chronicle.By May of 1864, Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant had resolved to destroy his Confederate adversaries through attrition if by no other means. Meanwhile, his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, looked for an opportunity to regain the offensive initiative. "We must strike them a blow," he told his lieutenants....

Fallen Leaders: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War recounts the fall of some of the most famous, infamous, and underappreciated commanders from both the North and South. The Civil War took as many as 720,000 lives and maimed hundreds of thousands more. The fallen included outstanding leaders on both sides, from a U.S. president all the way down the ranks to beloved regimental commanders. Abraham Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, and John Reynolds re...

As the 1864 Overland Campaign shifted from the Wilderness toward Spotsylvania Court House, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee successfully bottlenecked the Federal army just outside the village. Undeterred, Union commander Ulysses S. Grant sent part of his forces on a wide flanking maneuver to attack Confederates from the east. Lee scrambled to block them.Thus the Civil War came to the property now known as Stevenson Ridge.Traces of the Bloody Struggle: The Civil War at St...

The stakes for George Gordon Meade could not have been higher.After his stunning victory at Gettysburg in July of 1863, the Union commander spent the following months trying to bring the Army of Northern Virginia to battle once more and finish the job. The Confederate army, robbed of much of its offensive strength, nevertheless parried Meade’s moves time after time. Although the armies remained in constant contact during those long months of cavalry clashes, quick maneuvers, and su...

The first book-length study of two overlooked engagements that helped turned the tide of a pivotal Civil War battle.By May of 1863, the stone wall at the base of Marye's Heights above Fredericksburg, Virginia, loomed large over the Army of the Potomac, haunting its men with memories of slaughter from their crushing defeat there the previous December. They would assault it again with a very different result the following spring. This time the Union troops wrested th...

In the fall of 1862, after a leadership shake-up initiated by Lincoln, Gen. Ambrose Burnside assumed command of the Army of the Potomac and developed an aggressive plan to attack the Confederate capital of Richmond. However, in order to reach Richmond, Burnside had to march through Fredericksburg, where Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was well entrenched. After crossing the Rappahannock River under enemy fire, Burnside and his troops engaged Lee’s army within the city, then ...

Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have worked for years to compile this remarkable story of one of the war's greatest battles. escribes the series of controversial events that define this crucial battle, including General Robert E. Lee's radical decision to divide his small army--a violation of basic military rules--sending Stonewall Jackson on his famous march around the Union army flank. Jackson's death--accidentally shot by one of his own soldiers--is one of the many fasci...