This book describes nine transplanted Poles who participated in the Civil War. They span three generations and are connected by culture, nationality and adherence to their principles and ideals. The common thread that runs through their lives—the Polish White Eagle—is that they came from a country that had basically disintegrated at the end of the previous century, yet they carried the concepts of freedom they inherited from their forefathers to the New World to which they immigrated. Once in America the pre-war political feuds, ferocious ensuing battles, captures, prison camp escapes and privations of war—often in the words of the soldiers themselves—are fully described. More highly trained in warfare than their American brethren—and certainly more inured to struggles for nationhood— the Poles made a more significant contribution to Civil war combat than is usually described. The first group had fought in the 1830 war for freedom from the Russian Empire. The European revolutionary struggles of the 1840’s molded the next generation. The two of the youngest generation came of age just as the Civil War began, entered military service as enlisted men and finished as officers. Of the group, four sided with the North and four with the South, and the other began in the Confederate cavalry and finished fighting for the Union side. All but one came from aristocratic backgrounds. In a war commonly categorized as a “brother against brother,” a struggle between two American regions, history has not devoted a great deal of attention to the participation of Poles, and foreigners in general. These men fought with a belief in European democratic liberalism. Whether for the North to keep a Union together or to form a new nation from the Southern states, they held to their ideals, and in America’s own greatest conflict continued to fight for their beliefs.

“I thought my men were invincible,” admitted Robert E. Lee.A string of battlefield victories through 1862 had culminated in the spring of 1863 with Lee’s greatest victory yet: the battle of Chancellorsville. Propelled by the momentum of that supreme moment, confident in the abilities of his men, Lee decided to once more take the fight to the Yankees and launched this army on another invasion of the North.An appointment with destiny awaited in the little Pennsylvania college town of Gettysburg.Historian Dan Welch follows in the footsteps of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac as the two foes cat-and-mouse their way northward, ultimately clashing in the costliest battle in North American history.Based on the Gettysburg Civil War Trails, and packed with dozens of lesser-known sites related to the Gettysburg Campaign, The Last Road North: A Guide to the Gettysburg Campaign offers the ultimate Civil War road trip.

In the first years of the Civil War, Southern arms won spectacular victories on the battlefield; however, cooler heads in the Confederacy recognized the demographic and industrial weight pitted against them, and counted on British intervention to even those scales in order to deny the United States victory.Bluff, Bluster Lies and Spies is a wild ride through the mismanaged State Department of William Henry Seward in Washington, DC, to the more skillful work of Lords Palmerston, Russell and Lyons in the British Foreign Office. Fearful that Great Britain would recognize the Confederacy and provide the help that might have defeated the Union, the Lincoln administration was careful not to upset the greatest naval power on earth. At the same time, however, Great Britain needed to retain influence on American foreign policy, because her very safety as an empire depended upon it. In face of the growth of the Union navy—particularly its new ironclad ships—she turned out to be a paper tiger who relied on bluff and bluster to preserve the illusion of international strength. Britain had its own continental rivals with whom to vie, and the question of whether a truncated United States or a reunited stronger one was most advantageous was a vital question. Ultimately Prime Minister Palmerston decided that Great Britain would be no match for a Union armada that could have seized British possessions throughout the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, and he frustrated any ambitions to break Lincoln’s blockade of the Confederacy with Britannia.In addition to the naval arms race between Britain and France, Europe was covered with the spies, arms dealers, detectives and publicists who struggled to buy guns and to influence European opinion about the validity of either the Union or Confederate cause. This book describes in full how the Civil War in the New World was ultimately left to Southern battlefield prowess alone to determine, as the powers of the Old World declined to overtly intervene in the American question.

Soldiers called it one of the “waste places of nature” and “a region of gloom”—the Wilderness of Virginia, seventy square miles of dense, secondgrowth forest known as “the dark, close wood.”“A more unpromising theatre of war was never seen,” said another.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 campaign with a vow to never turn back. Robert E. Lee, commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, moved into the Wilderness to block Grant’s advance. Immovable object intercepted irresistible force—and the Wilderness burst into flame.With the forest itself burning around them, men died by the thousands. The armies bloodied each other without mercy and, at times, without any semblance of order. The brush grew so dense, and the smoke hung so thick, men could not see who stood next to them—or in front of them. “This, viewed as a battleground, was simply infernal,” a Union soldier later said.It was, said another, “hell itself.”Driven by desperation, duty, confusion, and fire, soldiers on both sides marveled that anyone might make it out alive.For more than a decade, Chris Mackowski has guided visitors across the battlefields of the Overland Campaign. Now in Hell Itself he invites readers of the Emerging Civil War Series to join him in the Wilderness—one of the most storied battlefields of the entire Civil War.

This ground-breaking series is a comprehensive history that traces the “Presidential line” of the Washingtons. Volume one begins with the immigrant John Washington who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va. , in 1657, married Anne Pope, and was the great-grandfather of President George Washington. It continues the record of their descendants for a total of seven generations. Volume two is a collection of notable descendants of the next eight generations of John and Anne Washington’s descendants, including Gen. George S. Patton, author Shelby Foote, and actor Lee Marvin. Future volumes trace generations eight through fifteen, making a total of more than 63,000 descendants.Although structured in a genealogical format for the sake of clarity, this is no barebones genealogy but a true family history with more than 1,200 detailed biographical narratives. These, in turn, strive to convey the greatness of the family that produced not only The Father of His Country but many others, great and humble, who struggled to build that country. The Washingtons includes a special volume on the time-honored John Wright line, which in recent years has been challenged largely on the basis of DNA evidence, and another on the royal descents of the presidential line. A cumulative index completes the series.

This ground-breaking series is a comprehensive history that traces the “Presidential line” of the Washingtons. Volume one begins with the immigrant John Washington who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va. , in 1657, married Anne Pope, and was the great-grandfather of President George Washington. It continues the record of their descendants for a total of seven generations. Volume two is a collection of notable descendants of the next eight generations of John and Anne Washington’s descendants, including Gen. George S. Patton, author Shelby Foote, and actor Lee Marvin. Future volumes trace generations eight through fifteen, making a total of more than 63,000 descendants.Although structured in a genealogical format for the sake of clarity, this is no barebones genealogy but a true family history with more than 1,200 detailed biographical narratives. These, in turn, strive to convey the greatness of the family that produced not only The Father of His Country but many others, great and humble, who struggled to build that country. The Washingtons includes a special volume on the time-honored John Wright line, which in recent years has been challenged largely on the basis of DNA evidence, and another on the royal descents of the presidential line. A cumulative index completes the series.

Artillery played an important and perhaps decisive role in the July 1863 battle of Gettysburg. Although many hundreds of books have been published on the battle, very few have focused more than a few paragraphs or a sprinkling of entries on the “long arm” and its role in the battle. This gap is finally filled by George Newton’s Silent Sentinels: A Reference Guide to the Artillery of Gettysburg. Now in paperback, Newton’s well-written and illustrated study was designed to be of use to both the casual battlefield visitor and the serious Civil War scholar. The former will use Silent Sentinels to learn more about the campaign in general, the role of artillery in Civil War battles, and how it was used on the battlefield at Gettysburg. They will also use it to learn how to identify different types of artillery, and tour a wide variety of artillery-related sites from Oak Hill in the north to a solitary gun well south of the Peach Orchard.More experienced Civil War students will find Silent Sentinels' extensive primary sources, diagrams, appendices of numbers and losses, and informative discussion of artillery organization and tactics an indispensable reference resource.Silent Sentinels opens with a general overview of the campaign and a wide-ranging discussion of 19th century artillery, the gun types used at Gettysburg, the equipment needed to operate the guns, how they were organized in each army, and the tactics employed by both Union and Confederate artillerymen. The chapter-long and wide-ranging tour included in this book guides readers to a variety of fascinating sites with enough detail to interest even the most jaded Gettysburg historian.This outstanding and useful historical guide includes detailed endnotes, a bibliography, and an index. Readers can peruse and enjoy this versatile study from the comfort of an easy chair or while walking the magnificent Pennsylvania field.

The months after Gettysburg had hardly been quiet—filled with skirmishes, cavalry clashes, and plenty of marching. Nonetheless, Union commander Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade had yet to come to serious blows with his Confederate counterpart,

This is the first biography devoted to the life of a remarkable young man who, in the words of Civil War historian Ezra Warner, “embarked upon a combat career which has few parallels in the annals of the army for gallantry, wounds sustained, and the obscurity into which he had lapsed a generation before his death.” But the story of General Martin Hardin provides more than a combat record—in fact comprises a walking tour through 1800s America, with its most costly war only a centerpiece. From his childhood in Illinois, where a slave girl implanted in him a fear of ghosts, to his attendance at West Point, along with other future luminaries, to his service on the frontier (where he took particular note of the bearing of the Cheyenne), Hardin’s life reveals the progress of a century. Abraham Lincoln was a close friend and political ally of Martin’s father, who died a hero in the Mexican War. The family were also relatives of Mary Todd. Made Brigadier General at age 27, Hardin fought with distinction at Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, Gettysburg, Grant’s Overland Campaign, and the July 1864 Rebel raid on Washington. He was wounded four times, nearly died on two occasions, and lost an arm during the war. On one occasion he was ambushed on a road by Mosby’s men, one of whom may have been Lincoln conspirator Lewis Paine. Hardin himself took part in the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination. In these pages we also learn the prominent role of General Hardin’s mother, who acted as her son’s lobbyist in the heady social world of wartime Washington. Over four years, she skillfully played upon her friendship with the President and the First Lady to advance her son‘s career. Although, as we see in these pages, his gallantry and leadership in combat sufficed enough to earn him renown, and in this book the under-sung exploits of a true 19th-century hero are finally revealed.

The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War . .

The nearly ten-month struggle for Petersburg, Virginia, is well known to students of the Civil War. Surprisingly few readers, however, are aware that Petersburg’s citizens felt war’s hard hand nearly a week before the armies of Grant and Lee arrived on their doorstep in the middle of June 1864. Distinguished historian William Glenn Robertson rectifies this oversight with the publication of The First Battle for Petersburg in a special revised Sesquicentennial edition. During his ill-fated Bermuda Hundred Campaign, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler in late May took note of the “Cockade City’s” position astride Richmond’s railroad lifeline and its minuscule garrison. When two attempts to seize the city and destroy the bridges over the Appomattox River failed, Butler mounted an expedition to Petersburg on June 9. Led by Maj. Gen. Quincy Gillmore and Brig. Gen. August Kautz, the Federal force of 3,300 infantry and 1,300 cavalry appeared large enough to overwhelm Brig. Gen. Henry Wise’s paltry 1,200 Confederate defenders, one-quarter of which were reserves that included several companies of elderly men and teenagers. The attack on the critical logistical center, and how the Confederates managed to hold the city, is the subject of Robertson’s ground-breaking study. Ironically, Butler’s effort resulted in Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard’s decision to slightly enlarge Petersburg’s garrison—troops that may have provided the razor-thin margin of difference when the head of the Army of the Potomac appeared in strength six days later.The First Battle for Petersburg describes the strategy, tactics, and generalship of the Battle of June 9 in full detail, as well as the impact on the city’s citizens, both in and out of the ranks. Robertson’s study is grounded in extensive primary sources supported by original maps and photos and illustrations. It remains the most comprehensive analysis of the June 9 engagement of Petersburg’s “old men and young boys.”Petersburg itself has never forgotten the sacrifices of its citizens on that summer day 150 years ago, and continues to honor their service with an annual commemoration. Once you read Dr. Robertson’s The First Battle for Petersburg: The Attack and Defense of the Cockade City, June 9, 1864, you will understand why.

Thousands of books and articles have been written about the Battle of Gettysburg. Almost every topic has been thoroughly scrutinized except one: Paul Philippoteaux’s massive cyclorama painting The Battle of Gettysburg, which depicts Pickett’s Charge, the final attack at Gettysburg. The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas is the first comprehensive study of this art masterpiece and historic artifact. This in-depth study of the history of the cyclorama discusses every aspect of this treasure, which was first displayed in 1884 and underwent a massive restoration in 2008. Coverage includes not only how it was created and what it depicts, but the changes it has undergone and where and how it was moved. Authors Chris Brenneman and Sue Boardman also discuss in fascinating detail how the painting was interpreted by Civil War veterans in the late 19th Century.With the aid of award-winning photographer Bill Dowling, the authors utilized modern photography to compare the painting with historic and modern pictures of the landscape. Dowling’s remarkable close-up digital photography allows readers to focus on distant details that usually pass unseen. Every officer, unit, terrain feature, farm, and more pictured in the painting is discussed in detail. Even more remarkable, the authors reveal an important new discovery made during the research for this book: in order to address suggestions from the viewers, the cyclorama was significantly modified five years after it was created to add more soldiers, additional flags, and even General George Meade, the commander of the Union Army!With hundreds of rare historic photographs and beautiful modern pictures of a truly great work of art, The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas is a must-have for anyone interested in the Battle of Gettysburg or is simply a lover of exquisite art.

As intelligence experts have long asserted, “Information in regard to the enemy is the indispensable basis of all military plans.” Despite the thousands of books and articles written about Gettysburg, Tom Ryan’s groundbreaking Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee’s Invasion of the North, June - July 1863 is the first to offer a unique and incisive comparative study of intelligence operations during what many consider the war’s decisive campaign.Based upon years of indefatigable research, the author evaluates how Gen. Robert E. Lee used intelligence resources, including cavalry, civilians, newspapers, and spies to gather information about Union activities during his invasion of the North in June and July 1863, and how this information guided Lee’s decision-making. Simultaneously, Ryan explores the effectiveness of the Union Army of the Potomac’s intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Both Maj. Gens. Joe Hooker and George G. Meade relied upon cavalry, the Signal Corps, and an intelligence staff known as the Bureau of Military Information that employed innovative concepts to gather, collate, and report vital information from a variety of sources.The result is an eye-opening, day-by-day analysis of how and why the respective army commanders implemented their strategy and tactics, with an evaluation of their respective performance as they engaged in a battle of wits to learn the enemy’s location, strength, and intentions.Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign is grounded upon a broad foundation of archival research and a firm understanding of the theater of operations that specialists will especially value. Everyone will appreciate reading about a familiar historic event from a perspective that is both new and enjoyable. One thing is certain: no one will close this book and look at the Gettysburg Campaign in the same way again.

Do not bring on a general engagement, Confederate General Robert E. Lee warned his commanders. The Army of Northern Virginia, slicing its way through south-central Pennsylvania, was too spread out, too vulnerable, for a full-scale engagement with its old nemesis, the Army of the Potomac. Too much was riding on this latest Confederate invasion of the North. Too much was at stake.As Confederate forces groped their way through the mountain passes, a chance encounter with Federal cavalry on the outskirts of a small Pennsylvania crossroads town triggered a series of events that quickly escalated beyond Lee’s—or anyone’s—control. Waves of soldiers materialized on both sides in a constantly shifting jigsaw of combat. “You will have to fight like the devil . . .” one Union cavalryman predicted.The costliest battle in the history of the North American continent had begun.July 1, 1863 remains the most overlooked phase of the battle of Gettysburg, yet it set the stage for all the fateful events that followed.Bringing decades of familiarity to the discussion, historians Chris Mackowski and Daniel T. Davis, in their always-engaging style, recount the action of that first day of battle and explore the profound implications in Fight Like the Devil.

An Alphabetical Listing of the Officers and Batteries of the Confederacy, 1861–1865 is a remarkable, immensely useful, and exceedingly rare book containing the names of the officers and every Confederate artillery unit. It is so rare that most scholars in the field don’t even know of its existence.It was originally published as simply Confederate Artillery Organizations by the U. S. War Department in 1898, one of Marcus J. Wright’s compilation aids to help assemble and organize the massive publication that would appear as the 128-volume The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880-1901), known to researchers and students alike as simply Official Records.Editor Ray Sibley spent more than a decade researching the thousands of entries, correcting mistakes, and adding many artillery units and additional officers unknown to the original compilers more than a century ago. Sibley utilized archival records, manuscripts, letters, diaries, and other sources to verify the original work, correct mistakes, and add further useful information in the form of hundreds of valuable footnotes.This new updated and easy-to-use reference work sets forth the linage of the Confederate artillery. It lists, in alphabetical order, individual batteries to artillery regiments, the names and alternate names for the batteries and the names of the men who led them. Also included are the dates of acceptance into Confederate service for each unit. Most companies have an annotation that includes an alternate name (if there was one), and the date if a unit disbanded or was merged into another organization. The annotations for officers include date of appointment, date of promotion to a higher grade (if any), date of transfers (if any), date dropped from rolls (if any), and date relieved of command (if any).

The Battle of Monroe's Crossroads, March 10, 1865, was one of most important but least known engagements of William T. Sherman's Carolinas Campaign. Now in paperback, here is the only book-length account of this combat. As Sherman's infantry crossed into North Carolina, Maj. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick's veteran Federal cavalry division fanned out in front, screening the advance. When Kilpatrick learned that Confederate cavalry under Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton was hot on his trail, he decided to set a trap for the Southern horsemen near a place called Monroe's Crossroads. Hampton, however, learned of the plan and decided to do something Kilpatrick was not expecting: attack.On March 10, Southern troopers under Hampton and Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler launched a savage surprise attack on Kilpatrick's sleeping camp. After three hours of some of the toughest cavalry fighting of the entire Civil War, Hampton broke off and withdrew. His attack, however, stopped Kilpatrick's advance and bought another precious day for Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee to evacuate his command from Fayetteville. This, in turn, permitted Hardee to join the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and set the stage for the climactic Battle of Bentonville nine days later.Noted Civil War author Eric J. Wittenberg has written the first detailed tactical narrative of this important but long-forgotten battle, and places it in its proper context within the entire Carolinas Campaign. His study features 28 original maps and dozens of illustrations.Finally, an author of wide experience and renown has brought to vivid life this overlooked portion of the Carolinas Campaign.