“Barr’s engaging and revealing collection of letters from Lincoln country directly links the battlefield with the home front” (Randall M. Miller, editor of Lincoln & Leadership). More than 150 years ago, twenty-seven-year-old Irish immigrant Josiah Moore met nineteen-year-old Jennie Lindsay, a member of one of Peoria, Illinois’s most prominent families. The Civil War had just begun, Josiah was the captain of the 17th Illinois Infantry, and his war would be a long and bloody one. Their courtship and romance, which came to light in a rare and unpublished series of letters, form the basis of Gene Barr’s memorable book. Josiah and Jennie’s letters shed significant light on the important role played by a soldier’s sweetheart on the home front, and a warrior’s observations from the war front. In addition to this deeply moving and often riveting correspondence, Barr includes previously unpublished material on the 17th Illinois and the war’s Western Theater, including Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and the lesser known Meridian Campaign—actions that have historically received much less attention than similar battles in the Eastern Theater. The result is a rich, complete, and satisfying story of love, danger, politics, and warfare—one you won’t soon forget. “A delightful read on many levels: the stilted Victorian language in the letters quickly becomes easy to understand as the reader watches the relationship between Joshua and Jennie evolve into a full-fledged love affair—one that lasted a lifetime.” —Emerging Civil War “In this rare and remarkable collection of letters readers come to know two young lovers brought together and then separated by the exigencies of war.” —Terrence J. Winschel, author of Triumph & Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign

The Civil War is most often described as one in which brother fought against brother. But the most devastating war fought on American soil was also one in which women demonstrated heroic deeds, selfless acts, and courage beyond measure. Women mobilized soup kitchens and relief societies. Women cared for wounded soldiers. Women were effective spies. And it is estimated that 300 women fought on the battlefields, usually disguised as men. The most fascinating Civil War women include: Harriet Tubman, a former slave, who led hundreds of fellow slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad Four hundred women who were seized in Roswell, Georgia, deported to Indiana, and vanished without a trace Belle Boyd, the "Siren of the Shenandoah," who at the age of seventeen killed a Union soldier "Crazy" Elizabeth Van Lew, who deliberately fostered the impression that she was eccentric so that she could be an effective spy for the North "The poor fellow sprang from my hands and fell back quivering in the agonies of death. A bullet had passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through my sleeve and passing through his chest from shoulder to shoulder." ?Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross "We were all amused and disgusted at the sight of a thing that nothing but the debased and depraved Yankee nation could produce. [A woman] was dressed in the full uniform of a Federal surgeon. She was not good looking, and of course had tongue enough for a regiment of men." ?Captain Benedict J. Semmes, describing Mary Walker, M.D.

Popular images of women during the American Civil War include self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, and brave ladies maintaining hearth and home in the absence of their men. However, as DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook show in their remarkable new study, that conventional picture does not tell the entire story. Hundreds of women assumed male aliases, disguised themselves in men’s uniforms, and charged into battle as Union and Confederate soldiers—facing down not only the guns of the adversary but also the gender prejudices of society. They Fought Like Demons is the first book to fully explore and explain these women, their experiences as combatants, and the controversial issues surrounding their military service. Relying on more than a decade of research in primary sources, Blanton and Cook document over 240 women in uniform and find that their reasons for fighting mirrored those of men—-patriotism, honor, heritage, and a desire for excitement. Some enlisted to remain with husbands or brothers, while others had dressed as men before the war. Some so enjoyed being freed from traditional women’s roles that they continued their masquerade well after 1865. The authors describe how Yankee and Rebel women soldiers eluded detection, some for many years, and even merited promotion. Their comrades often did not discover the deception until the “young boy” in their company was wounded, killed, or gave birth. In addition to examining the details of everyday military life and the harsh challenges of -warfare for these women—which included injury, capture, and imprisonment—Blanton and Cook discuss the female warrior as an icon in nineteenth-century popular culture and why twentieth-century historians and society ignored women soldiers’ contributions. Shattering the negative assumptions long held about Civil War distaff soldiers, this sophisticated and dynamic work sheds much-needed light on an unusual and overlooked facet of the Civil War experience.

Winner of the PEN Oakland–Josephine Miles Award “A stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women.” —David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass “Readers expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers’ brows will not find them here...Explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines.” —Washington Post The idea that women are outside of war is a powerful myth, one that shaped the Civil War and still determines how we write about it today. Through three dramatic stories that span the war, Stephanie McCurry invites us to see America’s bloodiest conflict for what it was: not just a brothers’ war but a women’s war. When Union soldiers faced the unexpected threat of female partisans, saboteurs, and spies, long held assumptions about the innocence of enemy women were suddenly thrown into question. McCurry shows how the case of Clara Judd, imprisoned for treason, transformed the writing of Lieber’s Code, leading to lasting changes in the laws of war. Black women’s fight for freedom had no place in the Union military’s emancipation plans. Facing a massive problem of governance as former slaves fled to their ranks, officers reclassified black women as “soldiers’ wives”—placing new obstacles on their path to freedom. Finally, McCurry offers a new perspective on the epic human drama of Reconstruction through the story of one slaveholding woman, whose losses went well beyond the material to intimate matters of family, love, and belonging, mixing grief with rage and recasting white supremacy in new, still relevant terms. “As McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a ‘people’s war’ nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people.” —James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom “In this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war’s elemental impact.” —Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering

Vividly depicting life both on the battlefield and at the home front during the Civil War, "Love and Valor" is a priceless collection of letters exchanged between Captain Jacob Ritner and his wife Emeline. While Jacob recounts all the battles he fought in compelling detail, Emeline movingly records the lives of those left behind to raise families and manage farms in their husbands'absence. "Love and Valor" is also the story of a family of Iowa abolitionists who help to make this book a must read.

In the early morning of April 12, 1861, Captain George S. James ordered the bombardment of Fort Sumter, beginning a war that would last four years and claim many lives. This book brings together a collection of voices to help explain the commencement of Am.

From celebrated author Susan Higginbotham comes an incredible book about Abraham Lincoln's First Lady and, on the other side of the Civil War, her sister. A Union's First Lady As the Civil War cracks the country in two, Mary Lincoln stands beside her husband praying for a swift Northern victory. But as the body count rises, Mary can't help but fear each bloody gain. Because her beloved sister Emily is across party lines, fighting for the South, and Mary is at risk of losing both her country and her family in the tides of a brutal war. A Confederate Rebel's Wife Emily Todd Helm has married the love of her life. But when her husband's southern ties pull them into a war neither want to join, she must make a choice. Abandon the family she has built in the South or become a true rebel woman fighting against the sister she has always loved best. With a country's legacy at stake, how will two sisters shape history? A Civil War book about two women determined to do the right thing, The First Lady and the Rebel is sure to inspire fans of Marie Benedict and Stephanie Dray.

Covering the same ground as the major motion picture The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey, this is the extraordinary true story of the anti-slavery Southern farmer who brought together poor whites, army deserters and runaway slaves to fight the Confederacy in deepest Mississippi. "Moving and powerful." -- The Washington Post. In 1863, after surviving the devastating Battle of Corinth, Newton Knight, a poor farmer from Mississippi, deserted the Confederate Army and began a guerrilla battle against it. A pro-Union sympathizer in the deep South who refused to fight a rich man’s war for slavery and cotton, for two years he and other residents of Jones County engaged in an insurrection that would have repercussions far beyond the scope of the Civil War. In this dramatic account of an almost forgotten chapter of American history, Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer upend the traditional myth of the Confederacy as a heroic and unified Lost Cause, revealing the fractures within the South.

A remarkable account of the collapse of the Old South and the final years of a young boy’s privileged but afflicted life. LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to an affluent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. After a horrific leg injury left him an invalid, the educated, inquisitive, perceptive, and exceptionally witty twelve-year-old began keeping a diary in 1860—just as secession and the Civil War began tearing the country and his world apart. He continued to write even as his health deteriorated until both the war and his life ended in 1865. His unique manuscript of the demise of the Old South is published here for the first time in The War Outside My Window. LeRoy read books, devoured newspapers and magazines, listened to gossip, and discussed and debated important social and military issues with his parents and others. He wrote daily for five years, putting pen to paper with a vim and tongue-in-cheek vigor that impresses even now, more than 150 years later. His practical, philosophical, and occasionally Twain-like hilarious observations cover politics and the secession movement, the long and increasingly destructive Civil War, family pets, a wide variety of hobbies and interests, and what life was like at the center of a socially prominent wealthy family in the important Confederate manufacturing center of Macon. The young scribe often voiced concern about the family’s pair of plantations outside town, and recorded his interactions and relationships with servants as he pondered the fate of human bondage and his family’s declining fortunes. Unbeknownst to LeRoy, he was chronicling his own slow and painful descent toward death in tandem with the demise of the Southern Confederacy. He recorded—often in horrific detail—an increasingly painful and debilitating disease that robbed him of his childhood. The teenager’s declining health is a consistent thread coursing through his fascinating journals. “I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before,” he wrote on March 17, 1863. “I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was.” Morphine and a score of other “remedies” did little to ease his suffering. Abscesses developed; nagging coughs and pain consumed him. Alternating between bouts of euphoria and despondency, he often wrote, “Saw off my leg.” The War Outside My Window, edited and annotated by Janet Croon with helpful footnotes and a detailed family biographical chart, captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South. Winner, 2018, The Douglas Southall Freeman Award