The Mississippi battle between Grant’s and Pemberton’s forces that sealed Vicksburg’s fate. The Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The fighting on May 16, 1863, took place just twenty miles east of the river city, where the advance of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Federal army attacked Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s hastily gathered Confederates. The bloody fighting seesawed back and forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line, sending Pemberton’s army into headlong retreat. The victory on Mississippi’s wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him the command of the entire US armed forces. Timothy Smith, a historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive account of this long-overlooked battle. This book, winner of a nonfiction prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, is grounded upon years of primary research, rich in analysis and strategic and tactical action, and a compelling read.

During the Civil War, Sylvanus Cadwallader, a war correspondent employed first by the Chicago Times and later for the New York Herald, was attached to General Grant’s headquarters from 1862 to 1865. Three Years with Grant is his account of that period. As a portrait of Grant, the personality and the military leader, as a civilian’s picture of how the war was fought at the command level, and, above all, as a hitherto unknown primary source of Civil War history, as a hitherto unknown primary source of Civil War history, this is an important book. It is also an extremely entertaining one that makes an exciting reading. Entertaining because Cadwallader was a shrewd and stubborn man who was remarkably frank about his contemporaries and who was continually in trouble with all authority except Grant himself; exciting because he was a superb reporter in a unique position. Cadwallader had privileges and information accessible to no other journalist. Through his eyes—and, indirectly, Grant’s—the reader experiences the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns; the actions of the Army of the Potomac; Grant and Lincoln at City Point; Grant and Sherman hatching strategy; Grant and Lee at Appomattox. The manuscript of Three Years with Grant, never published, was acquired some years ago by the Illinois State Historical Library; probably not more than a half- dozen living persons have read it. Now it has been ably edited, with an introduction and extensive notes, by Benjamin P. Thomas, whose Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as the best one-volume life of the President yet written.

Phil Hill, famous racing driver of the 1950s and 1960s, describes his years driving Ferraris, the cars and people involved, and provides an insider's view of the races of the era.

“Crisp and concise . . . As the nation prepares to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the conflict in which brother fought brother, the current state of preservation that Bishop provides for each of these sites is timely and helps underscore the significance of Mississippi’s rich Civil War heritage.” —Terrence J. Winschel, historian, Vicksburg National Military Park, and author, Triumph & Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign Between the years of 1862 and 1864, Mississippi was the site of such conflicts as the Battle of Corinth and the Siege of Vicksburg. This history book covers the fourteen major skirmishes that took place within the Magnolia State during the Civil War and offers a detailed description of each location’s current state of preservation. The maintenance of these sites are necessary to memorialize the more than 80,000 forgotten men who fought in these battles. In chronological order, sixteen chapters discuss each skirmish in detail and include firsthand accounts from those embroiled in the fighting, which depict the conditions faced throughout the series of conflicts. Photographs taken during the Civil War along with images of the sites today offer a past and present perspective of the battles that occurred within Mississippi’s boundaries.

Composed almost entirely of Midwesterners and molded into a lean, skilled fighting machine by Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, the Army of the Tennessee marched directly into the heart of the Confederacy and won major victories at Shiloh and at the rebel strongholds of Vicksburg and Atlanta.Acclaimed historian Steven Woodworth has produced the first full consideration of this remarkable unit that has received less prestige than the famed Army of the Potomac but was responsible for the decisive victories that turned the tide of war toward the Union. The Army of the Tennessee also shaped the fortunes and futures of both Grant and Sherman, liberating them from civilian life and catapulting them onto the national stage as their triumphs grew. A thrilling account of how a cohesive fighting force is forged by the heat of battle and how a confidence born of repeated success could lead soldiers to expect “nothing but victory.”

The struggle for control of the Mississippi River was the longest and most complex campaign of the Civil War. It was marked by an extraordinary diversity of military and naval operations, including fleet engagements, cavalry raids, amphibious landings, pitched battles, and the two longest sieges in American history. Every existing type of naval vessel, from sailing ship to armored ram, played a role, and military engineers practiced their art on a scale never before witnessed in modern warfare. Union commanders such as Grant, Sherman, Farragut, and Porter demonstrated the skills that would take them to the highest levels of command. When the immense contest finally reached its climax at Vicksburg and Port Hudson in the summer of 1863, the Confederacy suffered a blow from which it never recovered. Here was the true turning point of the Civil War. ø This fast-paced, gripping narrative of the Civil War struggle for the Mississippi River is the first comprehensive single-volume account to appear in over a century. Vicksburg Is the Key: The Struggle for the Mississippi River tells the story of the series of campaigns the Union conducted on land and water to conquer Vicksburg and of the many efforts by the Confederates to break the siege of the fortress. William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel present the unfolding drama of the campaign in a clear and readable style, correct historic myths along the way, and examine the profound strategic effects of the eventual Union victory.

William Taylor Stott was a native Hoosier and an 1861 graduate of Franklin College, who later became the president who took the college from virtual bankruptcy in 1872 to its place as a leading liberal arts institution in Indiana. The story of Franklin College is the story of W. T. Stott, yet his influence was not confined to the school’s parameters. Stott was an inspirational and intellectual force in the Indiana Baptist community, and a foremost champion of small denominational colleges and of higher education in general. He also fought in the Eighteenth Indiana Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, rising from private to captain by 1863. Stott’s diary reveals a soldier who was also a scholar.

In his study of the Vicksburg campaign, the author begins on March 29, 1863, when Ulysses S. Grant made his fateful decision to find an undefended landing spot on the Mississipi shore somewhere to the south of the city. In supporting the idea that the campaign grew out of a maze of interacting political, social, economic, geographic, military, and emotional considerations, he maintains that geography does not define who wins or loses, but only influences the ways in which campaigns and battles are waged. He illuminates the factors which participants weighed in making their decisions, thus providing insight on the decision-making process itself. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR