Though located in the heart of Unionist New England, Harvard produced 357 alumni who fought for the South during the Civil War--men not just from the South but from the North as well. This encyclopedic work gathers their stories together for the first time, providing unprecedented biographical coverage of the Crimson Confederates. Included are alumni of Harvard College, Law School, Medical School, and Lawrence Scientific School. The emphasis of the entries is on the alumnus's military career, whether as an infantry private or as a signal scout, as a surgeon or as a teacher in the Confederate Naval Academy, as an aide-de-camp or as an artillery captain. The range of participation took these men into all the major battles from the Eastern Theater under Robert E. Lee to the Trans-Mississippi under Richard Taylor and Sterling Price. Their careers spanned firing a gun at Fort Sumter and the earliest battles in Virginia to the closing shots at Bentonville and Mobile. Harvard's general officers included two major generals-- W. H. F. "Rooney" Lee (one of Robert E. Lee's sons) and John Sappington Marmaduke--as well as thirteen brigadiers, among them James Rogers Cooke, Stephen Elliott, States Rights Gist, John Echols, Ben Hardin Helm, Albert Gallatin Jenkins, Bradley Tyler Johnson, and William Booth Taliaferro. Several engineers and scientists from Lawrence Scientific School constructed major fortifications at Vicksburg and in Charleston Harbor, while others worked in the Nitre and Mining Bureau. An appendix of civilian Harvard alumni who served the Confederacy as congressmen, diplomats, jurists, editors, and in other ways is also included. This comprehensive, remarkably detailed reference work will be valuable for researchers and browsers alike. Helen P. Trimpi has taught at Stanford, College of Notre Dame (Belmont, California), University of Alberta, and Michigan State University. She is the author of Melville's Confidence Men and American Politics in the 1850s, numerous essays on Melville and modern poetry, and five volumes of poetry. Trimpi is a member of the Company of Military Historians.

General James Longstreet fought in nearly every campaign of the Civil War, from Manassas (the first battle of Bull Run) to Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, and was present at the surrender at Appomattox. Yet, he was largely held to blame for the Confederacy's defeat at Gettysburg. General James Longstreet sheds new light on the controversial commander and the man Robert E. Lee called “my old war horse.”

Few visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield take note of the peculiar grassy rise in the fields southeast of the town between Seminary and Cemetery ridges. It was there that the Bliss home and barn once stood, between the lines in a no-man's-land during the largest battle of the Civil War. The 60-acre farm witnessed back-and-forth bloody clashes that began on the morning of July 2, 1863, as a fitful episode between skirmishers and ended in a small but important combat all its own. The fight played an oversized role in the overall battle and directly impacted the massive rolling Confederate assault later that afternoon. In a bit more than 24 hours, the back-and-forth Bliss farm combat would attract at least 10 Union and Confederate regiments, draw heavy artillery fire, disrupt the seemingly unstoppable Confederate assault moving northward against Cemetery Ridge, and kill and wound hundreds of men. This study is based on official records, letters, diaries, and other unpublished archival sources. A new foreword by award-winning author and Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide James Hessler opens this facsimile edition, which originally appeared to great acclaim in a small print run in 1994. Elwood Christ's extraordinary "Over a Wide, Hot . . . Crimson Plain" The Struggle for the Bliss Farm at Gettysburg, July 2nd and 3rd, 1863 remains the only book ever published on the subject.

In the tradition of the great regimental histories of the past, this book records the fire which seared the ranks of the Twenty-Four Michigan Regiment of the legendary “Iron Brigade.” Born as the result of a riot, led by a Virginian, met with coldness and hostility by the black-hatted veterans of the brigade, the Twenty-Fourth swore it would win their respect…and so they did with a vengeance. At Fredericksburg, in “artillery hell” and under a murderous crossfire from the guns of “Stonewall” Jackson and “Jeb” Stuart, they performed the manual of arms to stead the line. The first day at Gettysburg they sparked this remark from the confederate ranks…”That ain’t no milishy, there’s those damn black hats again.” With the immortal First Corps they were ordered west of the town to hold long enough for the army to occupy the strategic heights behind them. They held, and by evening they had lost more men than any of the 400-odd Union regiments engaged in the battle. Still later they marched down “that crimson strip across the maps,” which marked Grant’s Wilderness Campaign; they bled at Petersburg and then, their ranks almost decimated, were sent to guard bounty jumpers. The last tribute to their gallant service came as they were chosen the Guard of Honor for Lincoln’s funeral. In a little more than two years of bloody fighting they found their way to nineteenth place on the list of “300 Fighting Regiments.” To read this book is to consort with heroes who, 100 years ago, stood watching their world writhe in agony. It gives hope that in matching their courage, our country will emerge from the cauldron triumphant.

This provocative study proves the existence of a de facto Confederate policy of giving no quarter to captured black combatants during the Civil War—killing them instead of treating them as prisoners of war. Rather than looking at the massacres as a series of discrete and random events, this work examines each as part of a ruthless but standard practice. Author George S. Burkhardt details a fascinating case that the Confederates followed a consistent pattern of murder against the black soldiers who served in Northern armies after Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. He shows subsequent retaliation by black soldiers and further escalation by the Confederates, including the execution of some captured white Federal soldiers, those proscribed as cavalry raiders, foragers, or house-burners, and even some captured in traditional battles. Further disproving the notion of Confederates as victims who were merely trying to defend their homes, Burkhardt explores the motivations behind the soldiers’ actions and shows the Confederates’ rage at the sight of former slaves—still considered property, not men—fighting them as equals on the battlefield. Burkhardt’s narrative approach recovers important dimensions of the war that until now have not been fully explored by historians, effectively describing the systemic pattern that pushed the conflict toward a black flag, take-no-prisoners struggle.

Drawing on six years of research, this book covers the military service and postwar lives of notable Confederate veterans who moved into Northern California at the end the Civil War. Biographies of 101 former rebels are provided, from the oldest brother of the Clanton Gang to the son of a President to plantation owners, dirt farmers, criminals and everything in between.

Although many Civil War reference books exist, Civil War researchers have until now had no single compendium to consult on important details about the combatant states (and territories). This crucial reference work, the sixth in the States at War series, provides vital information on the organization, activities, economies, demographics, and laws of Civil War South Carolina. This volume also includes the Confederate States Chronology. Miller enlists multiple sources, including the statutes, Journals of Congress, departmental reports, general orders from Richmond and state legislatures, and others, to illustrate the rise and fall of the Confederacy. In chronological order, he presents the national laws intended to harness its manpower and resources for war, the harsh realities of foreign diplomacy, the blockade, and the costs of states’ rights governance, along with mounting dissent; the effects of massive debt financing, inflation, and loss of credit; and a growing raggedness within the ranks of its army. The chronology provides a factual framework for one of history’s greatest ironies: in the end, the war to preserve slavery could not be won while 35 percent of the population was enslaved.

“Extensive research, fascinating characters . . . The author has done an admirable job of literally placing a face on the ordinary Confederate soldier.” —The Journal of Southern History “The history of the Civil War is the stories of its soldiers,” writes Ronald S. Coddington in the preface to Faces of the Confederacy. This book tells the stories of seventy-seven Southern soldiers—young farm boys, wealthy plantation owners, intellectual elites, uneducated poor—who posed for photographic portraits, cartes de visite, to leave with family, friends, and sweethearts before going off to war. Coddington, a passionate collector of Civil War-era photography, conducted a monumental search for these previously unpublished portrait cards, then unearthed the personal stories of their subjects, putting a human face on a war rife with inhuman atrocities. The Civil War took the lives of twenty-two of every hundred men who served. Coddington follows the exhausted survivors as they return home to occupied cities and towns, ravaged farmlands, a destabilized economy, and a social order in the midst of upheaval. This book is a haunting and moving tribute to those brave men. Like its companion volume, Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories, this book offers readers a unique perspective on the war and contributes to a better understanding of the role of the common soldier. “With his meticulous research and a journalist’s eye for good stories, Ron Coddington has brought new life to Civil War photographic portraits of obscure and long-forgotten Confederates whose wartime experiences might otherwise have been lost to history.” —Bob Zeller, cofounder and president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography

According to the 1860 census, nearly 350,000 native northerners resided in a southern state by the time of the Civil War. Although northern in birth and upbringing, many of these men and women identified with their adopted section once they moved south. In this innovative study, David Ross Zimring examines what motivated these Americans to change sections, support (or not) the Confederate cause, and, in many cases, rise to considerable influence in their new homeland. By analyzing the lives of northern emigrants in the South, Zimring deepens our understanding of the nature of sectional identity as well as the strength of Confederate nationalism. Focusing on a representative sample of emigrants, Zimring identifies two subgroups: “adoptive southerners,” individuals born and raised in a state above the Mason-Dixon line but who but did not necessarily join the Confederacy after they moved south, and “Northern Confederates,” emigrants who sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. After analyzing statistical data on states of origin, age, education, decade of migration, and, most importantly, the reasons why these individuals embarked for the South in the first place, Zimring goes on to explore the prewar lives of adoptive southerners, the adaptations they made with regard to slavery, and the factors that influenced their allegiances during the secession crisis. He also analyzes their contributions to the Confederate military and home front, the emergence of their Confederate identities and nationalism, their experiences as prisoners of war in the North, and the reactions they elicited from native southerners. In tracing these journeys from native northerner to Confederate veteran, this book reveals not only the complex transformations of adoptive southerners but also the flexibility of sectional and national identity before the war and the loss of that flexibility in its aftermath. To Live and Die in Dixie is a thought-provoking work that provides a novel perspective on the revolutionary changes the Civil War unleashed on American society.

A “timely” look at the roles played by ex-Confederates after the war, in politics, academia, the military, industry, and more (Midwest Book Review). The long and bloody American Civil War claimed the lives of more than 700,000 men. When it ended, former opponents worked to rebuild their reunified nation and move into the future together. Many people will find that surprising—especially in an era witnessing the destruction or removal of Confederate monuments and the desecration of Confederate cemeteries. In this unique and timely book, award-winning author Stephen M. Hood identifies more than three hundred former Confederate soldiers, sailors, and government officials who reintegrated into American society and attained positions of authority and influence in the federal government, the United States military, academia, science, commerce, and industry. Their contributions had a long-lasting and positive influence on the country we have today. For example, ten postwar presidents appointed former Confederates as Supreme Court justices, secretaries of the U.S. Navy, attorneys general, and a secretary of the interior. Dozens of former Southern soldiers were named U.S. ambassadors and consuls, and eight were appointed generals who commanded troops during the Spanish-American War. Former Confederates were elected mayors of such unlikely cities as Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Santa Fe, and served as governors of multiple non-Confederate states and territories. Ex-Southern soldiers became presidents of professional societies including the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association, to name only a few. Others paved the way in science and engineering by leading the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Geological Society of America. One former Confederate co-founded the environmental preservation group Sierra Club, and another was president of the Society for Classical Studies. Former soldiers in gray founded or co-founded many colleges and universities—some exclusively for women and newly freed African-Americans. Other former Rebels served as presidents of prominent institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at universities outside the South including Harvard, Yale, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Johns Hopkins, and Amherst College. Several others served on the governing boards of the United States Military Academy at West Point and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Every reader of Patriots Twice has benefited from the post-Civil War reconciliation when former combatants put down their swords, picked up their plowshares, and accepted the invaluable contributions of these (and thousands of other) former Confederates. The men who carried the bayonets found common cause and moved on together. This is an important concept everyone should—no, must—embrace to keep America united, strong, and free.