This is the story of the men who fought and died in the 72nd New York Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. Part of Dan Sickles' famed Excelsior Brigade, the 72nd New York served in all the major actions associated with the III Corps, losing one-fourth or more of the regiment in three different engagements. The narrative of the war is told in the words of the men who were there. Drawing on soldier's letters, diaries, memoirs (many unpublished or obscure) and official reports, this work follows these men from the exciting beginnings of recruitment, the boredom and frustrations of life policing the secessionist countryside of Southern Maryland, through to the eventual disbanding of the regiment in July of 1864 after being bled white at Williamsburg, the Peninsula, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and the Overland Campaign. A final chapter offers a brief account of many of the men's lives following the war. Included in the work are photographs, period illustrations, maps and an organizational chart. A complete roster is arranged by company with chronologies of officers' service.

Dear Uncles is one young man's story from the beginning of the American Civil War. Taken from letters sent home to family and friends, including correspondence written for his uncles' local newspaper, this book gives an intimate portrait of Arthur McKinstry's journey from a small town in upstate New York to confront Confederate forces in Virginia. Articulate, confident, and observant, McKinstry's letters are written with a journalist's eye and poet's heart, giving us a vivid, humorous, and ultimately heartbreaking view into his experiences of going to war. Whether slogging through rain and mud, waiting for care packages from home, or watching cannonballs land in camp, these dispatches place readers in a young soldier's boots and help them to imagine how family and friends experienced this crisis in American history. Dear Uncles also offers new insights into regimental organization, training, and the often-overlooked attempt of Confederates to blockade Washington, DC's Potomac River supply route. Dear Uncles will fascinate and entertain readers with an interest in American Civil War history.

A vivid account of the early battles, first in the Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy: “One of America’s foremost Civil War authorities” (Kirkus Reviews). The first book in Bruce Catton’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln’s Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan. Following the secession of the Southern states, a beleaguered President Abraham Lincoln entrusted the dashing, charismatic McClellan with the creation of the Union’s Army of the Potomac and the responsibility of leading it to a swift and decisive victory against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Although a brilliant tactician who was beloved by his troops and embraced by the hero-hungry North, McClellan’s ego and ambition ultimately put him at loggerheads with his commander in chief—a man McClellan considered unworthy of the presidency. McClellan’s weaknesses were exposed during the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history, which ended in a stalemate even though the Confederate troops were greatly outnumbered. After Antietam, Lincoln ordered McClellan’s removal from command, and the Union entered the war’s next chapter having suffered thousands of casualties and with great uncertainty ahead. America’s premier chronicler of the nation’s brutal internecine conflict, Bruce Catton is renowned for his unparalleled ability to bring a detailed and vivid immediacy to Civil War battlefields and military strategy sessions. With tremendous depth and insight, he presents legendary commanders and common soldiers in all their complex and heartbreaking humanity.

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The Maps of Spotsylvania through Cold Harbor continues Bradley M. Gottfried’s efforts to study and illustrate the major campaigns of the Civil War’s Eastern Theater. This is the ninth book in the ongoing Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series. After three years of bloody combat in Virginia, President Abraham Lincoln promoted Ulysses S. Grant to general-in-chief in early 1864. Grant immediately went to work planning a comprehensive strategy to bring an end to the war. He hungered to remain with the Western armies, but realized his place was in Washington. Unwilling to be stuck in an office, Grant joined George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. His presence complicated Meade’s ability to direct his army, but Grant promised to stay out of his way and give only strategic directives. This arrangement lasted through the Wilderness Campaign, the first action in what is now referred to as the “Overland Campaign.” This book continues the actions of both armies through the completion of the Overland Campaign. After the Wilderness fighting, the Army of the Potomac attempted to swing around the right flank of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and shoot straight for Richmond. The Confederate capital was never the goal; the move was intended to force Lee out into the open, where the larger and well-stocked Union army could destroy it. The head of Lee’s army blunted the enemy at Spotsylvania Court House, where both sides dug in. Days and men were wasted on fruitless attacks until Col. Emery Upton designed an audacious strike that temporarily penetrated Lee’s works. A much larger offensive against the “Mule Shoe” two days later tore the line open, destroyed a Rebel division, and triggered a long day of fighting. More fighting convinced Grant of the folly of further attempts to crush Lee at Spotsylvania and again he swung around the Rebel right flank. The march ignited almost continuous fighting at the North Anna, Bethesda Church, and Cold Harbor, where this volume ends. This study includes the various cavalry actions, including those at Spotsylvania Court House, Yellow Tavern, Haw’s Tavern, and Matadequin Creek. The Maps of Spotsylvania through Cold Harbor breaks down the entire operation into thirty-five map sets or “action sections” enriched with 134 detailed full-page color maps. These cartographic originals bore down to the regimental and battery level and include the march to and from the battlefields and virtually every significant event in between. At least two, and as many as ten maps accompany each map set. Keyed to each piece of cartography is a full facing page of detailed footnoted text describing the units, personalities, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) depicted on the accompanying map, all of which make the Spotsylvania story come alive. This unique presentation allows readers to easily and quickly find a map and text on any portion of the campaign, from the march to Spotsylvania to Cold Harbor. Serious students will appreciate the extensive and authoritative endnotes and complete order of battle. Everyone will want to take the book along on trips to these battlefields. Perfect for the easy chair or for stomping the hallowed ground, The Maps of Spotsylvania through Cold Harbor is a seminal work that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious student of the battle.

'From the first shot fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, to the last shot fired at Appomattox, food played a crucial role in the Civil War. In Starving the South, culinary historian Andrew Smith takes a fascinating gastronomical look at the war and its aftermath. At the time, the North mobilized its agricultural resources, fed its civilians and military, and still had massive amounts of food to export to Europe. The South did not; while people starved, the morale of their soldiers waned and desertions from the Army of the Confederacy increased.....' (Book Jacket)

The name Daniel Sickles and the word controversy are synonymous. Any student of 19th century American political history is familiar with Sickles’ 1859 murder of Philip Barton Key, the son of Francis Scott Key, who had seduced Sickles’ young wife. That murder, because Sickles was at the time a New York Congressman and Key a district attorney for Washington, captured the country’s imagination, a front-page event that inevitably ensnarled President James Buchanan, a close Sickles friend, inviting in the process explorations of what was seen as a sordid Washington society of the late 1850s. Civil War historians know Sickles as the General who led the men of the Union’s III Corps out onto the exposed expanse of the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg, a decision many scholars have regarded as disastrous, and one that nearly led to an overall Union defeat at the famous battlefield, while losing for Sickles his right leg from Confederate shelling. But these two singular, if spectacular events, in a very real sense represent only two days out of an extraordinary lifetime of 94 years. The rest of Sickles’ career was made up of his rise as a young stalwart of New York’s notorious Tammany Hall; his two terms in Congress leading up to the Civil War; his contentious service as a military governor of the Carolinas after the War; his newsworthy tenure as U.S. Minister to Spain in the late 1860s and early 70s; and even his stint, at the age of 70, as the sheriff of the county encompassing New York City. Beyond the headlines were Sickles’ relationships with presidents ranging from Franklin Pierce to Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, not to mention an improbable friendship with Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the century. Daniel Sickles: A Life is the first full-length published treatment looking in depth at the entirely of one man’s almost unbelievably colorful and contentious career. Garry Boulard is the author of The Expatriation of Franklin Pierce—The Story of a President and the Civil War (iUniverse, 2006), and The Worst President—The Story of James Buchanan (iUniverse, 2015). Boulard’s essays and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Journal of Ethnic Studies, Louisiana History, Journal of Mississippi History, and Florida Historical Quarterly, among many other publications.

This “very satisfying blow-by-blow account of the final stages of the Gettysburg Campaign” fills an important gap in Civil War history (Civil War Books and Authors). Winner of the Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Book Award This fascinating book exposes what has been hiding in plain sight for 150 years: The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but deep in central Virginia two weeks later along the line of the Rappahannock. Contrary to popular belief, once Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the Potomac back to Virginia, the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit—and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high wooded terrain. Doing so would trap Lee in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley and potentially bring about the decisive victory that had eluded Union arms north of the Potomac. The two weeks that followed resembled a grand chess match with everything at stake—high drama filled with hard marching, cavalry charges, heavy skirmishing, and set-piece fighting that threatened to escalate into a major engagement with the potential to end the war in the Eastern Theater. Throughout, one thing remains clear: Union soldiers from private to general continued to fear the lethality of Lee’s army. Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, the first of three volumes on the campaigns waged between the two adversaries from July 14 through the end of July, 1863, relies on the official records, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other sources to provide a day-by-day account of this fascinating high-stakes affair. The vivid prose, coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature. Named Eastern Theater Book of the Year byCivil War Books and Authors