The Confederacy’s Secretary of State burned all the intelligence records he could find as federal troops entered Richmond in 1865. Union intelligence records were kept sealed in the National Archives until 1953! Here is a report by the U.S. CIA about intelligence gathering in the American Civil War. Read about the Richmond society woman who ran a spy ring in the Confederate capital. Read about intelligence operations by the Confederates in Europe. Read how freed slaves risked their lives for the Union cause. This short but fascinating compilation of secrets provides a compelling overview of the men and women who spied during America's bloodiest war. Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers, tablets, and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

Though less famous than Hiram Berdan's sharpshooters, Birge's Western Sharpshooters played a significant role in the American Civil War. Here is their history, told by one of their own.At Shiloh, Corinth, Atlanta,and on Sherman's great march, the Western Sharpshooters dispensed fifty caliber death at a thousand yards.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History A dramatic, riveting, and “fresh look at a region typically obscured in accounts of the Civil War. American history buffs will relish this entertaining and eye-opening portrait” (Publishers Weekly). Megan Kate Nelson “expands our understanding of how the Civil War affected Indigenous peoples and helped to shape the nation” (Library Journal, starred review), reframing the era as one of national conflict—involving not just the North and South, but also the West. Against the backdrop of this larger series of battles, Nelson introduces nine individuals: John R. Baylor, a Texas legislator who established the Confederate Territory of Arizona; Louisa Hawkins Canby, a Union Army wife who nursed Confederate soldiers back to health in Santa Fe; James Carleton, a professional soldier who engineered campaigns against Navajos and Apaches; Kit Carson, a famous frontiersman who led a regiment of volunteers against the Texans, Navajos, Kiowas, and Comanches; Juanita, a Navajo weaver who resisted Union campaigns against her people; Bill Davidson, a soldier who fought in all of the Confederacy’s major battles in New Mexico; Alonzo Ickis, an Iowa-born gold miner who fought on the side of the Union; John Clark, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s who embraced the Republican vision for the West as New Mexico’s surveyor-general; and Mangas Coloradas, a revered Chiricahua Apache chief who worked to expand Apache territory in Arizona. As we learn how these nine charismatic individuals fought for self-determination and control of the region, we also see the importance of individual actions in the midst of a larger military conflict. Based on letters and diaries, military records and oral histories, and photographs and maps from the time, “this history of invasions, battles, and forced migration shapes the United States to this day—and has never been told so well” (Pulitzer Prize–winning author T.J. Stiles).

Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She worked as a seamstress, attended the Institute for Colored Youth, and was an active member of her community. She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community. Her diaries allow the reader to experience the Civil War in “real time” and are a counterpoint to more widely known diaries of the period. Judith Giesberg has written an accessible introduction, situating Davis and her diaries within the historical, cultural, and political context of wartime Philadelphia. In addition to furnishing a new window through which to view the war’s major events, Davis’s diaries give us a rare look at how the war was experienced as a part of everyday life—how its dramatic turns and lulls and its pervasive, agonizing uncertainty affected a northern city with a vibrant black community.

She walked the streets of Richmond dressed in farm woman’s clothing, singing and mumbling to herself. Soon her suspicious and condescending neighbors began referring to her as “Crazy Bet.” But she wasn’t mad; she had purpose in her doings. She wanted people to think she was insane so that they would be less likely to ask her questions and possibly discover her goal: to defeat the South and to end slavery. Elizabeth Van Lew, of Crazy Bet, was General Ulysses S. Grant’s spy in the capital city of the Confederacy.

When the Civil War broke out he sold his lucrative business and chiefly at his own expense, raised a battery which throughout the war was known as Bouton’s Battery—Battery I, First Regiment, Illinois Light Artillery. Generals Halleck and Sherman both pronounced him the best artillery officer in the army. "He was the most daring brigadier we had in the West." Bouton met Captain Ulysses S. Grant in Illinois just after the outbreak of war. He met Sherman at Shiloh. In that battle, at Corinth, on the Mississippi, at Tupelo and elsewhere, Edward Bouton served with both Generals and proved his worth as an outstanding officer. Now you can read about this remarkable man and his wartime exploits, one of the forgotten heroes of the American Civil War. Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers, tablets, and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

Among the hundreds of women who, in disguise, enlisted to serve as men during the Civil War, only Sarah Edmonds is known to have written a memoir recounting her experiences. As "Franklin Thompson," she joined the 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment in 1861, then fought in some of the bloodiest struggles of the Civil War, from the first battle of Bull Run to the Kentucky Campaign of 1863. This daring woman embarked upon dangerous missions into Confederate territory to gather information and to survey enemy positions, sometimes in the guise of a slave or Irish washerwoman, sometimes in Confederate uniform. Through her experiences as a "male nurse" and Union soldier, Edmonds depicts the horrors of Civil War hospitals and the simple pastimes of camp life. Throughout her impassioned account, first published in 1865, this enthralling storyteller reveals her courage, dedication to the Union, and resourcefulness in concealing her identity. Three years after her death, Edmonds's body was reinterred with military honors by her comrades, who recognized in her a "strong, healthy, and robust soldier, ever willing and ready for duty." The introduction and annotations by Elizabeth D. Leonard, a leading authority on Civil War women, support and amplify Edmonds's account. Challenging established views of the Civil War soldier, Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse, and Spy is compelling reading, especially for those interested in the Civil War, women's history, American studies, and military history.

No U.S. president has faced the problems Lincoln confronted, nor expressed himself with such eloquence on issues of great moment. Harold Holzer and Thomas Horrocks explore his writings on slavery, emancipation, racial equality, the legality of secession, civil liberties in wartime, and the meaning of the terrible suffering caused by the Civil War.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the years 1917 to 1921 is one of the most widely studied periods in history. It is also somewhat inevitably one that has generated a huge flow of literature in the decades that have passed since the events themselves. However, until now, historians of the revolution have had no dedicated bibliography of the period and little claim to bibliographical control over the literature. The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921offers for the first time a comprehensive bibliographical guide to this crucial and fascinating period of history. The Bibliography focuses on the key years of 1917 to 1921, starting with the February Revolution of 1917 and concluding with the 10th Party Congress of March 1921, and covers all the key events of the intervening years. As such it identifies these crucial years as something more than simply the creation of a communist state.

div The Literary Spy provides a unique view of the intelligence world through the words of its own major figures (and those fascinated with them) from ancient times to the present. CIA speechwriter and analyst Charles E. Lathrop has compiled and annotated more than 3,000 quotations from such disparate sources as the Bible, spy novels and movies, Shakespeare’s plays, declassified CIA documents, memoirs, TV talk shows, and speeches from U.S. and foreign leaders and officials. Arranged in thematic categories with opening commentary for each section, the quotations speak for themselves. Together they serve both to illuminate a world famous for its secrets and deceptions and to show the extent to which intelligence has manifested itself in literature and in life. Engaging, informative, and often irreverent, The Literary Spy is an exceedingly satisfying book—one that meets the needs of the serious researcher just as ably as those of the armchair spy in pursuit of an evening’s entertainment. /DIV