This guide includes the 26 major battlefields in Virginia as well as some of the smaller skirmishes.

Since 1982, the renowned Civil War historian James I. "Bud" Robertson’s Civil War Sites in Virginia: A Tour Guide has enlightened and informed Civil War enthusiasts and scholars alike. The book expertly explores the commonwealth’s Civil War sites for those hoping to gain greater insight and understanding of the conflict. But in the years since the book’s original publication, accessibility to many sites and the interpretive material available have improved dramatically. In addition, new historical markers have been erected, and new historically significant sites have been developed, while other sites have been lost to modern development or other encroachments. The historian Brian Steel Wills offers here a revised and updated edition that retains the core of the original guide, with its rich and insightful prose, but that takes these major changes into account, introducing especially the benefits of expanded interpretation and of improved accessibility. The guide incorporates new information on the lives of a broad spectrum of soldiers and citizens while revisiting scenes associated with the era’s most famous personalities. New maps and a list of specialized tour suggestions assist in planning visits to sites, while three dozen illustrations, from nineteenth-century drawings to modern photographs, bring the war and its impact on the Old Dominion vividly to life. With the sesquicentennial remembrances of the American Civil War heightening interest and spurring improvements, there may be no better time to learn about and visit these important and moving sites than now.

A study of the role of Afro-Virginians in the Civil War.

A “thoroughly researched [and] historically enlightening” account of how the Commonwealth of Virginia split in two in the midst of war (Civil War News). “West Virginia was the child of the storm.” —Mountaineer historian and Civil War veteran Maj. Theodore F. Lang As the Civil War raged, the northwestern third of the Commonwealth of Virginia finally broke away in 1863 to form the Union’s 35th state. Seceding from Secession chronicles those events in an unprecedented study of the social, legal, military, and political factors that converged to bring about the birth of West Virginia. President Abraham Lincoln, an astute lawyer in his own right, played a critical role in birthing the new state. The constitutionality of the mechanism by which the new state would be created concerned the president, and he polled every member of his cabinet before signing the bill. Seceding from Secession includes a detailed discussion of the 1871 U.S. Supreme Court decision Virginia v. West Virginia, in which former Lincoln cabinet member Salmon Chase presided as chief justice over the court that decided the constitutionality of the momentous event. Grounded in a wide variety of sources and including a foreword by Frank J. Williams, former Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and Chairman Emeritus of the Lincoln Forum, this book is indispensable for anyone interested in American history.

“A comprehensive study of the Civil War’s first major battle . . . well leavened with strategic and political context” (Robert E. L. Krick, author of Staff Officers in Gray). Battle of Big Bethel is the first full-length treatment of the small but consequential June 1861 Virginia battle that reshaped perceptions about what lay in store for the divided nation. The successful Confederate defense reinforced the belief most Southerners held that their martial invincibility and protection of home and hearth were divinely inspired. After initial disbelief and shame, the defeat hardened Northern resolution to preserve their sacred Union. The notion began to take hold that, contrary to popular belief, the war would be difficult and protracted—a belief that was cemented in reality the following month on the plains of Manassas. Years in the making, Battle of Big Bethel relies upon letters, diaries, newspapers, reminiscences, official records, and period images—some used for the first time. The authors detail the events leading up to the encounter, survey the personalities as well as the contributions of the participants, set forth a nuanced description of the confusion-ridden field of battle, and elaborate upon its consequences. Here, finally, the story of Big Bethel is colorfully and compellingly brought to life through the words and deeds of a fascinating array of soldiers, civilians, contraband slaves, and politicians whose lives intersected on that fateful day in the early summer of 1861. “The authors do a wonderful job of describing the motivations and mindsets of both the U.S. and Confederate soldiers at the outset of the conflict and handle slavery very effectively throughout.” —Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of

In the first comprehensive study of the experience of Virginia soldiers and their families in the Civil War, Aaron Sheehan-Dean captures the inner world of the rank-and-file. Utilizing new statistical evidence and first-person narratives, Sheehan-Dean explores how Virginia soldiers--even those who were nonslaveholders--adapted their vision of the war's purpose to remain committed Confederates. Sheehan-Dean challenges earlier arguments that middle- and lower-class southerners gradually withdrew their support for the Confederacy because their class interests were not being met. Instead he argues that Virginia soldiers continued to be motivated by the profound emotional connection between military service and the protection of home and family, even as the war dragged on. The experience of fighting, explains Sheehan-Dean, redefined southern manhood and family relations, established the basis for postwar race and class relations, and transformed the shape of Virginia itself. He concludes that Virginians' experience of the Civil War offers important lessons about the reasons we fight wars and the ways that those reasons can change over time.

142 two-color maps vividly depict battlefield action Detailed local driving directions guide visitors to each battlefield site Of the 384 Civil War battlefields cited as critical to preserve by the congressionally appointed Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, 123-fully one-third-are located in Virginia. The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide is the comprehensive guidebook to the most significant battles of the Civil War. Reviewed by Edwin C. Bearss and other noted Civil War authorities and sanctioned by the National Park Service and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, no other guidebook on the market today rivals it for historical detail, accuracy, and credibility.

Serving both as home to the Confederacy's capital, Richmond, and as the war's primary battlefield, Virginia held a unique place in the American Civil War, while also witnessing the privations and hardships that marked life in all corners of the Confederacy. Yet despite an overwhelming literature on the battles that raged across the state and the armies and military leaders involved, few works have examined Virginia as a distinctive region during the conflict. In Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration, Edward L. Ayers, Gary W. Gallagher, and Andrew J. Torget, together with other scholars, offer an illuminating portrait of the state's wartime economic, political, and social institutions. Weighing in on contentious issues within established scholarship while also breaking ground in areas long neglected by scholars, several of the essays examine such concerns as the war's effect on slavery in the state, the wartime intersection of race and religion, and the development of Confederate social networks. Other contributions shed light on topics long disputed by historians, such as Virgina's decision to secede from the Union, the development of Confederate nationalism, and how Virginians chose to remember the war after its close. For anyone interested in Virginia during the Civil War, this book offers new ways to approach the study of the most important state in the Confederacy during the bloodiest war in American history.

Civil War Weather in Virginia fills a tremendous gap in our available knowledge in a fundamental area of Civil War studies, that of basic quotidian information on the weather in the theater of operations in the vicinity of Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia.

A collection of ghost stories from Virginia during the Civil War.