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The Mobile & Ohio Railroad was the longest line in the nation when it was completed in spring of 1861-the final spike driven a few weeks after Confederate artillery shelled Fort Sumter. Within days, the M&O was swept up in the Civil War as a prime conveyor of troops and supplies, a strategic and tactical asset to both Confederate and Union armies, who fought to control it. Its northern terminus at Columbus, Kentucky saw some of the earliest fighting in the war. The southern terminus in Mobile,...

Penetrating the mysteries of Custer's disaster as well as the broader context of the 1876 campaign, The Little Bighorn Campaign is the most comprehensive military study of the movements and battles which led up to and followed Little Bighorn.

In 1868 a scion of one of the leading families of Richmond, Virginia, ambushed and killed the city's most controversial journalist over an article that had dishonored the killer's family. In 1892 a Democratic politician killed a crusading Danville minister after a dispute at the polls. In 1907 a former judge shot to death the son of the Nelson County sheriff for an alleged rape, and in 1935 an Appalachian schoolteacher stood accused of killing her father by beating him with a shoe. All of these...

On July 3, 1863, a large-scale cavalry fight was waged on Crest Ridge four miles east of Gettysburg. There, on what is commonly referred to as East Cavalry Field, Union horsemen under Brig. Gen. David M. Gregg tangled with the vaunted Confederates riding with Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart. This magnificent mounted clash, however, cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of what happened the previous day at Brinkerhoff's Ridge, where elements of Gregg's division pinned down the legendary in...

Scholars hail the find as "the most important discovery in Civil War scholarship in the last half century." The invaluable cache of Confederate General John Bell Hood's personal papers includes wartime and postwar letters from comrades, subordinates, former enemies and friends, exhaustive medical reports relating to Hood's two major wounds, and dozens of touching letters exchanged between Hood and his wife, Anna. This treasure trove of information is being made available for the first time for b...

When the Civil War finally came to North Florida, it did so with an intermittent fury that destroyed much of Jacksonville and scattered its residents. The city was taken four separate times by Federal forces but abandoned after each of the first three occupations. During the fourth occupation, it was used as a staging ground for the ill-fated Union invasion of the Florida interior, which ended in the bloody Battle of Olustee in February 1864. This late Confederate victory, along with the deadly...

June 1863. The American Civil War was two years old, and the U.S. Army in Virginia was in chaos. Reeling after the recent defeat at Chancellorsville, the Federals, especially the Cavalry Corps, scrambled to regroup. Confederate general Robert E. Lee seized the moment to launch a second invasion of the North. As Lee slipped away, frantic Federal leaders asked, “Where are the Rebels?” At this critical moment, the much-maligned Federal cavalry stepped to center stage. Small but Important Riots...

Among the many extant volumes of Civil War correspondence penned by military men, few can boast of the writing quality of Dear Courier: The Civil War Correspondence of Editor Melvin Dwinell.This Yankee-turned-Rebel was both fighter and journalist: second lieutenant of the Rome Light Guards and editor of the Rome Courier. Born in East Calais, Vermont, in 1825, Melvin Dwinell came to the South and was won over to its way of life. He soon found his calling in journalism, purchasing the Rome (Georg...

Fort Sumter to Fredericksburg, Revised Edition. Veteran Civil War historian and military commentator Al Nofi has compiled a dramatic selection of personal narratives extending from the Secession debate to Fort Sumter to the end of the first year of the Civil War.

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Though Abraham Lincoln took center stage in a divided country, a political rival-turned-ally had a major influence on national affairs during Lincoln's presidency. William Henry Seward, U.S. senator and former governor, lost the Republican Party nomination for president in 1860, but aided Lincoln's election by touring the country on behalf of the Republican ticket. As some Southern states prepared to withdraw from the Union, Secretary of State Seward sought to reunite the country. This biography...

Lauded as a hero in his native land for his sensational but ultimately unsuccessful exploits during the 1848 German Revolution, Franz Sigel- who immigrated to the United States in 1852- is among the most misunderstood figures of the American Civil War. He was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as a political general in the Union army, a move that successfully galvanized northern support and provided a huge influx of German recruits who were eager to ""fight mit Sigel."" But Sigel proved an inept and i...

Not all Texans agreed with the decision to secede from the Union in 1860, and many remained outspoken against the laws of the Confederacy. This is the story of one Texas family who suffered more at the hands of their own kind than of any warring enemy, told through the memoirs of James Lemuel Clark, the son of one of the 40 men hanged in 1862 for their Union sympathies. Civil War Recollections recounts the confusion of the Civil War years and events that shaped the lives of war survivors and inf...