Civil War Battle
1 primary work • 10 total works
Book 1
Although Stonewall Jackson was dead, Confederate morale was never higher. The victory at Chancellorsville had come against overwhelming odds, and the Southerners savored the sight of the Union army in retreat. In less than a year's time, the Federals had been pushed back from the outskirts of Richmond and now virtually out of Virginia.
Thus begins Gettysburg, the newest addition to The Civil War Battle Series, the Brannon family saga that has been praised as "robust, detail-rich and well-paced...equal parts pathos and accuracy" (Publishers Weekly) and "fraught with passion, tension, and tenderness" (Booklist).
Will and Mac, the two eldest Brannon sons, are in the ranks of the Stonewall Brigade and Jeb Stuart's cavalry. A short bivouac allows them to visit the family farm for some rest and recuperation from the fighting. Almost as soon as Will rejoins his company, Jackson's former corps marches up the Shenandoah Valley, sweeping the Union troops out of Winchester. A natural route to the North lies open, and Lee's army heads in that direction.
The eventual clash known as the battle of Gettysburg occupies the rest of the book. Will, who is involved from the first day, is kept in the thick of the combat around Culp's Hill and the right side of the Union line. Mac arrives on the evening of the second day, and he sees action with the Southern cavalry at Hanover. Both are swallowed up in the melee of the fighting, and neither emerges unscathed.
Bruised and bleeding, the Confederate army stumbles back into Virginia, leaving a fourth of their number behind on the Pennsylvania ground. News of the defeat and the huge number of casualties spreads quickly. Like thousands of families across the South, the Brannon clan in Culpeper County anxiously awaits word of the fates of two sons.
In this eighth volume of the ten-volume Civil War Battle Series, the action returns to northern Virginia and Culpeper County. The long absent Titus Brannon returns home on Christmas Day, 1863, just over a year since his disappearance during the battle of Fredericksburg. As much as his family is startled to learn that he is alive, he is surprised to find that his wife, Polly, is now married to his brother Henry. And she is pregnant.
Unwilling to accept Polly and Henry's marriage, Titus insists that Polly is still his wife, and a judge agrees. He refuses to divorce her, and later Polly's body is found at her father's plantation. The evidence points to Titus, and he is arrested and jailed.
As spring approaches, Will Brannon recuperates from his Gettysburg wound and returns to his regiment. In the meantime, a new commander leads the Union army into northern Virginia—U.S. Grant. To block Grant's march on Richmond, Robert E. Lee attacks. Grant, however, does not retreat after this surprise engagement but marches on. The two armies clash again and again, maneuvering ever closer to the Rebel capital.
Will throws himself into the battles with abandon. At last his pain ends at the portentously named crossroads, Cold Harbor.
After Titus's innocence is proven, he joins the partisan rangers of John S. Mosby. This guerrilla-style warfare suits his nature, and the rangers so effectively harass the Federals in the rich farmland of the Shenandoah that Grant dispatches a special force to squash Mosby. This unit adopts a policy of total war in the valley so as to undercut Mosby's support.
Titus vows vengeance on the Yankees for this wanton destruction, but even he knows that there is little chance that the tide will be stemmed. Both the Confederacy and the Brannons have suffered much in the year 1864. Now even the hotheaded Titus begins to wonder if the nation and his family will survive into 1865.
Vicksburg is the fifth volume in a series of historical novels spanning the Civil War featuring the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia. The focus turns to the west and the Southern stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where Cory Brannon is working to keep the town supplied by wagon train and railroad from Texas.
Vicksburg is the key to the Mississippi River and the future of the Confederacy, and Abraham Lincoln wants to put that key in his pocket. For almost a year the Federal army and navy have tried to dislodge the Confederates, but they have gained nothing. Finally, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the hero of the battles at Forts Henry and Donelson and the battle of Shiloh, is dispatched to take the town.
Cory and the woman he loves, Lucille Farrell, are working with her uncle, Col. Charles Thompson, and a small contingent of dedicated Southerners. In the spring of 1863, as the Union army begins to close in, Cory must abandon that venture to take on a vital mission for Confederate Gen. John Pemberton, the commander in charge of Vicksburg's defenses. At the end of Cory's journey, however, is an even more dangerous foray into Western Tennessee and over the border into Kentucky with the horse soldiers of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Cory's mentor from the battle of Shiloh. To help save Vicksburg, Cory becomes both a cavalry raider and even a spy.
Yet his efforts cannot prevent the inevitable as the Yankees eventually surround and lay siege to Vicksburg. With the Northern army set to seize the city, Lucille must also cope with additional challenges as she encounters a returning friend with secret plans of his own. The Federal bombardment, illness, injury, and starvation all take their toll on the defenders of Vicksburg, forcing Cory and Lucille to face decisions that threaten not only their love but their very lives.
The narrative of Chancellorsville begins in Mississippi and the situation on the western front. Before reaching Vicksburg, Cory Brannon stumbles into a campsite where all is not well and briefly encounters a cautious Confederate patrol. A veteran of the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson and Shiloh, but not a soldier in the Confederate army, h continues to search for Lucille Farrell, the daughter of his late employer. When he finds her, he also discovers that he may have a role to play in supplying the South with the food, weapons, and ammunition being brought in through Texas by blockade-runners. The path, however, is strewn with renegades and outlaws, and on the horizon there may be a rival for Lucille’s affections.
Meanwhile, Cory’s brothers, Will and Mac, enjoy a brief visit with the family members still in Culpeper. Will is greatly relieved that his mother, Abigail, who had banished him from the farm in the weeks before the war, now welcomes him with open arms. Brother Titus’s marriage to Polly Ebersole comes as a surprise to the two brothers in gray, but their presence stirs a sense of obligation and duty in the hotheaded Titus. Shortly after the two return to their units—Will to the Shenandoah with Jackson and Mac with Stuart near Richmond—the Confederate cause claims another Brannon, this one a gifted rifleman.
In December 1862 a new Union commander launches another campaign to claim the Southern capital, and Ambrose Burnside brings the Federal army to Fredericksburg. With him marches the conscience-driven Nathan Hatcher. When the battle breaks loose, Will and Mac are on the right side of the Confederate line, and Titus is on the left. After the terrible bloodletting of the Federal defeat, news comes that Titus has been lost. The brothers carry the information back to Culpeper, where the aloof Polly surprisingly grieves over the loss of Titus, her husband. She reaches out to the Brannon family and finds a comforting response from the people she has tried to keep at arm’s length.
In early 1863 a fitful calm pervades the Virginia front until yet another Union commander is named. Joe Hooker leads his army into the wooded wilderness of the Rappahannock again and confidently stakes his fortunes to an encounter with Robert E. Lee near the roadside inn at Chancellorsville. As the battle rushes toward them, Will and Mac witness the boldest move a field commander can make and the greatest loss the Confederacy can struggle to bear.
Chancellorsville is the fourth book in a series of historical novels spanning the Civil War.
The saga of the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia, concludes in this tenth volume of the Civil War Battle Series with sons in every theater of the war. For a time, Mac and Titus fight in the Shenandoah, Mac with Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry at the battle of Third Winchester and Titus with Mosby’s Rangers in the cut-and-slash tactics of guerrilla warfare. The cavalry, however, must throw its weight behind the defenses at Petersburg, where U.S. Grant’s army methodically pressures the remnants of Robert E. Lee’s legions. Cory fights against William T. Sherman in the Carolinas, and Henry rides with Nathan Bedford Forrest in Alabama.
In Culpeper the farm is well behind Union lines. Despite her mother’s admonitions, Cordelia is still intrigued with the attentions of a Yankee officer. He beau’s only failing is the belief that he cannot let the war end without experiencing combat.
Nathan Hatcher, now a so-called Galvanized Yankee, wears Union blue in the Dakota Territory. There he fights to survive both rugged winter weather and the fierce tribes whose goal is to thwart the invading hordes of settlers. Similar tribal resentments color the Comanche unrest in Texas, where Pie and Rachel Jones have settled. In the meantime, traveling to Texas are Cory’s wife, Lucille, her aunt, and a wounded blockade runner whose gratitude to the two women has taken a romantic turn.
With the coming of spring in 1865, the war reaches its climax in Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama. Mac is not far from the McLean house when Lee meets with Grant. Cory is at hand, too, when Joseph E. Johnston parleys with Sherman. Titus, however, finds himself enmeshed in the complicated scheme of one of the darkest plots of the war.
Finally, among the war’s last victims is the Brannon farm itself. As carpetbaggers move into the South, this prime real estate is too good to leave in the hands of defeated Rebels. For their part, the Brannons have only so much fight left in them. The unsettled West holds more promise than the scarred and wrecked land of northern Virginia. Cory already has one foot in Texas; he others are not far behind. Titus remains absent, estranged. Before departing her homeland, however, a mother has one last thing to do.
