This book provides historians and genealogists with a one-stop guide to every Civil War–related manuscript collection stored in Georgia’s many repositories. With this guide in hand, researchers will no longer spend countless hours pouring through online catalogs, emailing archivists, and wondering if they have exhausted every lead in their pursuit of firsthand information about the war and the experiences of those who lived through and were impacted by it. In assembling the first state-specific bibliography to be compiled since the Indiana and Illinois bibliographies were assembled for the Civil War Centennial in the 1960s, David Slay has expanded the scope of this survey to include works relating to women, African Americans, and social history, as well as the letters and diaries of soldiers who fought in the war, reflecting society’s evolving understanding and interest in this defining period of American life. In addition, this compilation is not confined to material produced from 1861 to 1865, but also includes collections spanning the lives of prominent Civil War figures, making it an invaluable source for biographers. Organized by institution, Georgia Civil War Manuscript Collections has many time-saving features, all designed to increase efficiency of research. Each collection description contains the title and catalog number used in the holding institution. Where possible, collection descriptions have been improved upon, providing the researcher with information beyond what is listed in the holding institution’s card catalog and finding aid. It also cross-references duplicate collections that are held in two or more institutions as microfilm or photocopies. Simply put, Georgia Civil War Manuscript Collections takes the mystery out of Civil War research in Georgia.

Beginning with the tumultuous events leading to Georgia's secession from the Union, I Will Give Them One More Shot follows the 1st Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel James N. Ramsey, as it travels from its formation at Macon, Georgia, to Pensacola, Richmond, Western (now West) Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Ramsey's regiment meets with initial success in a minor skirmish in the Allegheny Mountains at Laurel Hill, but then is involved in a disastrous retreat and rear guard fights at Kalers Ford and Corricks Ford, during which six companies are cut off from the army and become lost in the rugged Alleghenies, starving to the point of contemplating cannibalism. Serving under General Robert E. Lee at Cheat Mountain, the regiment finds itself involved in a friendly fire incident, then later fights well in the Confederate victory at Greenbriar River. Subsequently sent to the Shenandoah Valley to serve under General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, the 1st endures horrible conditions in the winter ice and snow as the regiment march to Bath, Hancock, and Romney. Left in fetid and isolated winter quarters in Romney, the army to which the Georgians belong comes near to mutiny. The last two chapters review what happened to the soldiers and officers of the 1st after they mustered out in March 1862, concluding with the fate of prominent characters and sites. Appendices list the commands under which the 1st Georgia served during major events in its year of service, casualties in the unit, and a roster of the 1,332 men who served with the regiment.

Based on reports from American repositories of manuscripts.

Commemorative practices are revised and rebuilt based on the spirit of the time in which they are re/created. Historians sometimes imagine that commemoration captures history, but actually commemoration creates new narratives about history that allow people to interact with the past in a way that they find meaningful. As our social values change (race, gender, religion, sexuality, class), our commemorations do, too. We Are What We Remember: The American Past Through Commemoration, analyzes current trends in the study of historical memory that are particularly relevant to our own present – our biases, our politics, our contextual moment – and strive to name forgotten, overlooked, and denied pasts in traditional histories. Race, gender, and sexuality, for example, raise questions about our most treasured myths: where were the slaves at Jamestowne? How do women or lesbians protect and preserve their own histories, when no one else wants to write them? Our current social climate allows us to question authority, and especially the authoritative definitions of nation, patriotism, and heroism, and belonging. How do we “un-commemorate” things that were “mis-commemorated” in the past? How do we repair the damage done by past commemorations? The chapters in this book, contributed by eighteen emerging and established scholars, examine these modern questions that entirely reimagine the landscape of commemoration as it has been practiced, and studied, before.

Spanning nearly a century, the letters in this collection revolve around a central event in the history of a southern family: the death of the eldest son owing to sickness contracted during service in the Confederate Army. The letters reveal a slaveowning family with keen interests in art, music, and nature and an unshakable belief in their religion and in the Confederate cause. William Seagrove Smith was a private in the signal corps of the Eighteenth Battalion, Georgia Infantry. Smith was part of the force defending Savannah until it fell in late 1864, and then marched with General William J. Hardee in his famous retreat out of the city and through the Carolinas. Like so many other soldiers on both sides of the conflict, William Smith fell not at the hands of an enemy but from disease. He died in Raleigh, North Carolina, on July 7, 1865. A parallel and complementary story about William's younger brother, Archibald, also emerges in the letters. As a cadet at Georgia Military Institute, Archibald was (as his parents fervently wished) exempt from service; however, he ultimately saw--and survived--action before the war's end. Scattered among the many lines in the letters that are devoted to the two brothers are a wealth of particulars about agricultural, industrial, and social life in the family's north Georgia community of Roswell, the Smith family's flight from Sherman's invasion force, their lives as refugees in south Georgia, and a final reunion of the Smith brothers outside of Savannah just after the city's fall. Also included are a number of moving exchanges between the Smiths and the family that cared for William in his final days. A brief history of the Smith family through 1863 begins the correspondence, while the letters following the war reveal their fortitude in the face of William's death and the hardships of Reconstruction. The volume concludes with selected letters from the subsequent generation of Smiths, who conjure images of the Old South and revive the memory of William. Like the most distinguished Civil War-era letter collections, The Death of a Confederate introduces a personal dimension to its story that is often lost in histories of this sweeping event.

In this first book-length environmental history of the American Civil War, Lisa M. Brady argues that ideas about nature and the environment were central to the development and success of Union military strategy. From the start of the war, both sides had to contend with forces of nature, even as they battled one another. Northern soldiers encountered unfamiliar landscapes in the South that suggested, to them, an uncivilized society's failure to control nature. Under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan, the Union army increasingly targeted southern environments as the war dragged on. Whether digging canals, shooting livestock, or dramatically attempting to divert the Mississippi River, the Union aimed to assert mastery over nature by attacking the most potent aspect of southern identity and power--agriculture. Brady focuses on the siege of Vicksburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, marches through Georgia and the Carolinas, and events along the Mississippi River to examine this strategy and its devastating physical and psychological impact. Before the war, many Americans believed in the idea that nature must be conquered and subdued. Brady shows how this perception changed during the war, leading to a wider acceptance of wilderness. Connecting environmental trauma with the onset of American preservation, Brady pays particular attention to how these new ideas of wilderness can be seen in the creation of national battlefield memorial parks as unaltered spaces. Deftly combining environmental and military history with cultural studies, War upon the Land elucidates an intriguing, largely unexplored side of the nation's greatest conflict.

While fighting his way toward Atlanta, William T. Sherman encountered his biggest roadblock at Kennesaw Mountain, where Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee held a heavily fortified position. The opposing armies confronted each other from June 19 to July 3, 1864. Hess explains how this battle, with its combination of maneuver and combat, severely tried the patience and endurance of the common soldier and why Johnston's strategy might have been the Confederates' best chance to halt the Federal drive toward Atlanta.

No scholarly reference library is complete without a copy of Ancestry's Red Book. In it, you will find both general and specific information essential to researchers of American records. This revised 3rd edition provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization. Whether you are looking for your ancestors in the northeastern states, the South, the West, or somewhere in the middle, ""Ancestry's Red Book has information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide. In short, the ""Red Book is simply the book that no genealogist can afford not to have. The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail. Unlike the federal census, state and territorial census were taken at different times and different questions were asked. Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how""