The American Civil War continues to be one of the most significant events in US history. In this title, readers will examine the memorable victories and defeats that marked the final years of the war for both the Union and Confederate forces. Engaging text introduces readers to the Wilderness Campaign, the Siege of Petersburg, Sherman's March to the Sea, the fall of Richmond, and ultimately, the Confederacy's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Chapters also explore the war's aftermath, including President Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the Reconstruction period of American history. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Abdo & Daughters is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

“The voices of soldiers, sailors and civilians, northerners and southerners, generals and privates, combine to create a distinctively American chorus.” —Publishers Weekly “How long must our dear land be desolated by the ravages and our bravest sacrificed upon thy altars?” What was it like to live through the turmoil of the Civil War as it exploded day by day? Robert Denney takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the years that disunited a nation. His chronological daily entries, abundantly illustrated with period images and maps, create an enthralling chronicle of the war’s evolution. At the same time, the words of actual participants caught in the crossfire—drawn from diaries, letters, and books—provide a moving and personal perspective on the larger narrative. “A fantastically detailed day by day account of the Civil War . . . bring[s] the war to life.” —History of War “This imposing volume is a useful record of the war years.” —Civil War History

From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning history A Stillness at Appomattox, an electrifying account of the end of the Civil War—Grant and Lee’s final maneuvers as four years of internecine conflict inched to a close. “The end of the war was like the beginning, with the army marching down the open road under the spring sky.” Here is the triumphant close of Bruce Catton’s history of the Army of the Potomac, the major Union army that fought and ultimately won the war. In the spring of 1865, the war was in its endgame, as Grant broke through the defenses at Petersburg and chased Lee’s army for the final clash. Meanwhile, Lee had one final option open to him: escape to North Carolina and join up with General Joe Johnston or otherwise accept defeat. Here are the war’s final days and minutes, the race to the finish of America’s bloodiest years.

A vivid look at the wartime experiences of a Jewish woman in the Confederate South Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than marriage. She was American born when most American Jews were immigrants. She affirmed and maintained her dedication to Jewish religious practice and Jewish faith while many family members embraced Christianity. Yet she also lived well within the social parameters established for Southern white women, espoused Southern values, and owned enslaved African Americans. The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai is one of the few surviving Civil War diaries by a Jewish woman in the antebellum South. It charts her daily life and her evolving perspective on Confederate nationalism and Southern identity, Jewishness, women’s roles in wartime, gendered domestic roles in slave-owning households, and the centrality of family relationships. While never losing sight of the racist social and political structures that shaped Emma Mordecai’s world, the book chronicles her experiences with dislocation and the loss of her home. Bringing to life the hospital visits, food shortages, local sociability, Jewish observances, sounds and sights of nearby battles, and the very personal ramifications of emancipation and its aftermath for her household and family, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai offers a valuable and distinct look at a unique historical figure from the waning years of the Civil War South.

Anna Kingsley's life story adds a dramatic chapter to histories of the South, the state of Florida, and the African diaspora. Working from surprisingly extensive records, including information and photographs from extended-family members and descendants, Daniel Shafer reconstructs and documents one slave’s remarkable story. Both an American slave and a slaveowner--and possibly an African princess--Anna was a teenager when she was captured in her homeland of Senegal in 1806 and sold into slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a planter and slave trader from Spanish East Florida, bought her in Havana, Cuba, and took her to his St. Johns River plantation in northeast Florida, where she soon became his household manager, his wife, and eventually the mother of four of his children. Her husband formally emancipated her in 1811, and she became the owner of her own farm and twelve slaves the following year. For 25 years, life on her farm and at the Kingsley plantation on Fort George Island was relatively tranquil. But when Florida passed from Spanish to American control, and racism and discrimination increased in the American territories, Anna Kingsley and her children migrated to a colony in Haiti established by her husband as a refuge for free blacks. Amid the spiraling racial tensions of the antebellum period, Anna returned to north Florida, where she bought and sold land, sued white people in the courts, and became a central figure in a free black community. Such accomplishments by a woman in a patriarchal society are fascinating in themselves. To have achieved them as a woman of color is remarkable.

In A Late Encounter with the Civil War, Michael Kreyling confronts the changing nature of our relationship to the anniversary of the war that nearly split the United States. When significant anniversaries arrive in the histories of groups such as families, businesses, or nations, their members set aside time to formally remember their shared past. This phenomenon—this social or collective memory—reveals as much about a group's sense of place in the present as it does about the events of the past. So it is with the Civil War. As a nation, we have formally remembered two Civil War anniversaries, the 50th and 100th. We are now in the complicated process of remembering the war for a third time. Kreyling reminds us that we were a different “we” for each of the earlier commemorations, and that “we” are certainly different now, and not only because the president in office for the 150th anniversary represents a member of the race for whose emancipation from slavery the war was waged. These essays explore the conscious and unconscious mechanisms by which each era has staged, written, and thought about the meaning of the Civil War. Kreyling engages the not-quite-conscious agendas at work in the rituals of remembering through fiction, film, graphic novels, and other forms of expression. Each cultural example wrestles with the current burden of remembering: What are we attempting to do with a memory that, to many, seems irrelevant or so far in the past as to be almost irretrievable?

As the Civil War's toll mounted, an antiquated medical system faced a deluge of sick and wounded soldiers. In response, the United States created a national care system primarily funded and regulated by the federal government. When New Haven, Connecticut, was chosen as the site for a new military hospital, Pliny Adams Jewett, next in line to become chief of surgery at Yale, sacrificed his private practice and eventually his future in New Haven to serve as chief of staff of the new thousand-bed Knight U.S. General Hospital. The "War Governor," William Buckingham, personally financed hospital construction while supporting needy soldiers and their families. He appointed state agents to scour battlefields and hospitals to ensure his state's soldiers got the best care while encouraging their transfer to the hospital in New Haven. This history of the hospital's construction and operation during the war discusses the state of medicine at the time as well as the administrative side of providing care to sick and wounded soldiers.

Architecture in the Digital Age addresses contemporary architectural practice in which digital technologies are radically changing how buildings are conceived, designed and produced. It discusses the digitally-driven changes, their origins, and their effects by grounding them in actual practices already taking place, while simultaneously speculating about their wider implications for the future. The book offers a diverse set of ideas as to what is relevant today and what will be relevant tomorrow for emerging architectural practices of the digital age.

Alfred Emory Lee, an aspiring attorney recently graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, resolved to do his part to restore the Union. Lee enlisted in Co. I of the 82nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry in November 1861 and so begins this incredible journey through the Civil War. Lee was commissioned as an officer and wrote home frequently, leaving a fascinating record of the lengthy list of battles in which his regiment participated, including McDowell, Cross Keys, Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, (where Lee was severely wounded and captured on the first day of the battle), Wauhatchie, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, Culp's Farm, Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, Savannah, Averysboro, and Bentonville. Alfred E. Lee's Civil War draws from Lee's copious wartime correspondence and his post war writings to present a detailed and insightful portrait of the war as fought both east and west.

See how Fort Lesley J. McNair withstood the trials, tribulations and test of time and continues to protect our nation's capital today. From southeast Washington, DC, where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet, Fort Lesley J. McNair still protects America's capital. In 1791, Pierre L'Enfant designated it as a military reservation. The post is the third oldest in continuous operation--as an arsenal, a penitentiary, a hospital, and now, a military education center. It was renamed in 1948 to honor Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, who was killed in World War II. Over the course of two centuries, the fort has borne witness to the British ransacking during the War of 1812; a Civil War explosion that killed female arsenal workers; and the incarceration, trial, and hanging of Lincoln assassination conspirators. Over time, it became the home of several artillery commands, the first federal penitentiary, the US Army Engineer School, the US Army Music School, the US Army War College and the US Army Band (Pershing's Own). Today, it has evolved into the National Defense University, Inter-American Defense College and the headquarters of the Military District of Washington.