Includes Civil War Map and Illustrations Pack – 224 battle plans, campaign maps and detailed analyses of actions spanning the entire period of hostilities. In this work, Dr. Howard Hensel has analyzed the national objectives, grand and national military strategies, and theater operations of the United States government and the Union army during the four year conflict. In addition to contributing to a better understanding of these aspects of Federal war policy, Dr. Hensel has drawn generalizable conclusions from the actions of the Washington politico-military leadership. Of particular interest is the typology of offensively oriented, generic military strategies constructed from the experience of the Federal high command and its armies during this traumatic war.

With a swiftly moving narrative style and perceptive analysis, The Sword of Lincoln is destined to become the modern account of the army that was so central to the history of the Civil War.

The Confederate sword of Lieutenant Colonel Axalla John Hoole, 8th S.C. Infantry, was engaged in many of the most important battles of the Civil War. Responding to the first call to arms, it was present at Fort Sumter and saw action at First Manassas, the Warwick-Yorktown Line, Williamsburg, Savage's Station, Malvern Hill, Harpers Ferry, Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. It fell silent on the last day of the Battle of Chickamauga, September 20, 1863, in the fierce fighting on the slopes of Snodgrass Hill. Fourteen decades and four generations later, the sword has returned to Chickamauga. Today it is handsomely displayed at the Chickamauga Battlefield Museum and Visitor Center, Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. This is its remarkable story, told by Dr. Elizabeth Hoole McArthur, educator, author, historian, and great-granddaughter of the soldier who carried it.

Drawing on previously unpublished letters written by John S. Kidder to his wife, Harriet, during the Civil War, James M. Greiner recounts the triumphs and tragedies endured by one New York family. Kidder, a carriage maker living in the rural village of Laurens, responded to President Lincoln's call in the summer of 1862 for more troops by personally recruiting over seventy men living nearby. Serving under Emory Upton, considered one of the most talented soldiers produced by the Union, Kidder was captain of Company I of the 121st New York Volunteers. The regiment saw action at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Rappahannock Station, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania. Kidder's letters home contain rich details of camp life, the difficulties of commanding men who had only recently been his neighbors, and the highs and lows associated with soldiering during the Civil War. They also reveal Harriet's struggle to maintain the family home and business due to the uncertainties of army pay.

Ted Tunnell's superbly researched biography of Marshall H. Twitchell is a major addition to Reconstruction literature. New England native, Union soldier, Freedmen's Bureau agent, and Louisiana planter, Twitchell became the radical political boss of Red River Parish in the 1870s. He forged an economic alliance with entrepreneurial Jewish merchants and rose to power during the first upswing of the southern economy after the war. The Panic of 1873, however, undermined his regime and virtually overnight the New Englander quickly went from financial benefactor to scapegoat for northwest Louisiana's failed dreams of prosperity. His life-and-death struggle with the notorious White League has more gut-wrenching suspense than most novels. The first full-length study of Twitchell, Edge of the Sword is edifying, entertaining, and cutting-edge scholarship.

Throughout history, people have picked up their pens and wielded their words--transforming their lives, their communities, and beyond. Now it's your turn! Representing a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, Mightier Than the Sword connects over forty inspiring biographies with life-changing writing activities and tips, showing readers just how much their own words can make a difference. Readers will explore nature with Rachel Carson, experience the beginning of the Reformation with Martin Luther, champion women's rights with Sojourner Truth, and many more. These richly illustrated stories of inspiring speechmakers, scientists, explorers, authors, poets, activists, and even other kids and young adults will engage and encourage young people to pay attention to their world, to honor their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace the transformative power of words to bring good to the world.

A beautiful woman, desired by two very different brothers, fights for the freedom of others in this spellbinding saga set during “Bleeding Kansas.” The daughter of abolitionists whose isolated cabin on the Kansas–Missouri border serves as a stop on the Underground Railroad, Deborah Whitlaw is devastated when pro-slavery marauders murder her parents. Yet she can no more extinguish the flame of justice that burns inside her than she can forget her mother and father. She vows to continue their fight, no matter the cost, and joins forces with a runaway black woman and a mission-educated Shawnee girl to spirit many fugitives northward. Deborah’s fiery personality attracts two aristocratic English brothers. Rolf Hunter is violent and indomitable; he wants to capture Deborah and bend her to his will. Dane is the polar opposite of his sibling. Honest, gentle, and idealistic, he wins Deborah’s heart, but their tender romance faces staggering obstacles in a state and nation lurching toward civil war. For a blessed interval, Deborah finds solace with Conrad, a German nobleman who has brought his peace-loving Mennonite tenants to Kansas to found a colony. But Rolf, now the head of a gang of pro-slavery bushwhackers, soon shatters Deborah’s idyll. Can she keep him from crushing not only her, but also her friends and the abolitionist cause they’ve risked their lives to support? A magnificent tale of love and honor, danger and destiny, Daughter of the Sword takes readers on a thrilling journey into the darkest chapter of American history and pays tribute to the brave men and women who led the nation back into the light.

When the 107th New York Volunteer Infantry arrived in Washington, D.C. in August 1862, President Lincoln personally honored them with a regimental banner. It was kept by Secretary of State William Seward and never saw a battlefield--the 107th Volunteers saw many. This book presents a day-to-day chronicle of the regiment's actions during the Civil War, from Antietam to Chancellorsville to Gettysburg to their deadliest fight at New Hope Church. At the Siege of Atlanta, where citizens dug furnished caves to escape the shelling, the 107th took fire from determined rebel snipers and were among the first troops to enter the city.

When the South bombarded Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Ellithorpe family in rural New York answered President Lincoln’s call to defend the Union. For the next four years, the two Ellithorpe brothers and two of their brothers-in-law fought in some of the Civil War’s most storied regiments, on nearly every major battlefield in the East. In this utterly unique Civil War history/biography, John A. Simpson reconstructs the intertwined lives and wars of four Union soldiers, from Bull Run to Gettysburg and beyond. When the Civil War broke out, Phillip Ellithorpe, Philander Ellithorpe, Asa Burleson, and Oliver Moore did not hesitate to volunteer to fight for the Union. Their service would encompass virtually every branch of the Northern army: infantry (including sharpshooters), cavalry (mounted and dismounted), and artillery as well as commissary, engineering, and ambulance duty. They would serve in six different regiments: the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves (the legendary Bucktails); the 27th New York Infantry (the Union Regiment); the 2nd New York Mounted Rifles; the 5th Vermont Infantry; the 1st New York Dragoons; and the 1st Minnesota, which gained immortality at Gettysburg. They would participate in the major battles of the war’s Eastern theater: First Bull Run, the Peninsula, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Grant’s Overland campaign through Petersburg. Phillip would die at Gettysburg, and the other three would return home and live under the shadow of the Civil War for the rest of their lives. All for the Union tells the dramatic story of these four soldiers, weaving their lives and wars into a tapestry of how one family navigated home front and battle front during the Civil War. Based on 180 family letters, voluminous primary and second sources, and visits to homes and battlefields from Allegany County, New York, to Richmond, Virginia, All for the Union is a remarkable contribution to Civil War history.