Colonel Robert Michael Powell (1826-1916) of the 5th Texas Infantry Regiment was born in Alabama but moved to Texas in 1849 to practice law. When the war broke out, he was commissioned a captain in Company D, 5th Texas Infantry and was promoted to colonel and command of the regiment in November 1862. The 5th Texas, part of Jerome Robertson’s Texas Brigade, played a prominent role on July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg, where the 37-year-old Powell led 409 men into the caldron and made repeated efforts to mount Little Round Top. The regiment lost 54 killed, 112 wounded, and 45 missing or captured. Powell was wounded and captured on the slope of the rocky hill and was not paroled until weeks before the end of the war. Captain George Hillyer would survive the Civil War and one day become the mayor of Atlanta. That outcome looked almost impossible in early July 1863 at Gettysburg, where he led his regiment (part of George “Tige” Anderson’s brigade) in some of the most brutal fighting of the war. Hillyer and his men fought across the bloody Rose farm and into the Rose woods, and against Stony Hill. His description of the fighting is graphic, detailed, absolutely harrowing. This includes Hillyer’s full account, his official battle report, and a letter to his father about his experiences on July 2 and 3. Historian Greg Coco added detailed explanatory notes and a walking tour of ground over which Hillyer and his men walked and fought.

Although it was the Civil War’s second-largest battle, few books have been written about Chickamauga, and nothing like the thousands penned about the war’s largest and bloodiest battle at Gettysburg. You can count on two hands the number of authors who have tackled Chickamauga in any depth, and most of their works cover the entire battle. Left unmined and mostly forgotten are the experiences of specific brigades or regiments or state-affiliated troops. Scott Mingus’s and Joe Owen’s Unceasing Fury: Texans at the Battle of Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863, is the first full-length book to examine in detail the role of troops from the Lone Star State.Texas troops fought in almost every major sector of the sprawling Chickamauga battlefield - from the first attacks on September 18 on the bridges spanning the creek to the final attack on Snodgrass Hill on September 20, the third day of fighting. In between, Texas regiments launched attack after attack against Union lines at the Viniard farm, Poe Field, Kelly Field, and North Dyer Field. More than 4,400 Texans participated on foot and on horseback; one out of four fell there. Fortunately, many of the survivors left vivid descriptions of battle action, the anguish of losing friends, the pain and loneliness of being so far away from home, and their often-colorful opinions of their generals.The authors of this richly detailed study base their work on scores of personal accounts, memoirs, postwar newspaper articles, diaries, and other primary sources. Their meticulous work, which includes original maps, photos, and other illustrations, provides the first full exploration of the critical role Texas enlisted men and officers played in the three days of fighting near West Chickamauga Creek in September 1863. Unceasing Fury provides the Lone Star State soldiers with the recognition they have so long deserved.

Historian Greg Coco mined letter collections and diary entries to produce this small but fascinating anthology that demonstrates the humanity of the soldiers who marched to and fought through the great battle of Gettysburg.

Hundreds of firsthand accounts describing the gruesome appearance of the sprawling and horrific Gettysburg battlefield meticulously describe the true cost of Civil War combat. Greg Coco, the legendary expert on Gettysburg’s dead, painstakingly details the early round of burials, and explains how Southern remains were identified (whenever possible) and removed in the early 1870s. Six maps identify the location of more than 100 burial sites. Wasted Valor is a book difficult to put down, and impossible to forget.

William Royston Geise was a young Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1970s when he researched and wrote The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1865: A Study in Command in 1974. Although it remained unpublished, it was not wholly unknown. Deep-diving researchers were aware of Dr. Geise’s work and lamented the fact that it had never been published. In many respects, studies of the Trans-Mississippi Theater are only now catching up with Geise. This intriguing study traces the evolution of Confederate command and how it affected the shifting strategic situation and general course of the war. Dr. Geise accomplishes his task by coming at the question in a unique fashion. Military field operations are discussed as needed, but his emphasis is on the functioning of headquarters and staff – the central nervous system of any military command. This was especially so for the Trans-Mississippi. After July 1863, the only viable Confederate agency west of the great river was the headquarters at Shreveport. That hub of activity became the sole location to which all isolated players, civilians and military alike, could look for immediate overall leadership and a sense of Confederate solidarity. By filling these needs, the Trans-Mississippi Department assumed a unique and vital role among Confederate military departments and provided a focus for continued Confederate resistance west of the Mississippi River. The author’s work mining primary archival sources and published firsthand accounts, coupled with a smooth and clear writing style, helps explain why this remote department (referred to as “Kirby Smithdom” after Gen. Kirby Smith) failed to function efficiently, and how and why the war unfolded there as it did. Trans-Mississippi Theater historian and Ph.

Most studies of the Mississippi River focus on Union campaigns to open and control it, overlooking Southern attempts to stop them. Now in paperback, Neil Chatelain's Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865 is the other side of the story - the first modern full-length treatment of inland naval operations from the Confederate perspective. Confederate President Jefferson Davis realized the value of the Mississippi River and its entire valley, which he described as the "great artery of the Confederacy. " This key internal highway controlled the fledgling nation's transportation network. Davis and Stephen Mallory, his secretary of the navy, knew these vital logistical paths had to be held, and that they offered potential highways of invasion for Union warships and armies to stab their way deep into the heart of the Confederacy. To protect these arteries of rebellion, Southern strategy called for crafting a ring of powerful fortifications supported by naval forces. Different military branches, however, including the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Revenue Service, as well as civilian privateers and even state naval forces, competed for scarce resources to operate their own vessels. A lack of industrial capacity, coupled with a dearth of skilled labor, further complicated Confederate efforts and guaranteed the South's grand vision of deploying dozens of river gunboats and powerful ironclads would never be fully realized. Despite these limitations, the Southern war machine introduced numerous innovations and alternate defenses including the Confederacy's first operational ironclad, the first successful use of underwater torpedoes, widespread use of Army-Navy joint operations, and the employment of extensive river obstructions. When the Mississippi came under complete Union control in 1863, Confederate efforts shifted to its many tributaries, where a bitter and deadly struggle ensued to control these internal lifelines. Despite a lack of ships, material, personnel, funding, and unified organization, the Confederacy fought desperately and scored many localized tactical victories - often won at great cost - but failed at the strategic level. Chatelain, a former Navy Surface Warfare Officer, grounds his study in extensive archival and firsthand accounts, official records, and a keen understanding of terrain and geography. The result is a fast-paced, well-crafted, and endlessly fascinating account that is sure to please the most discriminating student of the Civil War.

Few Civil War generals attracted as much debate and controversy as Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard. He combined brilliance and charisma with arrogance and histrionics. He was a Catholic Creole in a society dominated by white Protestants, which made him appear exotic next to the likes of Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee.He was reviled by Jefferson Davis and often mocked by Mary Chesnut in her diary. Yet, he was popular with his soldiers and subordinates. Outside of Lee, he was the South’s most consistently successful commander, winning at Bull Run, defending Charleston in 1864, and defeating Benjamin Butler at Bermuda Hundred and Ulysses Grant and George Meade at Petersburg. Yet, he lived his life in the shadow of his one major defeat: Shiloh.Beauregard’s career before and after the war was no less tumultuous than his Civil War record. He was born among the Creole elite of Louisiana, but rejected the life of a planter in favor of the military, inspired by tales of Napoléon. He was considered a shining light of the antebellum army and performed superbly in the Mexican-American War. Yet, he complained about a lack of promotion and made a frustrating stab at being mayor of New Orleans in 1858.After the war, he was a successful railroad executive and took a stand against racism, violence, and corruption during Reconstruction. Yet, he was ousted from both railroads he oversaw and his foray into Reconstruction politics came to naught. Although he provided for his family and left them a hefty sum after his death, the money was mostly gained by working for the corrupt Louisiana Lottery.In Dreams of Victory: General P. G. T. Beauregard in the Civil War, Sean Michael Chick explores a life of contradictions and dreams unrealized—the first real hero of the Confederacy who sometimes proved to be his own worst enemy.

By the spring of 1864, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia had become battle-hardened, battle-weary foes locked in an ongoing stalemate. With the presidential election looming in the fall, President Abraham Lincoln needed to break the deadlock and so brought to the east the unassuming "dust-covered man" who had strung together victory after victory in the west: Ulysses S. Grant. "Well," said soldiers in the Army of the Potomac with a grudging respect for their Southern adversary, "Grant has never met Bobby Lee yet." Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant would come to symbolize the armies they led as the spring campaign got underway, and the clash that began in the Virginia Wilderness on May 5, 1864, turned into a long, desperate death-match that inexorably led to Appomattox Court House eleven months later. The war would come to an end, but at what cost along the way? Grant vs. Lee: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War recounts some of the most famous episodes and most compelling human dramas from the marquee match-up of the Civil War - not just the two most successful commanders produced by either side but the two largest and most fabled armies of the war.

In the popular memory, the end of the Civil War arrived at Appomattox with handshakes and amicable banter between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant - an honorable ceremony amongst noble warriors. And so it has been remembered to this day. But the war was not over. A larger and arguably more important surrender had yet to take place in North Carolina. This story occupies but little space in the vast annals of Civil War literature. As author Ernest A. Dollar Jr. ably explains in Hearts Torn Asunder: Trauma in the Civil War’s Final Campaign in North Carolina, the lens of modern science may reveal why. This war’s final campaign in North Carolina began on April 10, 1865, a day after Appomattox. More than 120,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were still in the field bringing war with them as they moved across North Carolina’s heartland. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was still out to destroy the South’s ability and moral stamina to make war. His unstoppable Union troops faced Maj. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s demoralized but still dangerous Confederate Army of Tennessee. Thousands of paroled Rebels, desperate, distraught, and destitute, added to the chaos by streaming into the state from Virginia. Grief-stricken civilians struggling to survive in a collapsing world were caught in the middle. The collision of these groups formed a perfect storm long ignored by those wielding pens. Hearts Torn Asunder explores the psychological experience of these soldiers and civilians during the chaotic closing weeks of the war. Their letters, diaries, and accounts reveal just how deeply the killing, suffering, and loss had hurt and impacted these people by the spring of 1865. The author deftly recounts the experience of men, women, and children who endured intense emotional, physical, and moral stress during the war’s dramatic climax. Their emotional, irrational, and often uncontrollable reactions mirror symptoms associated with trauma victims today, all of which combined to shape memory of the war’s end. Once the armies left North Carolina after the surrender, their stories faded with each passing decade, neither side looked back and believed there was much that was honorable to celebrate. Hearts Torn Asunder recounts at a very personal level what happened during those closing days that made a memory so painful that few wanted to celebrate, but none could forget.

"What If..

Jeffrey Hunt’s Meade and Lee After Gettysburg: The Forgotten Final Stage of the Gettysburg Campaign, from Falling Waters to Culpeper Court House, July 14-31, 1863 exposes for Civil War readers what has been hiding in plain sight for 150 years: The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but deep in central Virginia two weeks later along the line of the Rappahannock.Contrary to popular belief, once Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the swollen Potomac back to Virginia the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit—and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high wooded terrain. Doing so would trap Lee in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley and potentially bring about the decisive victory that had eluded Union arms north of the Potomac.The two weeks that followed was a grand chess match with everything at stake—high drama filled with hard marching, cavalry charges, heavy skirmishing, and set-piece fighting that threatened to escalate into a major engagement with the potential to end the war in the Eastern Theater. Throughout, one thing remains clear: Union soldiers from private to general continued to fear the lethality of Lee’s army.Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, the first of three volumes on the campaigns waged between the two adversaries from July 14 through the end of 1863, relies on Official Records, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other sources to provide a day-by-day account of this fascinating highstakes affair. The vivid prose, coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature.Thanks to Hunt these important two weeks—until now overshadowed by the battle of Gettysburg and almost completely ignored by writers of Civil War history—have finally gotten the attention they have long deserved. Readers will never view the Gettysburg Campaign the same way.

The diminutive Union XII Corps found significant success on the field at Antietam. Its soldiers swept through the East Woods and the Miller Cornfield, permanently clearing both of Confederates, repelled multiple Southern assaults against the Dunker Church plateau, and eventually secured a foothold beyond the Dunker Church in the West Woods. This important piece of high ground had been the Union objective all morning, and its occupation threatened the center and rear of Gen. Robert E. Lee's embattled Army of Northern Virginia. Federal leadership largely ignored this signal achievement and the opportunity it presented. The XII Corps' achievement is especially notable given its string of disappointments and hardships in the months leading up to Antietam. Cedar Mountain to Antietam: A Civil War Campaign History of the Union XII Corps, July – September 1862 by M. Chris Bryan is the story of the formation of this often luckless command as the II Corps in Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia on June 26, 1862. Bryan explains in meticulous detail how the corps came within a whisker of inflicting a crushing defeating against Maj. Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson at Cedar Mountain on August 9, suffered through the hardships of Pope's campaign before and after the Battle of Second Manassas, and its resurgence after entering Maryland and joining the reorganized Army of the Potomac. The men of this small corps, who would later wear a five-pointed star as their insignia, went on to earn a solid reputation in the Army of the Potomac at Antietam that would only grow during the battles of 1863.Bryan's study, a hybrid unit history and leadership and character assessment, puts the XII Corps' actions in proper context by providing significant and substantive treatment to its Confederate opponents. His unique study, based on extensive archival research, newspapers, and other important resources, is a compelling story of a little-studied yet consequential corps and fills a gaping historiographical gap that has longed needed to be filled.

Thousands of books and articles examine nearly every aspect of the Civil War, but the important retreat of the armies from the Gettysburg battlefield to the Potomac River has been but little covered. Until now, no one had produced a critical analysis of the command decisions made during that fateful time based upon available intelligence. “Lee is Trapped and Must be Taken”: Eleven Fateful Days after Gettysburg, July 4 to July 14, 1863, by Thomas J. Ryan and Richard R. Schaus, now available in paperback, rectifies this oversight. This comprehensive day-by-day account, which begins after the end of the Gettysburg battle, examines how Maj. Gen. George G. Meade organized and motivated his Army of the Potomac in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s mandate to bring about the “literal or substantial destruction” of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s defeated and retreating Army of Northern Virginia. As far as Lincoln was concerned, if Meade aggressively pursued and confronted Lee before he could escape across the flooded Potomac River, “the rebellion would be over.” The long and bloody three-day battle exhausted both armies. Both commanders faced the difficult tasks of rallying their troops for more marching and fighting. Lee had to keep his army organized and motivated enough to conduct an orderly withdrawal into Virginia. Meade faced the same organizational and motivational challenges with the added expectation of catching and defeating a still-dangerous enemy. Central to their decision-making was the information they received from their intelligence gathering resources about the movements, intentions, and capability of the enemy. The eleven-day period after Gettysburg was a battle of wits to determine which commander better understood the information he received and directed his army accordingly. Prepare for some surprising revelations. Ryan and Schaus rely on a host of primary sources to craft their study, including letters, memoirs, diaries, official reports, newspapers, and telegrams. The threading of these intelligence gems creates a gripping narrative with a significant amount of new information—which the authors use to offer their own direct and often damning conclusions. “Lee is Trapped and Must be Taken” is a sequel to Thomas Ryan’s Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign (Savas Beatie, 2015), the recipient of the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award and Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Distinguished Book Award.

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was the first Union officer killed in the American Civil War. When it happened, on May 24, 1861, the entire North was aghast. Ellsworth was a celebrity and had just finished traveling with his famed and entertaining U. S. Zouave Cadets drill team. They had performed at West Point, in New York City, and for President Buchanan before returning home to Chicago. Ellsworth then joined his friend and law mentor Abraham Lincoln in his quest for the presidency. When Lincoln put out the call for troops after Fort Sumter was fired upon, Ellsworth responded. Within days he was able to organize over a thousand New York firefighters into a regiment of volunteers. Was it youthful enthusiasm or a lack of formal training that resulted in his death? There is evidence on both sides. What is definite is that the Lincolns rushed to the Navy Yard to view the body of the young man they had loved as a son. Mary Lincoln insisted that he lie in state in the East Room of their home. The elite of New York brought flowers to the Astor House en memoriam. Six members of the 11th New York accompanied their commander’s coffin. When the young colonel’s remains were finally interred in the Hudson View Cemetery, the skies opened up. A late May afternoon thunderstorm broke out in the middle of the procession, referred to as “tears from God himself.” Only eight weeks later, the results of the battle of First Bull Run knocked Ellsworth out of the headlines. The trickle of blood had now become a torrent, not to end for four more years of war. Groeling’s well-written biography is grounded in years of examining archival resources, diaries, personal letters, newspapers, and other accounts. In the sixty intervening years since the last portrait of Ellsworth was written, new information has arisen that gives readers and historians a better understanding of the Ellsworth phenomenon. The author’s interwoven accounts of John Hay, George Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln, and the Lincoln family put Ellsworth clearly at the forefront of the excitement that led up to the election of a president. First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero examines every facet of Ellsworth’s complex, fascinating life. It is the story of many young men who fought and died for the Union. Elmer, however, was the first and - according to those who remember him - perhaps the best.

The Civil War was the first conflict in which railroads played a major role. Although much has been written about the role of railroads in general, little has been written about specific lines. The Cumberland Valley Railroad, for example, played an important strategic role by connecting Hagerstown, Maryland, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Its location enhanced its importance during some of the Civil War's most critical campaigns. Despite the line's significance to the Union war effort, its remarkable story remains little known. Now available in paperback, the publication of Targeted Tracks: The Cumberland Valley Railroad in the Civil War, 1861-1865, by Scott L. Mingus Sr. and Cooper H. Wingert, rectifies that oversight. Because of its proximity to major cities in the Eastern Theater, the Cumberland Valley Railroad was an enticing Confederate target. As invading armies jostled for position, the CVRR's valuable rolling stock was never far from the minds of Rebel leaders. Northern military and railway officials knew the line was a prized target and coordinated - and just as often butted heads - in a series of efforts to ensure the railroad's prized resources remained out of enemy hands. When they failed to protect the line, as they sometimes did, Southern horsemen wrought havoc on the Northern war effort by tearing up its tracks, seizing or torching Union supplies, and laying waste to warehouses, engine houses, and passenger depots. In October 1859, Abolitionist John Brown used the CVRR in his fateful Harpers Ferry raid. The line was under direct threat by invading Confederates during the Antietam Campaign, and the following summer suffered serious damage (and played a major logistical role) during the Gettysburg Campaign. In 1864, Rebel raiders burned much of its headquarters town at Chambersburg, including the homes of many CVRR employees. The railroad was as vital to residents of the bustling and fertile Cumberland Valley as it was to the Union war effort. Targeted Tracks is grounded on the railway's voluminous reports, letters and diaries of local residents and Union and Confederate soldiers, official reports, and newspaper accounts. The primary sources, combined with the expertise of the authors, bring this largely untold and engaging story to life.

In early August 1862, Confederate Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson took to the field with his Army of the Valley for one last fight—one that would also turn out to be his last independent command. Near the base of Cedar Mountain, in the midst of a blistering heat wave, outnumbered Federal Infantry under Maj.