Confederate General Joseph Eggleston Johnston’s brilliance in adapting to the evolving art of war set him apart as one of the Civil War’s most innovative strategists. Johnston keenly understood the revolutionary impact of new technologies—rifled muskets, railroads, telegraphs, and trench warfare-and applied these insights to conserve the South’s most critical resource: its soldiers. His motto, “Let the place go, and save the garrison,” encapsulated his belief in prioritizing manpower over territory; he was convinced of the importance of concentrating force to overcome the advantage in numbers the Union enjoyed. Johnston’s reputation as a master tactician was widely recognized, even by his adversaries. Renowned British war correspondent Sir William Howard Russell lauded him in 1861 as the Confederacy’s finest strategist. Years later, Union General Ulysses S. Grant conceded that Johnston caused him more anxiety than any other Southern commander, stating, “Take it all in all, the South, in my opinion, had no better soldier than Joe Johnston—none at least that gave me more trouble.”Despite his genius, Johnston’s career was marred by his fraught relationship with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis was critical of Johnston and his meddling undermined Johnston’s strategies and weakened the Southern war effort. As noted by his contemporary, General James Longstreet, Johnston’s talents for army command and campaign management were unparalleled, but he was denied the opportunities afforded to others. This book argues that with proper support and alignment of leadership, Johnston’s innovative strategies might have altered the course of the war.Widely regarded as the first modern war, the Civil War demanded visionary leadership. This new biography of Johnston sheds light on his legacy as a brilliant leader, offering a fresh perspective on a conflict that defined a nation.

During the Revolutionary War, East Florida was a strategic staging ground for the British campaigns in the south. Early in the war, George Washington recognized the strategic importance of neutralizing this loyalist outpost, before its proximity to Georgia and the Carolinas could create problems for the Patriots. East Florida was a haven for runaway slaves, a paradox considering the large, enslaved population in the colony. Following Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation of freedom for slaves that fled behind British lines and took up arms, the colony’s African-American population swelled and former slaves as well as natives were readily armed to fight against the Continental Army and other Patriots.East Florida saw two major battles during these campaigns, as well as multiple skirmishes and much political intrigue. While East Florida stayed loyal to the crown there were significant Patriot sympathies in the colony’s political leadership. The East Florida Rangers, a loyalist militia unit raised to defend the colony from Patriot incursions, were successful in raiding Georgia and in one such incursion sacked Augusta and came within sight of Savannah.Three signers of the Declaration of Independence were held prisoner in St Augustine, the capital of East Florida, after the British capture of Charleston. After the battle of Yorktown, East Florida became a loyalist haven and was also the site of the last battle of the war—a naval battle off the Florida coast in 1783.Fully illustrated with photographs, artwork and maps, this volume explores the multiple invasions of British East Florida by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 was critical in determining the outcome of the American Civil War and helped reelect Abraham Lincoln that November, assuring eventual victory. The largely overlooked campaign in Georgia has seen a resurgence of interest in the past decade. Dennis B. Conklin adds to the growing literature with Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.Conklin’s account, which originally appeared as a Ph.D. dissertation, offers a look at the dysfunctional relationships that permeated upper echelon leadership and helped lead to the defeat of the Army of Tennessee and the loss of the important logistical rail city. Crucial flaws in Jefferson Davis’s leadership in general, he explains, and the mutual distrust between the Southern president and Joseph E. Johnston (commander of the Army of Tennessee), had them working at cross purposes. As the campaign progressed and large swaths of territory were lost to Gen. William T. Sherman’s advancing armies, the ongoing hostile relationship between Davis, Johnston, corps commander John Bell Hood, and Georgia’s Governor Joseph Brown intensified.Davis’s initial uneasiness with Johnston at the helm was part of the reason he elevated Hood to lead an infantry corps in the primary Western army before the campaign opened. Hood, who matured as a tactical commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under the aggressive Robert E. Lee, grew increasingly frustrated by Johnston’s withdrawals, leading to what Conklin believes was their inevitable clash at Cassville—a critical dispute fueled by inconsistent maps and conflicting battlefield ideologies. The resultant letters to and from key players in Richmond did nothing to increase Davis’s faith in Johnston’s leadership and contributed to Hood’s eventual elevation to command of the army.Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command is a fascinating fast-paced study on the politics of command, human nature, and the stress of war, and how it all combined to influence the outcome of the Civil War’s most important campaign.

The weeks of bloody maneuvering and fighting along the Delaware River at Fort Mercer, Fort Mifflin, and Gloucester receive but scant attention in the literature of the American Revolution. The same is true for the five-day Whitemarsh operation and other important events in December 1777. Award-winning author Michael C. Harris’s impressive Fighting for Philadelphia: Forts Mercer and Mifflin, the Battle of Whitemarsh, and the Road to Valley Forge, October 5-December 19, 1777 rescues these important actions from obscurity, puts them in context with the Saratoga Campaign, and closes his magnificent trilogy that began with Brandywine and left off with Germantown.This period of the war began when General Sir William Howe’s army of 16,500 British and Hessian soldiers set out aboard a 265-ship armada from New York to capture Philadelphia in late July 1777. Six difficult weeks later, Howe landed near Elkton, Maryland, moved north into Pennsylvania, and defeated Washington’s army in the large battle at Brandywine on September 11. Philadelphia fell to the British.On October 4, Washington launched a successful surprise attack obscured by darkness and a heavy morning fog against the British garrison at Germantown. The recapture of the colonial capital seemed within Washington’s grasp until poor battlefield decisions brought about a reversal of fortune and a clear British victory. Like Brandywine, however, the bloody Germantown scrap proved Continental soldiers could stand toe-to-toe with British Regulars. What followed was a protected quasi-siege of the British garrison in Germantown prior to the travails soon to come that winter at Valley Forge.Harris’s Fighting for Philadelphia is the first complete study to merge the strategic, political, and tactical history of the complex operations sandwiched between Germantown and the arrival of the Continental Army at Valley Forge. Harris’s sweeping prose relies almost exclusively on original archival research and a deep personal knowledge of the terrain, highlighted by eighteen original maps, illustrations, and modern photos. Told largely through the words of those who fought there, Fighting for Philadelphia is sure to please the most discriminating reader and assume its place as one of the finest military studies of its kind.

The Brennans have done it again. Gettysburg in Color: Sacred Ground, 1863-1938 completes this groundbreaking trilogy.Patrick Brennan, a long-time student of the Civil War and editorial advisor for The Civil War Monitor magazine, with his technology-astute daughter Dylan Brennan, brought Gettysburg into the 21st century with Gettysburg in Color: Vol. 1: Brandy Station to the Peach Orchard, and Vol. 2: The Wheatfield to Falling Waters. The third and final entry examines the battlefield’s transformation from post-battle Hell to American shrine.The Brennans used an artificial intelligence-based computerized color identifier to determine the general color of uniforms, flesh, hair, equipment, terrain, houses, and much more. More research honed in on the exact colors. The result is a monumental full-color study of the important three-day battle like it has never been seen before.The deep colorization of battle-related woodcuts, for example, reveals a plethora of details that have passed generations of eyes unseen. The photos of the soldiers, their officers, and the returning veterans look as if they were taken yesterday.Gettysburg in Color: Sacred Ground, 1863-1938 details the meandering and fascinating story up to the eve of World War II by surveying the post-battle cleanup, the establishment of the National Cemetery, land acquisition and the monument movement, the three major anniversary celebrations, Camp Colt and the Marine reenactment of 1922, and the creation of the National Military Park. Even the effects of the automobile revolution and its deep impact on the park are covered in entertaining detail.This sweeping installment closes the series, which every student of history in general, and the Civil War in particular, will want to own for a lifetime.

At a regimental reunion in 1880, former Confederate Brigadier General Samuel McGowan lauded the 12th South Carolina Infantry as “The finest of that immortal army,” “foremost in the charge,” and “the invincible Twelfth.” The 12th regiment was part of McGowan’s Brigade from early 1863 through the end of the war. The aging brigadier, wounded four times in combat, was an authority on the regiment’s reputation. “It would be impossible on an occasion of this kind, to give anything like a history of the Twelfth Regiment, or tell half of its gallant deeds. That,” he declared, “would require a volume.” With Benjamin L. Cwayna’s The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia, that volume has finally arrived.The field career of the regiment kicked off with an embarrassing defeat in its first engagement on the South Carolina coast in 1861 at Port Royal Sound. The demoralizing event could have set the regiment on a path of self-fulfilling failure and disaster, but a change in colonels from a perpetually absent political appointee to a scrappy legislator born and bred in the upcountry turned the tide. Dixon Barnes instilled discipline and strong leadership in the unit and began a transformational process that turned the raw recruits into some of the Confederacy’s most reliable soldiers.The 12th was transferred to what would become Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and was brigaded with four other regiments from the Palmetto State. Together, they fought in nearly every major engagement of the war in the Eastern Theater. The 12th earned a high reputation within the army for drill and discipline, and was well known for its impetuous, devastating, and sometimes reckless attacks and counterattacks. That penchant for taking the fight to the enemy came at a bloody price. By the end of the war, only 149 of the nearly 1,400 men who served in the ranks of the regiment surrendered at Appomattox Court House.Author Cwayna based his study on fifteen years of diligent research, mining every available primary source for information to painstakingly construct the 12th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry’s history from its formation in 1861 until its last official reunion in the 1880s and beyond. Through the words of its soldiers and officers, the stories of long and arduous marches, lack of food, horrendous and unimaginable carnage in battle, and a singular focus on continuing the struggle to gain independence at any cost and under innumerable odds takes shape. The Invincible Twelfth is the story of a remarkable regiment which has long deserved to have its story told.

His friends called him “Sam.” His wife called him “Ulyss.” His initials suggested a name evocative of one of his most important battlefield successes: “‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant. ”Ulysses S. Grant didn’t think he’d even have an opportunity to get into the war, yet, by the time it ended, he commanded every soldier serving in the United States Army. Along the way he racked up impressive victories, learned from valuable mistakes, broke the back of the Confederacy, survived the backbiting of his immediate superior, and earned the respect and support of the president. “Grant is my man and I am his the rest of the war!” exclaimed Abraham Lincoln after the particularly vital victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi.Grant came from humble beginnings along the Ohio River, made a military name for himself near that river’s confluence with the Mississippi, and went on to use “the Father of Waters” to split the Confederacy in two. That effort set him on the road to Chattanooga, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, the long siege of Petersburg, and Appomattox Court House in some of the war’s most intense and infamous battles. In less than three years, the non-descript and unimpressive colonel of a regiment of Illinois volunteers rose to become the highest-ranking officer in the army and the first permanent lieutenant general since George Washington. His ultimate victory set him on a path to two terms in the White House—a far cry from that small clapboard house in which he was born.His meteoric rise from obscurity made Ulysses S. Grant the ultimate man of irony. Unassuming. Unpretentious. Unwilling to retreat. “There will be no turning back,” he once famously declared.Unconditional Surrender allows readers to walk in Grant’s footsteps with Dr. Curt Fields, the nation’s foremost Ulysses S. Grant living historian. Fields has offered a first-person portrayal of Grant since February 2010. Distilled within these pages are years of extensive study that offer an ideal introduction to the “dust-covered man” from the West who won the Civil War and saved the United States.

Tens of thousands of books have been published on the Civil War. In an effort to list some of the most important titles, in 1997 the University of Illinois Press published The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography, by David J. Eicher. This well-received reference work includes books published through mid-1995. As anyone who has studied this era knows, a vast number of significant books have been published since that time—hence the need for this updated bibliography.Walter Westcote’s Books on the American Civil War Era: A Critical Bibliography includes nearly 3,000 books, most of which have been published since the appearance of Eicher’s groundbreaking 1997 study. Topics are wide-ranging and organized into easy-to-use categories, so readers can find exactly what they are seeking. Organisational categories include battles and campaigns (all theatres, including naval actions), Confederate and Union memoirs and biographies, general works on a vast array of topics, state and local studies, and unit histories. Readers will also be pleased to find a list of classic studies published before 1995, as well as more than 200 books that represent a continuation of a series begun prior to that time, and the completion of the Supplement to the Records of the War of the Rebellion, which consisted of twenty volumes in 1995 but now exceeds 100. Each account lists the author or editor, title, date of original publication (and reprint, if any), publisher, page count, and a short summary of its contents.

In America, before the United States was established, there were a small number of select people and events that made such an impact on the great issues of the day that they changed the course of history. One such event was colonial Boston’s battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775. And, indisputably, the most important actor in that event was Massachusetts native Colonel William Prescott. Prescott was a humble and noble man of high integrity, a descendent of one of America’s earliest families, and an ardent patriot beloved by those who knew him best. The brave and determined stand made by Prescott and his hodgepodge of mostly inexperienced fighters, against a far more formidable British military force, demonstrated the American fighting spirit and spurred the drive for independence. Although Prescott's men twice threw back British assaults on their defenses, they were forced to retreat during a third assault. Prescott was one of the last to leave their makeshift fort, defending himself against the British bayonets with his triangular-bladed short sword. Prescott survived the famous battle and, as few others could claim, participated in a series of major events during the Revolutionary Era and the eventual establishment of the United States Constitution.While Bunker Hill has remained a touchstone, time and subsequent events have caused Prescott’s fame gradually to fade from memory. But were it not for Prescott’s extraordinary efforts in June 1775 the drive for Liberty might well have been delayed, if not abandoned altogether. This book tells the story of Prescott’s extraordinary life in an attempt to revive the legacy and fame of this true American hero.

“It is glorious to see such courage in one so young!”So exclaimed Confederate General Robert E. Lee on December 13, 1862, during the battle of Fredericksburg as he watched Major John Pelham fight at least five Union batteries with just one lone gun. The dashing and handsome 24-year-old Alabama officer earned the compliments and admiration of his men, the war-gods of Virginia (Lee, Jackson, and Stuart), and Southern society—all while helping transform the concept of horse artillery on Civil War battlefields across Virginia and Maryland.After Pelham’s sudden death in 1863, his place in Lost Cause memory soared and admirers firmly elevated him into the upper ranks of the Confederate pantheon. His status as a Lost Cause hero exacted a price—admirers transformed Pelham’s memory into “the beau ideal of Confederate arms,” sometimes altering and clouding the realities of his life. His memory has been trapped there ever since—until now.In Glorious Courage, historian Sarah Kay Bierle reconsiders Pelham’s extraordinary, if short, life by drawing on primary and other sources and her extensive knowledge of the battlefields. Pelham’s zest for living carried him from Alabama to the military academy at West Point, while his zeal in command of the Stuart Horse Artillery earned him well-deserved plaudits. But like every other man who served the Confederate cause, the remarkable young officer was a human being with flaws. He deserves his place in history as he lived it, not varnished with the perspectives shoved upon him by later generations.

On the eve of the Civil War, the London Times informed its readers that Castle Pinckney has “been kept garrisoned, not to protect Charleston from naval attack from the ocean, but to serve as a bridle upon the city.” Located on a marshy island in the center of Charleston’s magnificent harbor, the large cannons on the ramparts of this horseshoe-shaped masonry fort had the ability to command downtown Charleston and the busy wharves along East Bay Street. This inescapable fact made Castle Pinckney an important chess piece in the secession turmoil of 1832 and 1850, and in the months leading up to the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter. Now in paperback, Holding Charleston by the Bridle: The History of Castle Pinckney from 1811 Through the Civil War to the Present Day by Cliff Roberts and Matthew Locke is the first book on the subject, from the fort’s innovative design as part of America’s “Second System” of coastal fortifications to the modern challenges of preserving its weathered brick walls against rising sea levels. The impressive bastion was constructed as a state-of-the-art seacoast fortress on the eve of the War of 1812. President James Monroe and Gens. Winfield Scott, Robert E. Lee, and P. G. T. Beauregard inspected its casemates and barracks. The history of Pinckney is as impressive as its list of visiting VIPs.Defending the fort was one of Winfield Scott’s major concerns during the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Seminole Indians and Africans from the illegal slave ship Echo were held there. In 1860, Maj. Robert Anderson knew the fort was the key to protecting his small Federal garrison at Fort Moultrie, but his requests to Washington for troops to hold the Castle went unheeded. That December, three companies of Charleston militia scaled and seized the fort in a daring act that pushed the nation to the edge of civil war. After First Manassas (Bull Run), 156 captured Yankee officers and enlisted men were sent to the island, and in 1863, members of the famed 54th Massachusetts were held there as POWs. The fort’s guns helped defend the city during the war’s longest siege. By 1865, the old fortress had been transformed into an earthen barbette battery with a rifled Brooke gun and three giant 10” Columbiads. During Reconstruction, the Castle became an “American Bastille” for Southerners accused of crimes against the government.Roberts and Locke rely on extensive primary research and archaeological evidence to tell the full story of the Castle for the first time. Given its importance to America’s history, it is a history long overdue.

The nine-month siege of Petersburg was the longest continuous operation of the Civil War. Contrary to popular belief, it was anything but static trench warfare, as John Horn ably demonstrates in Lee Besieged: Grant’s Second Petersburg Offensive, June 18-July 1, 1864. Large-scale Union “offensives”—grand maneuvers that triggered some of the large-scale battles—broke the monotony of siege warfare. Once his First Offensive (the assaults of June 15-18) failed to capture the city, the Union commander planned and launched his next major effort within hours. This Second Offensive was one of the most dramatic operations of the entire war.To pave the way for success, Grant brought the city’s bridges under the fire of his siege guns to slow the transfer of enemy troops in and out of Petersburg. He also seized a bridgehead at Deep Bottom on James River’s north bank to draw Confederate forces out of Petersburg by menacing Richmond. Next, he took more ambitious measures by sending infantry to hem in Petersburg from the Appomattox River above and below the city. The move was designed to cut the critical Weldon and South Side railroads and force the Rebels to abandon Petersburg and Richmond. As his infantry went to work, his cavalry set out to cut the Confederate railroads below Petersburg to slow reinforcements coming up from the south and west.Grant’s opponent, however, was General Robert E. Lee with his veteran infantry, not the inept John Floyd of Fort Donelson or the distracted John C. Pemberton of Vicksburg. Lee and his infantry subordinate William Mahone marched to meet the enemy and in a stunning turn of events routed Grant’s foot soldiers at Jerusalem Plank Road. Together, Confederate cavalry leader Wade Hampton and Mahone smashed Grant’s troopers at the battles of Sappony Church and First Reams Station. Thousands of Federal prisoners of war flooded into Confederate camps. Not until April 1865, after seven more offensives, would Grant reach the Appomattox above Petersburg and force Lee to relinquish that city and the capital of Richmond.This is tactical battle action at is finest. Horn’s explanation for the context and consequences of every decision is grounded in hundreds of primary sources and supported by 40 original maps. Lee Besieged: Grant’s Second Petersburg Offensive, June 18-July 1, 1864 is the first full-length book to put Grant’s second effort into its proper perspective—not only in the context of Petersburg’s siege and the Civil War, but in the context of warfare’s history.

The fighting on the first day at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, was unexpected, heavy, confusing, and in many ways, decisive. Much of it consisted of short and often separate simultaneous engagements or “firefights,” a term soldiers often use to describe close, vicious, and bloody combat. Several books have studied this important inaugural day of Gettysburg, but none have done so from the perspective of the rank and file of both armies. Now in paperback, John Michael Priest’s “Strong Men of the Regiment Sobbed Like Children”: John Reynolds’ I Corps at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 rectifies this oversight in splendid style.When dawn broke on July 1, no one on either side could have conceived what was about to take place. Anticipating a fight and with a keen appreciation for terrain, Brig. Gen. John Buford deployed his Union cavalry in a giant arc north and west of Gettysburg to slow down any Confederate advance until Maj. Gen. John Reynolds could bring up his infantry. By the time the foot soldiers of the I Corps arrived, A. P. Hill’s heavy Confederate formations had pushed back the troopers from the west. Richard Ewell’s troops would soon arrive from the north, threatening the town and its key road network. Reynolds, who would die early in the fighting, poured his troops in as they arrived. The road system and undulating ground broke up command control, and the various ridges, tall ground cover, and powder smoke made target recognition difficult. Brigades and regiments often engaged on their own initiatives without the direction of a division or corps commander. The men of both armies fought with determination born of desperation, valor, and fear. By the time the fighting ended, the I Corps was in shambles and in pell-mell retreat for Cemetery Hill. Its bold stand, together with the XI Corps north of town, bought precious hours for the rest of the Army of the Potomac to arrive and occupy good defensive ground.Priest, who Edwin Bearss hailed as “the Ernie Pyle of the Civil War,” spent a decade researching this study and walking the ground to immerse readers into the uncertain world of the rank-and-file experience. He consulted more than 300 primary sources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper accounts, recollections, casualty lists, and drill manuals to present the battle from the ground up. Nineteen detailed regimental-level maps illustrate the ebb and flow of the battle. The result is a fast-paced narrative sure to please the most demanding students of the Civil War. The footnotes alone are worth the price of admission.Readers will close the book with a full understanding of why a veteran New Yorker spoke for the survivors of both armies when he wrote, “Strong men of the regiment sobbed like children.”

When Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland in early September 1862, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan moved his reorganized and revitalized Army of the Potomac to meet him. The campaign that followed included some of the most dramatic marching and influential combat of the entire Civil War. Combined with Southern failures in the Western Theater, the fighting dashed the Confederacy's best hope for independence, convinced President Abraham Lincoln to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, and left America with what is still its bloodiest day in history.One of the campaign's participants was Ezra A. Carman, the colonel of the 13th New Jersey Infantry. Wounded earlier in the war, Carman would achieve brigade command and fight in more than twenty battles before being mustered out as a brevet brigadier general. After the horrific fighting of September 17, 1862, he recorded in his diary that he was preparing "a good map of the Antietam battle and a full account of the action." Unbeknownst to the young officer, the project would become the most significant work of his life.Appointed as the "Historical Expert" to the Antietam Battlefield Board in 1894, Carman and the other members solicited accounts from hundreds of veterans, scoured through thousands of letters and maps, and assimilated the material into the hundreds of cast iron tablets that still mark the field today. Carman also wrote an 1,800-page manuscript on the campaign, from its start in northern Virginia through McClellan's removal from command in November 1862. Although it remained unpublished for more than a century, many historians and students of the war consider it to be the best overall treatment of the campaign ever written.Dr. Thomas G. Clemens (editor), recognized internationally as one of the foremost historians of the Maryland Campaign, has spent more than two decades studying Antietam and editing and richly annotating Carman's exhaustively written manuscript. The result is The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Carman's magisterial account published for the first time in paperback in three volumes. Jammed with sweeping prose, firsthand accounts, personal anecdotes, and old-fashioned footnotes, together with stunning original maps and photos, this long-awaited study will be read and appreciated as battle history at its finest.

Antietam is the eagerly awaited second volume of Ezra Carman's magisterial The Maryland Campaign of September 1862.Many authors have written about the climactic September 17 battle of the 1862 invasion of Maryland, but it is impossible to do so without referencing Carman's sweeping and definitive maps and 1,800-page manuscript. His work guides every Civil War historian and comprises the basis of the National Park Service's interpretive programs at Antietam. Indeed, even the basic layout of the National Park battlefield was based upon Carman's groundbreaking work. Carman had the advantage of not only participating in the battle as a colonel in the Union army, but knowing, corresponding, and conversing with hundreds of Northern and Southern soldiers from corps commanders all the way down to privates. Over the decades he amassed a vast collection of letters, maps, and personal memoirs from many key participants. He used this treasure trove of firsthand accounts to create his compelling narrative. No one has devoted more time and effort to understanding what happened at Antietam than did Ezra Carman - the campaign's first true historian.Unfortunately, Carman did not always note from where he obtained his information, making the authenticity and reliability of his work problematic. Editor Thomas G. Clemens, recognized internationally as one of the foremost historians of the Maryland Campaign, has spent more than two decades studying Antietam and editing and richly annotating Carman's exhaustively written manuscript. As Clemens discovered, Carman used his sources judiciously, and the stories he relates withstand scrutiny for accuracy and reliability.Carman's invaluable prose is augmented by his detailed maps of the dawn to nearly dusk fighting on September 17, which have never appeared in their original form in any book on the battle. Even more exciting are the newly discovered 19th century photographs authorized by Carman to document his work laying out the battlefield, a haunting visual record of how the battlefield appeared to Carman as he tried to unravel its mysteries.The result is The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Antietam, the most comprehensive and detailed account of the battle ever produced, now in paperback. Jammed with firsthand accounts, personal anecdotes, detailed footnotes, maps, and photos, this long-awaited study will be read and appreciated as battle history at its finest. Indeed, we will never see such a study again.

Shepherdstown Ford and the End of the Campaign is the third and final volume of Ezra Carman's magisterial The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, superbly edited and annotated by Dr. Tom Clemens.The battle of Antietam was bloody and horrific, but as Carman makes clear, he did not believe it was the decisive battle of the sprawling 1862 campaign. Generals Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan intended to continue fighting after Sharpsburg, but the battle of Shepherdstown Ford (September 19-20) forced them to abandon their goals and end the campaign. Carman was one of the few who gave this smaller engagement its due importance by detailing the disaster that befell the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry, Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill's success in repulsing the Union advance, and the often overlooked foray of Jeb Stuart's cavalry to seize the Potomac River ford at Williamsport.Carman includes an invaluable statistical study of the casualties in the various battles of the entire Maryland Campaign, and covers President Lincoln's decision to relieve General McClellan of command on November 7. He also explores the relations between the president and McClellan before and after the Maryland Campaign, which he appended to his original manuscript. His thorough examination of the controversy about McClellan's role in the aftermath of Second Manassas campaign will surprise some and discomfort others, as might his insightful narrative about McClellan's reluctance to commit General Franklin's corps to aid Maj. Gen. John Pope's army at Manassas. Carman concludes his account with an executive summary of the entire campaign.This magisterial study concludes with Dr. Clemens' invaluable bibliographical dictionary, a genealogical goldmine of personal information about the soldiers, politicians, and diplomats who had an impact on shaping Carman's manuscript. While many names will be familiar to readers, others upon whom Carman relied for creating his campaign narrative are as obscure to us today as they were during the war.Now in paperback, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Vol. III: Shepherdstown Ford and the End of the Campaign, concludes the most comprehensive and detailed account of the campaign ever produced. Jammed with firsthand accounts, personal anecdotes, detailed footnotes, maps, and photos, this long-awaited study will be appreciated as Civil War history at its finest.