Back Door to Richmond


Book Description




Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee


Book Description

Earl J.Hess's study of armies and fortifications turns to the 1864 Overland Campaign to cover battles from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor. Drawing on meticulous research in primary sources and careful examination of battlefields at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Bermuda Hundred, and Cold Harbor, , Hess analyzes Union and Confederate movements and tactics and the new way Grant and Lee employed entrenchments in an evolving style of battle. Hess argues that Grant's relentless and pressing attacks kept the armies always within striking distance, compelling soldiers to dig in for protection.




The Sharpshooters


Book Description

Recruited as sharpshooters and clothed in distinctive uniforms with green trim, the hand-picked regiment of the Ninth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry was renowned and admired far and wide. The only New Jersey regiment to reenlist for the duration of the Civil War at the close of its initial three-year term, the Ninth saw action in forty-two battles and engagements across three states. Throughout the South, the regiment broke up enemy camps and supply depots, burned bridges, and destroyed railroad tracks to thwart Confederate movements. Members of the Ninth also suffered disease and starvation as POWs at the notorious Andersonville prison camp in Georgia. Recruited largely from socially conservative cities and villages in northern and central New Jersey, the Ninth Volunteer Infantry consisted of men with widely differing opinions about the Union and their enemy. Edward G. Longacre unearths these complicated political and social views, tracing the history of this esteemed regiment before, during, and after the war—from recruitment at Camp Olden to final operations in North Carolina.




Civil War Petersburg


Book Description

Few wartime cities in Virginia held more importance than Petersburg. Nonetheless, the city has, until now, lacked an adequate military history, let alone a history of the civilian home front. The noted Civil War historian A. Wilson Greene now provides an expertly researched, eloquently written study of the city that was second only to Richmond in size and strategic significance. Industrial, commercial, and extremely prosperous, Petersburg was also home to a large African American community, including the state's highest percentage of free blacks. On the eve of the Civil War, the city elected a conservative, pro-Union approach to the sectional crisis. Little more than a month before Virginia's secession did Petersburg finally express pro-Confederate sentiments, at which point the city threw itself wholeheartedly into the effort, with large numbers of both white and black men serving. Over the next four years, Petersburg's citizens watched their once-beautiful city become first a conduit for transient soldiers from the Deep South, then an armed camp, and finally the focus of one of the Civil War's most protracted and damaging campaigns. (The fall of Richmond and collapse of the Confederate war effort in Virginia followed close on Grant's ultimate success in Petersburg.) At war's end, Petersburg's antebellum prosperity evaporated under pressures from inflation, chronic shortages, and the extensive damage done by Union artillery shells. Greene's book tracks both Petersburg's civilian experience and the city's place in Confederate military strategy and administration. Employing scores of unpublished sources, the book weaves a uniquely personal story of thousands of citizens--free blacks, slaves and their holders, factory owners, merchants--all of whom shared a singular experience in Civil War Virginia.




And Keep Moving On


Book Description

When campaigning began anew after the winter of 1863-64, the Battle of Wilderness seemed merely a reprise of earlier struggles, but Grant changed the pattern by refusing to withdraw and instead attacked again and again throughout the summer of 1864. This is the story of the 1864 Virginia campaign.




Charlie


Book Description

The reader finds Charles Lowrey in the Viet Nam War. A Marine Recon with extraordinary ability, Charlie and his team of both military and civilian folks will use all they have to outwit and overcome their foes. Charlie and company will meet the trouble head on! Charlie meets John Smith aka “Joe,” and together they reach far beyond government organizations to set up and pull off some of the most intricate and outrageous ops ever imagined. Charlie will have instant appeal for those who like military action and the stories of all branches of service. For readers of other preferences there are the ongoing mysteries to be unraveled. Spies and espionage with tense situations! Humorous episodes that progress to hilarious events! Love so deep and passion so intense it will stir emotions! Powerful hatred that controls and drives some to kill! The characters fight with fury, love with unbridled passion, play to win, find the answers with nearly nothing to go on, and go about all of it like it’s the most important thing they will every do. About the Author Curtis Lowder was born in West Virginia coal country and raised in West Virginia and Virginia. Being the son of a minister and a Godly mother, he was raised in a Christian home and those principles that are with him still. He found himself in trouble plenty of times despite his upbringing that taught better! He completed high school and enlisted in the Marines during the Viet Nam War. On active duty Lowder was assigned to the Second Marine Airwing and was in Avionics. He worked on jets mostly with some time at New River on helicopters. After four years active duty, he with his wife and daughter moved to Oklahoma and he joined his brother in the electrical contracting business. After a successful career, he is mostly retired and enjoying writing again. All of his experiences play into his writing as he combines fact with fiction in an intriguing and entertaining way. Lowder’s writing includes the excitement of espionage, the emotions of romance in different stages, intense dramatic events, and hilarious things that come at serious times. And in the space of a few lines, a new story emerges to follow! There is something for everyone in his writing! “One more page,” will happen often with a book written by Curtis Lowder.




Joseph and Harriet Hawley's Civil War


Book Description

This study examines the partnership of Joseph and Harriet Hawley, a married couple from Connecticut, during the American Civil War. Bringing together social, political, and military history, the author analyzes the wartime experiences of the couple and Americans more generally.




The Earl J. Hess Fortifications Trilogy, Omnibus E-book


Book Description

This three-volume Omnibus e-Book set is a collection of Earl J. Hess's definitive works on trench warfare during the Civil War. The set includes: Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864, covering the eastern campaigns, from Big Bethel and the Peninsula to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Charleston, and Mine Run; Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign, covering Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and Bermuda Hundred; and In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat, recounting the strategic and tactical operations in Virginia during the last ten months of the Civil War, when field fortifications dominated military planning and the landscape of battle. This invaluable trilogy is a must have for anyone interested in the battles, tactics and strategies of both sides during the Civil War.




Freedom by the Sword


Book Description

From late 1862 to the spring of 1865, the federal government accepted more than 180,000 black men as soldiers, something it had never done before on such a scale. Known collectively as the United States Colored Troops and organized in segregated regiments led by white officers, some of these soldiers guarded army posts along major rivers; others fought Confederate raiders to protect Union supply trains; and still others took part in major operations like the siege of Petersburg and the battle of Nashville. After the war, many of the black regiments garrisoned the former Confederacy to enforce federal Reconstruction policy. This book tells the story of these soldiers' recruitment, organization, and service.




No Band of Brothers


Book Description

The Civil War was barely over before Southerners and other students of the war began to examine the Confederate high command in search of an explanation for the South's failure. Although years of research failed to show that the South's defeat was due to a single, overriding cause, the actions of the Southern leaders during the war were certainly among the reasons the South lost the war. In No Band of Brothers, Steven Woodworth explores, through a series of essays, various facets of the way the Confederacy waged its unsuccessful war for secession. He examines Jefferson Davis and some of his more important generals, including Pierre G. T. Beauregard, Leonidas Polk, Joseph E. Johnston, Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson; the Confederacy's strategic plans; and the South's success in making competent officers out of men with very little military preparation. Woodworth particularly looks at the personalities and personal relationships that affected the course and outcome of the war. What made a good general? What could make an otherwise able man a failure as a general? What role did personal friendships or animosities play in the Confederacy's top command assignments and decisions? How successful was the Confederacy in making competent generals out of its civilian leaders? In what ways did Jefferson Davis succeed or fail in maximizing the chances for the success of his cause? In analyzing the Confederate leadership, Woodworth reveals some weaknesses, many strengths, and much new information. No Band of Brothers will be an important addition to Civil War scholarship and will be welcomed by professional historians, amateur historians, students, and the general reader alike.