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WINNER, ADULT NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD BY THE ALABAMA LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

WINNER, CLINTON JACKSON COLEY AWARD FROM THE ALABAMA HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Uncovering the Forgotten Battle That Changed a Nation.

The Fort Mims massacre changed the course of American history in many ways, not the least of which was the ensuing rise of one Andrew Jackson to the national stage. The unprecedented Indian victory over the encroaching Americans who were bent on taking their lands and destroying their culture horrified many and injured the young nation's pride. Tragedies such as this one have always rallied Americans to a common cause: a single-minded determination to destroy the enemy and avenge the fallen. The August 30, 1813 massacre at Fort Mims, involving hundreds of dead men, women, and children, was just such a spark.

Gregory Waselkov tells compellingly the story of this fierce battle at the fortified plantation home of Samuel Mims in the Tensaw District of the Mississippi Territory. With valuable maps, tables, and artifact illustrations, Waselkov looks closely at the battle to cut through the legends and misinformation that have grown around the event almost from the moment the last flames died at the smoldering ruins. At least as important as the details of the battle, though, is his elucidation of how social forces remarkably converged to spark the conflict and how reverberations of the battle echo still today, nearly two hundred years later.

A critical, multidisciplinary examination of Civil War combat that interrogates the technological, medical, psychological, and cultural forces shaping battlefield experience and its enduring national legacy.

“In our youth, our hearts were touched with fire,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes of his generation’s Civil War days. Through the ages, war stories have gleamed with romantic glory, and American memories of the cataclysmic Civil War inspire pageantry and poetry even today.

The essays in Battle form a corrective to such celebratory histories by examining the lethal realities of Civil War combat—Enlightenment science applied to the creation of weapons that maimed and killed, which far outpaced advances in diet, sanitation, and medical treatment. The book reveals that behind the drums and trumpets, sashes and swords, the armies of the Union and Confederacy alike were haunted by fear, pain, and death.

The collection includes an introduction and afterword by editor Kent Gramm, who also contributes an essay titled “Numbers” that reveals the war in statistics. Paul Fussell contributes a powerful essay titled “The Culture of War.” D. Scott Hartwig examines the face of battle at Gettysburg. Bruce A. Evans discusses medical technology in “Wounds, Death, and Medical Care in the Civil War.” Eric T. Dean challenges the meanings and consequences of combat in “The Awful Shock and Rage of Battle.” The collection is rounded out by Alan T. Nolan’s masterful review of the national consequences of battle and the resultant myth of the Confederacy’s Lost Cause.

A gripping account of Union soldiers behind Confederate bars—where survival, sacrifice, and the unforgiving realities of Civil War imprisonment collide.

In Captives in Blue, Roger Pickenpaugh examines the ways the Confederate army contended with the growing prison population, the variations in the policies and practices of different Confederate prison camps, the effects these policies and practices had on Union prisoners, and the logistics of prisoner exchanges. He explores conditions that arose from conscious government policy decisions and conditions that were the product of local officials or unique local situations. He also considers how Confederate prisons and policies dealt with African American Union soldiers. Black soldiers held captive in Confederate prisons faced uncertain fates; many former slaves were returned to their former owners, while others faced harsh treatment in the camps. Drawing on prisoner diaries, Pickenpaugh provides compelling first-person accounts of life in prison camps often overlooked by scholars in the field.

This study of Union captives in Confederate prisons is a companion to Roger Pickenpaugh’s earlier groundbreaking book Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union and extends his examination of Civil War prisoner-of-war facilities into the Confederacy.

“This is a vivid description of conditions and events rarely described: the imprisonment of captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Its many parallels to circumstances in Andersonville are especially intriguing.” —Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States

Contains contemporary reports from prisoners and witnesses humanize the grim realities of the POW camps.

Captives in Gray is Civil War prison camp authority Roger Pickenpaugh’s acclaimed and definitive account of the Union’s POW camps. Combining his own extensive research into official records and a rich variety of letters and diaries with the best contemporary scholarship, Pickenpaugh covers every major northern camp.

Because the Union won few victories in 1861 and took few prisoners, the North had time to plan and build prison camps, an opportunity it largely squandered. Pickenpaugh gives illuminating accounts of the role and leadership of thrifty Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman, the commissary general of prisoners for most of the conflict, and President Abraham Lincoln's secretaries of war, the incompetent Simon Cameron and the malignant Edwin M. Stanton.

Death came in many ways. Soldiers from the Deep South had no experience with extreme cold, and they died by the hundreds each winter. In one memorable freeze, Rock Island, Illinois, saw temperatures between twenty-eight and thirty-one degrees below zero. With insufficient fuel and inadequate shelter, clothing, and blankets, prisoners there and in other camps froze to death. Food rations varied widely. A few Confederates enjoyed better rations than they had in the CSA armies, but the majority supplemented their meager rations by eating rats, dogs, cats, and seagulls.

Poor medical care added to the death toll. Treatment was bad even by the standards of Civil War medicine, often due to Hoffman's reluctance to spend. Prisoners suffered from lice and scurvy, as well as pneumonia, measles, and a variety of fevers. As in both armies, diarrhea and dysentery were chronic. Smallpox epidemics killed many. Poor sanitation and drainage caused 385 deaths at Elmira, New York, in September 1864 alone.

During the war, over 12 percent of rebel prisoners, or 25,976 of the 214,865, died in captivity. Together with his Captives in Blue, Captives in Gray gives the fullest account of the experiences of prisoners of war in the American Civil War.

Reconstruction politics and race relations between freed blacks and the white establishment in Perry County, Alabama

In his fascinating, in-depth study, Bertis D. English analyzes why Perry County, situated in the heart of a violence-prone subregion of Alabama, enjoyed more peaceful race relations and less bloodshed than several neighboring counties. Choosing an atypical locality as central to his study, English raises questions about factors affecting ethnic disturbances in the Black Belt and elsewhere in Alabama. He also uses Perry County, which he deems an anomalous county, to caution against the tendency of some scholars to make sweeping generalizations about entire regions and subregions.

English contends Perry County was a relatively tranquil place with a set of extremely influential African American businessmen, clergy, politicians, and other leaders during Reconstruction. Together with egalitarian or opportunistic white citizens, they headed a successful campaign for black agency and biracial cooperation that few counties in Alabama matched. English also illustrates how a significant number of educational institutions, a high density of African American residents, and an unusually organized and informed African American population were essential factors in forming Perry County’s character. He likewise traces the development of religion in Perry, the nineteenth-century Baptist capital of Alabama, and the emergence of civil rights in Perry, an underemphasized center of activism during the twentieth century.

This well-researched and comprehensive volume illuminates Perry County’s history from the various perspectives of its black, interracial, and white inhabitants, amplifying their own voices in a novel way. The narrative includes rich personal details about ordinary and affluent people, both free and unfree, creating a distinctive resource that will be useful to scholars as well as a reference that will serve the needs of students and general readers.
 

A Southern Whig, a Unionist firebrand—Edward Stanly’s fight for principle in a fractured nation.

This biography of Edward Stanly relates the major political events of his life: his emergence, while still in his twenties, as a fiery and controversial leader of the Whig Party in North Carolina, his role as one of the ablest champions of Whiggery in the United States House of Representatives, 1837–1843; his candidacy for governor of California on the Republican ticket in 1857; his appointment by President Abraham Lincoln as military governor of North Carolina in 1862; and his support in California of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policy.

Raised under the “Ancient Standard of Federalism,” Edward Stanly was a southern nationalist in the tradition of the two great Virginia Federalists, George Washington and John Marshall. An outspoken opponent of the nullification and secession doctrines of party of section in national politics.
 

The raid that exposed the Union capital’s greatest danger.

The definitive description of the last Confederate invasion of the Union in 1864. The Civil War was in its fourth year, and the Union’s victory was not at all certain. The Lincoln administration seemed weak as the autumn election approached. Lee’s army remained strong in Virginia while Johnston’s forces feinted and dodged in north Georgia to shield Atlanta. The Union army and navy grew in strength, but Confederate forces continued to fight tenaciously.

Amid an air of stalemate, the Confederates planned a bold move to strike at Washington, DC and capture or scatter Lincoln and his cabinet. In command of the operation was the colorful and unpredictable Jubal “Old Jube” Anderson Early, brought in to replace the fallen Stonewall Jackson. Less well known than the bloodier Antietam and Gettysburg, Early's campaign, Cooling argues, had greater significance.

In addition to the persnickety bachelor Anderson, this account introduces many colorful participants, including railroad president John W. Garrett, the politically influential Blair family, and Elizabeth “Aunt Betty” Thomas, a free Black woman, who was said to have saved Lincoln’s life by shouting at him: “Get down, you fool!” when he came under fire at Fort Stevens. Exciting and comprehensive, Civil War scholars and readers will delight in this masterful account.
 

When war came to the nation in 1861, Michiganians rallied around the Stars and Stripes and readily agreed with a veteran politician who declared, “He who is not for his country is against her.” Even as the conflict grew bloody and costly, they remained committed to suppressing the rebellion. By war’s end, an astonishing 50 percent of its military-age males had enlisted in the army. This Michigan Civil War chronicle is more than a story about soldiers’ heroism on distant battlefields. It also includes the often-overlooked role of women—some of whom refused to stay home and went to war. Also buried in the historical record are accounts of white soldiers whose views on slavery and African Americans, especially those in uniform, were transformed. There is also a much-needed exploration of Michigan’s response to the shocking assassination of a beloved president. Many a Hand captures these stories in a single volume. 

Reexamines the contested geopolitical landscape of the lower Mississippi River Valley in 1740s, centering Choctaw perspectives 

Matthew J. Sparacio’s comprehensive history, The Choctaw Civil War: Women, Justice, and Sovereignty in the Native South, delivers a rich portrait of eighteenth-century Choctaw life and recasts the Native South as a region shaped by Choctaw decisions. 

In the 1730s and 1740s, the Choctaw Nation leveraged competing European imperial agendas while establishing reciprocal diplomatic ties with other tribes, including their neighboring “brothers,” the Chickasaws. Choctaws drew strength from their multifaceted understanding of sovereignty: connections to land, contributions to society through work, generosity, respect, kinship obligations, and justice. A series of attacks on Choctaw women, however, tested the limits of justice and obligation within and between Choctaw communities. Mounting pressures from both Louisiana and South Carolina added to this factionalism, ultimately leading to civil war. 

Relying on Chahta anumpa (“Choctaw language”) training and tribal histories, gender theory, and ethnohistorical methods, Sparacio highlights women’s contributions to Choctaw society and governance. Intense eighteenth-century debates over justice, kinship, and responsibility created several Choctaw movements for justice that still inspire efforts in Oklahoma and Mississippi to end the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons’ crisis. Tribal and bodily sovereignty shaped the Native South and will shape its future. 

The Choctaw Civil War is a major reinterpretation of Choctaw history and the colonial South. This will be a must-read for historians, scholars of the Native South, and anyone interested in sovereignty movements today.
 

New perspectives on the battles that opened the Confederacy to invasion

In early 1862, the Civil War had been raging for almost ten months, and the Confederacy had enjoyed virtually uninterrupted success. From seizing federal property to early battlefield victories, Southern forces had effectively expelled Union authority from nearly all of the Confederacy’s eleven states. The Union suffered repeated setbacks, while modest victories in western Virginia and Kentucky had little strategic impact. By the end of February, however, much had changed.

On February 6, Union gunboats under the joint command of Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, opening a crucial waterway into the Confederacy. Just days later, Grant moved against Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. After several days of fighting, the fort surrendered on the 16th, along with more than 13,000 Confederate troops—the largest surrender in US history to that point. These twin victories shattered Confederate control of Kentucky and western Tennessee, allowing Federal soldiers and sailors to use the rivers to threaten the Confederacy’s interior. This first major strategic breakthrough of the war signaled a dramatic shift in momentum and elevated Grant’s national profile.

In this essay collection, leading and emerging scholars provide in-depth analyses of previously overlooked aspects of the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign. Contributors examine how ecological forces influenced the campaign, the effectiveness of the joint command between the Union army and navy, and Union brigadier general Charles F. Smith’s assault that doomed Fort Donelson. They also explore the battle’s impact on the military career of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the effects of surprise during the Confederate breakout attempt from Fort Donelson, Confederate colonel Gabriel Wharton’s memoir, and how the loss of the forts showed Texans that the fight to preserve the enslaved South would cost them more than they had imagined.

In the aftermath of the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign, most of the Civil War still lay ahead. The Confederacy would have many opportunities to regain its momentum and exhaust the Union will to prevail. However, with a few key exceptions, for the rest of the war, the Confederacy fought to defend itself rather than to take new territory. It was in this massive shift of momentum during ten days in 1862 that the war’s military outcome was foreshadowed.

Civil War enthusiasts will welcome this concluding volume of Peter Cozzens's highly praised trilogy on the Civil War in the West.

The battle around Chattanooga in the late fall of 1863 were among the most decisive of the Civil War, opening the Deep South to the Union and setting the stage for the Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea. After Chattanooga, the principal Confederate army in the West fought without spirit or hope of victory. Cozzens's comprehensive account details movements of individual regiments, even as it reveals the larger impact of the campaign on the outcome of the war.

In The Shipwreck of Their Hopes, Cozzens draws on his acclaimed storytelling skills and exhaustive research efforts to fully chronicle one of the South's most humiliating defeats. As in his earlier books, he brings to life the officers and enlisted men who fought the war.

Letters from a Confederate soldier to his wife during the Civil War.

Yours Till Death: Civil War Letters of John W. Cotton offers a rare and deeply personal window into the lived experience of the American Civil War through the words of an ordinary Confederate soldier. Composed of letters written by John W. Cotton to his wife in Coosa County, Alabama, this collection preserves an unfiltered, intimate record of wartime life from 1862 to 1865, revealing both the hardships of military service and the enduring ties of family and home.

Cotton, a yeoman farmer who enlisted in the Confederate Army in the spring of 1862, writes with directness and honesty about his daily experiences as he moves through the major campaigns of the war, including service in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina. His correspondence captures not only the movements and conditions of military life—guard duty, illness, shortages, and shifting morale—but also the emotional landscape of a soldier separated from his family. His letters are filled with concern for his wife, children, and farm, illustrating the constant tension between duty to country and responsibility to home. 

More than a military chronicle, Yours Till Death is also a valuable portrait of rural Southern life during wartime. Cotton’s references to crops, weather, labor, and household concerns provide insight into how families on the home front coped with absence, uncertainty, and economic strain. These details illuminate the broader social and agricultural context of the Confederacy, offering readers a richer understanding of how war reshaped everyday life for civilians as well as soldiers. 

The letters, preserved and edited by historian Lucille Griffith, retain the immediacy and authenticity of Cotton’s voice. Written without the benefit of hindsight, they convey the evolving attitudes, anxieties, and hopes of a man living through one of the most turbulent periods in American history. As such, they serve as an important primary source for scholars and students, complementing official histories with the perspective of an individual whose experiences reflect those of countless others who lived and fought during the Civil War.

Yours Till Death will appeal to readers interested in Civil War studies, Southern history, and personal narratives of wartime experience. By bringing together themes of conflict, family, survival, and resilience, this collection transforms historical events into a deeply human story—one that reminds us that the past is best understood not only through battles and politics, but through the voices of those who lived it.