What really happened at Fort Pillow on April 12, 1864? The Union called it a massacre. The Confederacy called it necessity. TheTennessee spring came early that year, “awakening regional plants as warmer air and mois soil nurtured new life. Across the landscape could be seen the faint hint of green as sweet gum, hickory, oak cottonwood,…Sweet Williams, and wild dogwood added their hues.” This serene backdrop in hardly the place where one would imagine such a one-sided military atrocity to take place. Although at first glance the numbers are hardly noteworthy, the casualty ratio speaks volumes on the event. Eyewitness accounts relate “vivid recollection” of the numerous and specific nature of the injuries suffered by the survivors.” Controversy and scandal surround the Southern general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Why did it seem that he passively watched his men attack and mutilate more than one hundred apparently unarmed soldiers? Perhaps the biggest controversy involved racial prejudice. Was there a reason that Fort Pillow was singled out for Confederate vengeance, with the knowledge that the majority of the men were African-American? Of the dead, 66 percent were black. An Unerring Fire answers these questions and more in a critical examination of what remains one of the most controversial episodes of the Civil War.

“War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest famously declared. The Civil War was fundamentally a matter of Americans killing Americans. This undeniable reality is what Jonathan Steplyk explores in Fighting Means Killing, the first book-length study of Union and Confederate soldiers’ attitudes toward, and experiences of, killing in the Civil War. Drawing upon letters, diaries, and postwar reminiscences, Steplyk examines what soldiers and veterans thought about killing before, during, and after the war. How did these soldiers view sharpshooters? How about hand-to-hand combat? What language did they use to describe killing in combat? What cultural and societal factors influenced their attitudes? And what was the impact of race in battlefield atrocities and bitter clashes between white Confederates and black Federals? These are the questions that Steplyk seeks to answer in Fighting Means Killing, a work that bridges the gap between military and social history—and that shifts the focus on the tragedy of the Civil War from fighting and dying for cause and country to fighting and killing.

Inspired and informed by the latest research in African American, military, and social history, the fourteen original essays in this book tell the stories of the African American soldiers who fought for the Union cause. Collectively, these essays probe

Stirring tales, dating from the French and Indian War through the 1850s, recount desperate situations from the lives of westward-bound women and their families, including encounters with the Native Americans they ultimately displaced.

Musaicum Books presents to you a meticulously edited Joseph Alexander Altsheler collection. This ebook has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Content: The Young Trailers Series The Young Trailers The Forest Runners The Keepers of the Trail The Eyes of the Woods The Free Rangers The Riflemen of the Ohio The Scouts of the Valley The Border Watch The French and Indian War Series The Hunters of the Hills The Shadow of the North The Rulers of the Lakes The Masters of the Peaks The Lords of the Wild The Sun of Quebec The Texan Series The Texan Star The Texan Scouts The Civil War Series The Guns of Bull Run The Guns of Shiloh The Scouts of Stonewall The Sword of Antietam The Star of Gettysburg The Rock of Chickamauga The Shades of the Wilderness The Tree of Appomattox The World War Series The Guns of Europe The Forest of Swords The Hosts of the Air Other Novels The Great Sioux Trail In Hostile Red The Last Rebel Before the Dawn The Candidate The Last of the Chiefs The Quest of the Four Apache Gold