After the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, both sides thought victory would come quickly. But they were wrong. Battle followed battle, and the death toll climbed. The North and the South were unprepared for the long bloody conflict ahead. Then the two armies met at Gettysburg, a battle that would change the course of history.

If you are interested in painting, collecting or gaming with model soldiers, or interested in the American Civil War in any way then this book is for you. As well as many articles that set the scene and atmosphere of the period, this book contains painting guides, rules and campaigns that are informative and great fun to play. This full color book, lavishly illustrated with stunning photography of lots of magnificently painted miniatures is all you need to recreate the battles and tactics of the American Civil War.

Stackpole Books presents Gen. Edward J. Stackpole’s Civil War classics -- They Met at Gettysburg, Drama on the Rappahannock, Chancellorsville, and From Cedar Mountain to Antietam -- in a single abridged volume that covers the war’s pivotal and turbulent middle year in the Eastern Theater, from the summer of 1862 through the summer of 1863. This year of bloody conflict included the war’s defining battles: Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. It was a year during which the Union cycled through generals as Lincoln sought one who could fight and win – from McClellan to Pope for Second Bull Run, back to McClellan for Antietam, to Burnside for Fredericksburg, to Hooker for Chancellorsville, and to Meade for Gettysburg. As Union command in the East remained unsettled and these generals proved incompetent, timid, or both – or worse – this was the South’s chance, and Lee came into his own as a general for the ages during these months, besting Pope at Second Bull Run, decimating Burnside at Fredericksburg, and outsmarting and outfighting Hooker, with help from Stonewall Jackson, at Chancellorsville. Lee, with a growing belief in his army’s invincibility and an awareness that the Union’s considerable resources in men and material would soon tell, twice mounted invasions of the North during these months, first at Antietam, where he fought McClellan to a draw but had to turn back, and last and more disastrously at Gettysburg, where Meade defeated Lee in three days of hard fighting and sent the Confederates reeling back to Virginia. This was also the year during which Lincoln gave the war higher purpose and greater stakes: Antietam enabled him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation while Gettysburg yielded the famous address. The new birth of freedom Lincoln promised would be won or lost on the battlefield. This is epic history, told in sweeping, dramatic style by a master of the craft. One battle flows seamlessly to the next in Stackpole’s grand narrative, which also turns a soldier’s eye to the leadership of the men in blue and gray. This book will find enthusiastic readers among general readers as well as among Civil War buffs, military history aficionados, and military officers seeking insightful professional reading.

Presents Explains the events leading up to the Battle of Bull Run, the beginning of the Civil War, and the Battle of Gettsyburg, which became the turning point that brough about the end of the war.

A comprehensive collection of Civil War maps and battle plans that brought Union and Confederate forces to the largest battle ever fought on American soil. Thousands of books and articles have been written about Gettysburg—but the military operation itself remains one of the most complex and difficult to understand. Here, Bradley M. Gottfried gives readers a unique and thorough study of the campaign that decided the fate of a nation. Enriched with 144 detailed, full-page color maps comprising the entire campaign, The Maps of Gettysburg shows the action as it happened—down to the regimental and battery level, including the marches to and from the battlefield, and virtually every significant event in-between. Paired with each map is a fully detailed text describing the units, personalities, movements, and combat it depicts—including quotes from eyewitnesses—all of which bring the Gettysburg story to life. Perfect for the armchair historian or first-hand visitor to the hallowed ground, “no academic library can afford not to include The Maps of Gettysburg as part of their American Civil War Reference collections” (Midwest Book Review).

The complete text of one of the most important speeches in American history, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to remember not only the grim bloodshed that had just occurred there, but also to remember the American ideals that were being put to the ultimate test by the Civil War. A rousing appeal to the nation’s better angels, The Gettysburg Address remains an inspiring vision of the United States as a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”