Thousands of books have been written covering every aspect of the Civil War. Yet scant attention has been given to the civilian government of the Confederacy. The most recent book on the subject was published in 1944, and what little has been written since is scattered among various journals and magazines. Drawing on scholarship old and new, this book provides a detailed overview of each of the Confederacy's six executive departments, along with biographical sketches of each man who held a position in Jefferson Davis's cabinet, from Secretary of State to Postmaster General.

Thousands of books have been written covering every aspect of the Civil War. Yet scant attention has been given to the civilian government of the Confederacy. The most recent book on the subject was published in 1944, and what little has been written since is scattered among various journals and magazines. Drawing on scholarship old and new, this book provides a detailed overview of each of the Confederacy's six executive departments, along with biographical sketches of each man who held a position in Jefferson Davis's cabinet, from Secretary of State to Postmaster General.

Just as Confederate naval action is commonly overshadowed by the land battles of the Civil War, the navy's originator, Stephen Mallory, is often overlooked in favor of more famous leaders. Mallory had served as one of Florida's U.S. senators for ten years before becoming navy secretary in the Confederate government, challenged to create a valid military force where none had existed. This biography chronicles Mallory's formative years in Key West, his decades of public service, and his declining days. It discusses his career in the United States Senate, where he chaired the Committee for Naval Affairs, helping to strengthen--in an ironic twist of fate--the very navy he would later attempt to defeat. The work also examines the challenges and obstacles Mallory faced in creating a navy for the South. Special attention is given to Mallory's family relationships. Primary sources include autobiographical documents and archival records.

"Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him ... Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president"--

Lasting from 1861 to 1865, the Civil War pitted brother against brother and resulted in the deaths of well over 600,000 soldiers. This encyclopedia provides information about a variety of topics related to the war and its aftermath, including political issues, generals, battles and campaigns, armies, weapons and ammunition, naval vessels, medical treatments, and aspects of daily life in the military and on the home front.

Gideon Welles’s 1861 appointment as secretary of the navy placed him at the hub of Union planning for the Civil War and in the midst of the powerful personalities vying for influence in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Although Welles initially knew little of naval matters, he rebuilt a service depleted by Confederate defections, planned actions that gave the Union badly needed victories in the war’s early days, and oversaw a blockade that weakened the South’s economy. Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles’s original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip. Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.