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Amid the aristocratic ranks of the Confederate cavalry, Nathan Bedford Forrest was untutored, all but unlettered, and regarded as no more than a guerrilla. His tactic was the headlong charge, mounted with such swiftness and ferocity that General Sherman called him a "devil" who should "be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the treasury." And in a war in which officers prided themselves on their decorum, Forrest habitually issued surrender-or-die ultimatums to the enemy and often intimidated his own superiors. After being in command at the notorious Fort Pillow Massacre, he went on to haunt the South as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Now this epic figure is restored to human dimensions in an exemplary biography that puts both Forrest's genius and his savagery into the context of his time, chronicling his rise from frontiersman to slave trader, private to lieutenant general, Klansman to—eventually—New South businessman and racial moderate. Unflinching in its analysis and with extensive new research, Nathan Bedford Forrest is an invaluable and immensely readable addition to the literature of the Civil War.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the epic New York Times bestselling account of how Civil War general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson became a great and tragic national hero. Stonewall Jackson has long been a figure of legend and romance. As much as any person in the Confederate pantheon—even Robert E. Lee—he embodies the romantic Southern notion of the virtuous lost cause. Jackson is also considered, without argument, one of our country’s greatest military figures. In April 1862, however, he was merely another Confederate general in an army fighting what seemed to be a losing cause. But by June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the Western world. Jackson’s strategic innovations shattered the conventional wisdom of how war was waged; he was so far ahead of his time that his techniques would be studied generations into the future. In his “magnificent Rebel Yell…S.C. Gwynne brings Jackson ferociously to life” (New York Newsday) in a swiftly vivid narrative that is rich with battle lore, biographical detail, and intense conflict among historical figures. Gwynne delves deep into Jackson’s private life and traces Jackson’s brilliant twenty-four-month career in the Civil War, the period that encompasses his rise from obscurity to fame and legend; his stunning effect on the course of the war itself; and his tragic death, which caused both North and South to grieve the loss of a remarkable American hero.

A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!

Originally there was no connection between the settlements along the coast. In 1776 they held a meeting and declared their separation from England and asserted that each State was a free, independent and sovereign State; and by a treaty of peace, that was admitted by England. In 1781 the States entered into a confederacy and again declared the independence and sovereignty of each State. In 1788 a union was proposed to go into effect between any nine States that ratified the Constitution. Eleven States ratified the Constitution and it went into operation between them. George Washington was elected President of the eleven States. In ratifying that Constitution Virginia and New York particularly affirmed that the people of any State had a right to withdraw from the Union, and there was general assent to that claim, and it was taught in the text book at West Point. There arose at various times differences between the Southern States and the Northern States but all these were peaceably settled except as to African slavery. For some cause South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, and presently was joined by six other Southern States. Neither Congress nor the President took any action against these States. But at length Congress passed a measure proposing that the States should amend the Constitution and prohibit Congress from interfering with Negro slavery in any State, with the expectation that such an amendment would lead the seceded States to return. Presently the new President was led to deny the right of a State to withdraw from the Union, and he started a war against the seceded States and called on the other States to furnish troops for his war. When North Carolina and Virginia and other Southern States were called on to furnish troops to fight the seceded States, North Carolina said, “You can get no soldiers from this State to fight your unholy war,” and North Carolina withdrew from the Union and so did Virginia and two other States. Then the Supreme Court in a case before it declared that under the Constitution the President had no right to make war and the Constitution did not give Congress the right to make war on any State. So it mentioned the war as one between the Northern and Southern States and said the right of the matter in dispute was to be determined by the “wager of battle,” thus ignoring the light and justice of the claim in dispute. And so the Northern States conquered those that had seceded. This book contains the following chapters: 1. The Slave Trade 2. Steps Leading to War 3. Nullification, North and South 4. The States Made the Union 5. Nullification, North and South 6. Ratification of the Constitution by Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island 7. Secession, Insurrection of the Negroes, and Northern Incendiarism 8. The Modern Case of John Brown 9. Why South Carolina Seceded 10. Secession of the Cotton States 11. President Lincoln’s Inaugural 12. Lincoln and the Constitution 13. Lincoln the Lawyer 14. Lincoln’s Inhumanity 15. Lincoln the Usurper 16. Abraham Lincoln, the Citizen 17. Lincoln the Strategist 18. Conditions Just After the War 19. The War Between the Northern States and the Southern States 20. Speech of Jefferson Davis at Mississippi City, Mississippi in 1881