For Kentuckians, the Civil War was truly a conflict of brother against brother. As a slave state bordering the United States and the Confederate States, Kentucky had ties to both the North and South. Although its state government remained in the Union, the people of Kentucky were divided in sentiment, prompting some 40,000 Kentuckians to leave their homes to fight for Southern independence. When Confederate soldiers eventually returned from the country's bloodiest war, they were held in high regard by their fellow Kentuckians. To be counted among the state's Confederate veterans was an honor, and when the number of living Confederate veterans began to dwindle, groups across Kentucky raised monuments to their memory. Remembering Kentucky's Confederates presents an overview of the state's Confederate soldiers and units who fought bravely in the War Between the States.

In Creating a Confederate Kentucky, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925, belying the fact that Kentucky never left the Union. After the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties and embraced the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with former Confederate states. Marshall looks beyond postwar political and economic factors to the longer-term commemorations of the Civil War by which Kentuckians fixed the state's remembrance of the conflict for the following sixty years.

Remembering Mississippi's Confederates is a collection of never-before-seen images which document the history of these soldiers. The Confederate States of America engaged in a battle for national survival that lasted four long and incredibly bloody years. The conflict went on for so long because thousands of rebels were willing to lay down their lives and defend their homes to the last man and last cartridge. Many of these soldiers were Mississippians--approximately 78,000 citizens of the Magnolia State can be documented as having served in the Civil War. Of this number, over 27,500 died either of disease or in combat. Remembering Mississippi's Confederates is a photographic tribute to the men who fought so gallantly for their state. Many of the images in this volume have never been published and come from the proud descendants of the soldiers themselves; others were acquired from collections spread across the United States.

Found on monuments throughout the South, the sentiment "Lest we forget!" represents the theme of Remembering Georgia's Confederates. Dedicated to the men and women who served Georgia when her heart belonged to the Confederate States of America, this volume remembers the state's Confederate past--a time of passion, devotion, honor, courage, faith, perseverance, sacrifice, and loss. Georgia, rich in its heritage, boasts numerous locales to visit, learn about, and remember its role in the Confederacy: the battlefields and their interpretive centers, the coastal forts, the prison camp, the world's largest painting, the world's largest Confederate memorial, a pair of locomotive engines, a number of Confederate cemeteries, and various homes, museums, and history centers.

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

In the fall of 1865, the United States Army executed Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson for his role in murdering fifty-three loyal citizens of Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War. Long remembered as the most unforgiving and inglorious warrior of the Confederacy, Ferguson has often been dismissed by historians as a cold-blooded killer. In Confederate Outlaw: Champ Ferguson and the Civil War in Appalachia, biographer Brian D. McKnight demonstrates how such a simple judgment ignores the complexity of this legendary character. In his analysis, McKnight maintains that Ferguson fought the war on personal terms and with an Old Testament mentality regarding the righteousness of his cause. He believed that friends were friends and enemies were enemies—no middle ground existed. As a result, he killed prewar comrades as well as longtime adversaries without regret, all the while knowing that he might one day face his own brother, who served as a Union scout. Ferguson’s continued popularity demonstrates that his bloody legend did not die on the gallows. Widespread rumors endured of his last-minute escape from justice, and over time, the borderland terrorist emerged as a folk hero for many southerners. Numerous authors resurrected and romanticized his story for popular audiences, and even Hollywood used Ferguson’s life to create the composite role played by Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales. McKnight’s study deftly separates the myths from reality and weaves a thoughtful, captivating, and accurate portrait of the Confederacy’s most celebrated guerrilla. An impeccably researched biography, Confederate Outlaw offers an abundance of insight into Ferguson’s wartime motivations, actions, and tactics, and also describes borderland loyalties, guerrilla operations, and military retribution. McKnight concludes that Ferguson, and other irregular warriors operating during the Civil War, saw the conflict as far more of a personal battle than a political one.

The commonwealth of Virginia holds a prominent and distinguished place in American Civil War history. Home to the Confederacy's capital city of Richmond, more major battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state. The commonwealth also produced some of the war's most legendary and iconic figures, including Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart. Images of America: Remembering Virginia's Confederates explores the Confederate military and government service of a wide array of Virginia residents, ranging from the most prominent generals, politicians, and spies to little-known enlisted men. It also acknowledges their dedication and sacrifice to a cause in which they strongly believed.