The letters of Richard and Mary Watkins are a treasure. A rare perspective offering tremendous insight into the daily life of both as they struggle with the hardships of war, farm operations and family concerns. A must read. Neal Wixson, editor, Echoes from the Boys of Company H -------------------------------- Between 1861 and 1865, Confederate Captain Richard Watkins and his wife Mary exchanged detailed and heartfelt letters. Richard had enlisted with Company K of the 3rd Virginia Calvary after Virginia seceded from the Union. Mary remained living near Meherrin, Virginia raising their three daughters and managing the farm. Sharing their letters with future generations was likely something the pair never envisioned. Editor Jeff Toalson, however, discovered, transcribed and annotated this extraordinarily rare collection of more than 300 unpublished letters. Held by the Virginia Historical Society, the letters convey detailed information about the war and daily life during a critical time in our nations history. Unlike military accounts of Civil War maneuvers and battles, the letters bring a clear sense of humanity to the conflict and its affects on those who lived through the time. Richard and Marys letters are touching and intriguing, weaving both a love story and an intense eyewitness account of the war. All of the major campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania are covered. Jeffs editing and attention to detail bring this heart-warming and engaging story to life. Despite the hardships, fears, disease and separation, youll be fascinated by the humor, depth and the stark realities of the Watkinss lives.

Civil War studies normally focus on military battles, campaigns, generals and politicians, with the common Confederate soldiers and Southern civilians receiving only token mention. Using personal accounts from more than two hundred forty soldiers, farmers, clerks, nurses, sailors, farm girls, merchants, surgeons, chaplains and wives, author Jeff Toalson has created a compilation that is remarkable in its simplicity and stunning in its scope. These soldiers and civilians wrote remarkable letters and kept astonishing diaries and journals. They discuss disease, slavery, inflation, religion, desertion, blockade running, and their never-ending hope that the war would end before their loved ones died. A major portion of these documents were unpublished and were made available by the Brewer Library of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. With this, his third significant contribution to Civil War literature, Jeff Toalson joins the select company of Thomas W. Cutrer and Bell I. Wiley as historians who have devoted their body of work to preserving the 'voices' of common Confederate soldiers and civilians.

"Soldier mortals would not survive if they were not blessed with the gift of imagination and the pictures of hope," wrote Confederate Private Henry Graves in the trenches outside Petersburg, Virginia. "The second angel of mercy is the night dream." Providing fresh perspective on the human side of the Civil War, this book explores the dreams and imaginings of those who fought it, as recorded in their letters, journals and memoirs. Sometimes published as poems or songs or printed in newspapers, these rarely acknowledged writings reflect the personalities and experiences of their authors. Some expressions of fear, pain, loss, homesickness and disappointment are related with grim fatalism, some with glimpses of humor.

The Civil War brought many forms of upheaval to America, not only in waking hours but also in the dark of night. Sleeplessness plagued the Union and Confederate armies, and dreams of war glided through the minds of Americans in both the North and South. Sometimes their nightly visions brought the horrors of the conflict vividly to life. But for others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this innovative new study, Jonathan W. White explores what dreams meant to Civil War–era Americans and what their dreams reveal about their experiences during the war. He shows how Americans grappled with their fears, desires, and struggles while they slept, and how their dreams helped them make sense of the confusion, despair, and loneliness that engulfed them. White takes readers into the deepest, darkest, and most intimate places of the Civil War, connecting the emotional experiences of soldiers and civilians to the broader history of the conflict, confirming what poets have known for centuries: there are some truths that are only revealed in the world of darkness.

“A mosaic of thousands of tiny pieces that, seen whole, amounts to a fascinating picture of what probably was the most important moment of the Civil War.” —Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times bestselling author of The Generals George Armstrong Custer is famous for his fatal defeat at the Little Bighorn in 1876, but Custer’s baptism of fire came during the Civil War. His true rise to prominence began at Gettysburg in 1863. On the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, Custer received promotion to brigadier general and command—his first direct field command—of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, the “Wolverines.” Custer did not disappoint his superiors, who promoted him in a search for more aggressive cavalry officers. At approximately noon on July 3, 1863, the melee that was East Cavalry Field at Gettysburg began. An hour or two into the battle, after many of his cavalrymen had been reduced to hand-to-hand infantry-style fighting, Custer ordered a charge of one of his regiments and led it into action himself, screaming one of the battle’s most famous lines: “Come on, you Wolverines!” Around three o’clock, the Confederates led by Stuart mounted a final charge, which mowed down Union cavalry—until it ran into Custer’s Wolverines, who stood firm, breaking the Confederates’ last attack. In a book combining two popular subjects, Tucker recounts the story of Custer at Gettysburg with verve, shows how the Custer legend was born on the fields of the war’s most famous battle, and offers eye-opening new perspectives on Gettysburg’s overlooked cavalry battle. “A thoughtful and challenging new look at the great assault at Gettysburg . . . Tucker is fresh and bold in his analysis and use of sources.” —William C. Davis, author of Crucible of Command

Household War restores the centrality of households to the American Civil War. The essays in the volume complicate the standard distinctions between battlefront and homefront, soldier and civilian, and men and women. From this vantage point, they look at the interplay of family and politics, studying the ways in which the Civil War shaped and was shaped by the American household. They explore how households influenced Confederate and Union military strategy, the motivations of soldiers and civilians, and the occupation of captured cities, as well as the experiences of Native Americans, women, children, freedpeople, injured veterans, and others. The result is a unique and much needed approach to the study of the Civil War. Household War demonstrates that the Civil War can be understood as a revolutionary moment in the transformation of the household order. The original essays by distinguished historians provide an inclusive examination of how the war flowed from, required, and resulted in the restructuring of the nineteenth-century household. Contributors explore notions of the household before, during, and after the war, unpacking subjects such as home, family, quarrels, domestic service and slavery, manhood, the Klan, prisoners and escaped prisoners, Native Americans, grief, and manhood. The essays further show how households redefined and reordered themselves as a result of the changes stemming from the Civil War.

Cavalry operations during the Gettysburg campaign have been well covered, but never like this. Most cavalry treatments of the campaign and battle have focused on strategy, operations, and tactics and zoomed in on particular episodes: the Battle of Brandy Station in June 1863 (the largest cavalry engagement on American soil), Jeb Stuart’s controversial ride-for-glory that deprived Lee of important intelligence for days, Union cavalry general John Buford’s role in the start of the battle on July 1, and the cavalry battle involving not only Stuart but also George Armstrong Custer east of Gettysburg on July 3. Daniel Murphy’s book covers the grand sweep of cavalry in the Gettysburg campaign, from Lee’s crossing of the Rappahannock in early June 1863, through the epic three-day clash in Pennsylvania, to the conclusion of Lee’s retreat in July 1863. But more than that, in a book blending strategy and tactics and campaign narrative with deep research in primary sources and an equestrian’s sense for what it’s like to ride and manage horses, Daniel Murphy brings a horseman’s eye to the story of the campaign: how individual cavalrymen experienced the campaign from the saddle and how horses—with special needs for care and maintenance—were in fact weapons that helped shape battles. In this new narrative of Civil War cavalry, author Daniel Murphy gets into the saddle and explores what it was like to be a cavalryman during the Gettysburg campaign. Horse-soldiering was a unique way of doing battle, and Murphy gives it more justice and nuanced description than any author has yet given it.