The Edge of Mosby’s Sword is the first scholarly volume to delve into the story of one of John Singleton Mosby’s most trusted and respected officers, Colonel William Henry Chapman. Presenting both military and personal perspectives of Chapman’s life, Gordon B. Bonan offers an in-depth understanding of a man transformed by the shattering of his nation. This painstakingly researched account exposes a soldier and patriot whose convictions compelled him to battle fiercely for Southern independence; whose quest for greatness soured when faced with the brutal realities of warfare; and who sought to heal his wounded nation when the guns of war were silenced. Born into a wealthy slave-owning family, Chapman was a student of the fiery secessionist rhetoric of antebellum Virginia who eagerly sought glory and adventure on the battlefields of the Civil War. Bonan traces Chapman’s evolution from an impassioned student at the University of Virginia to an experienced warrior and leader, providing new insight into the officer’s numerous military accomplishments. Explored here are Chapman’s previously overlooked endeavors as a student warrior, leader of the Dixie Artillery, and as second-in-command to Mosby, including his participation in the capture of Harpers Ferry, the battering of Union forces at Second Manassas, and his ferocious raids during the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign. Bonan reveals fresh perspectives on the intrepid maneuvers of Mosby’s Rangers, the hardships of war, and Chapman’s crucial role as the right hand of the “Gray Ghost.” But while Mosby recognized him for his bravery and daring, the fame Chapman sought always eluded him. Instead, with his honors and successes came disillusionment and sorrow, as he watched comrades and civilians alike succumb to the terrible toll of the war. The end of the struggle between North and South saw Chapman accept defeat with dignity, leading the Rangers to their official surrender and parole at Winchester. With the horrors of the war behind him, he quickly moved to embrace the rebuilding of his country, joining the Republican party and beginning a forty-two-year career at the IRS enforcing Federal law throughout the South. In the end, Chapman’s life is a study in contradictions: nationalism and reconciliation; slavery and liberty; vengeance and chivalry.

From the hills and valleys of the eastern Confederate states to the sun-drenched plains of Missouri and "Bleeding Kansas," a vicious, clandestine war was fought behind the big-battle clashes of the American Civil War. In the east, John Singleton Mosby became renowned for the daring hit-and-run tactics of his rebel horsemen. Here a relatively civilized war was fought; women and children usually left with a roof over their heads. But along the Kansas-Missouri border it was a far more brutal clash; no quarter given. William Clarke Quantrill and William "Bloody Bill" Anderson became notorious for their savagery.

The fascinating life of Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost, before, during, and after the Civil War. The most famous Civil War name in Northern Virginia—other than General Lee—belongs to Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost. His early life characterized by abuse of childhood bullies, a less-than-outstanding academic career, and even a brief incarceration, Mosby stands out among nearly one thousand generals who served in the war. Even though Mosby was opposed to secession, he joined the Confederate army as a private in Virginia, and quickly rose through the ranks. He became celebrated for his raids that captured Union general Edwin Stoughton in Fairfax and Colonel Daniel French Dulany in Rose Hill. By 1864, he was a feared partisan guerrilla in the North and a nightmare for Union troops protecting Washington City. After the war, his support for presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant forced Mosby to leave his native Virginia for Hong Kong as U.S. consul. A mentor to young George S. Patton, Mosby’s military legacy extended far beyond the War Between the States and into World War II. William S. Connery brings alive the many dimensions of this American hero.

From Army Rangers to Green Berets to the U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden, this book explains what makes Special Forces "special," covering the rich and varied history of elite formations in American military history and describing their recruitment, intense training, and equipment in depth. Most civilians have only a vague idea of what the U.S. Special Forces are all about—who they are, how they differ from our "normal" military forces, what they've accomplished throughout our history, and how they operate today. Fighting Elites: A History of U.S. Special Forces examines the rich and varied history of U.S. Special Forces, identifies their contributions to specific conflicts from colonial times forward, and highlights their present operational excellence. In this first-ever reference guide to U.S. Special Forces, military historian John C. Fredriksen provides a carefully balanced presentation, describing all units in their own detailed section that discusses their origins, recruitment, training, tactics, and equipment, and defining military engagements, if known. The text also contains 20 biographical entries of noted personalities associated with special purpose activities.

Despite popular belief, the Civil War did not end when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, in April 1865. The Confederacy still had tens of thousands of soldiers under arms, in three main field armies and countless smaller commands scattered throughout the South. Although pressed by Union forces at varying degrees, all of the remaining Confederate armies were capable of continuing the war if they chose to do so. But they did not, even when their political leaders ordered them to continue the fight. Convinced that most civilians no longer wanted to continue the war, the senior Confederate military leadership, over the course of several weeks, surrendered their armies under different circumstances. Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered his army in North Carolina only after contentious negotiations with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Gen. Richard Taylor ended the fighting in Alabama in the face of two massive Union incursions into the state rather than try to consolidate with other Confederate armies. Personal rivalry also played a part in his practical considerations to surrender. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith had the decision to surrender taken out of his hands—disastrous economic conditions in his Trans-Mississippi Department had eroded morale to such an extent that his soldiers demobilized themselves, leaving Kirby Smith a general without an army. The end of the Confederacy was a messy and complicated affair, a far cry from the tidy closure associated with the events at Appomattox.

In Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares, John H. Matsui argues that the political ideology and racial views of American Protestants during the Civil War mirrored their religious optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, perfectibility, and the millennium. While previous historians have commented on the role of antebellum eschatology in political alignment, none have delved deeply into how religious views complicate the standard narrative of the North versus the South. Moving beyond the traditional optimism/pessimism dichotomy, Matsui divides American Protestants of the Civil War era into “premillenarian” and “postmillenarian” camps. Both postmillenarian and premillenarian Christians held that the return of Christ would inaugurate the arrival of heaven on earth, but they disagreed over its timing. This disagreement was key to their disparate political stances. Postmillenarians argued that God expected good Christians to actively perfect the world via moral reform—of self and society—and free-labor ideology, whereas premillenarians defended hierarchy or racial mastery (or both). Northern Democrats were generally comfortable with antebellum racial norms and were cynical regarding human nature; they therefore opposed Republicans’ utopian plans to reform the South. Southern Democrats, who held premillenarian views like their northern counterparts, pressed for or at least acquiesced in the secession of slaveholding states to preserve white supremacy. Most crucially, enslaved African American Protestants sought freedom, a postmillenarian societal change requiring nothing less than a major revolution and the reconstruction of southern society. Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Civil War as it reveals the wartime marriage of political and racial ideology to religious speculation. As Matsui argues, the postmillenarian ideology came to dominate the northern states during the war years and the nation as a whole following the Union victory in 1865.

As early as 1865, survivors of the Civil War were acutely aware that people were purposefully shaping what would be remembered about the war and what would be omitted from the historical record. In Remembering the Civil War, Caroline E. Janney examines how the war generation--men and women, black and white, Unionists and Confederates--crafted and protected their memories of the nation's greatest conflict. Janney maintains that the participants never fully embraced the reconciliation so famously represented in handshakes across stone walls. Instead, both Union and Confederate veterans, and most especially their respective women's organizations, clung tenaciously to their own causes well into the twentieth century. Janney explores the subtle yet important differences between reunion and reconciliation and argues that the Unionist and Emancipationist memories of the war never completely gave way to the story Confederates told. She challenges the idea that white northerners and southerners salved their war wounds through shared ideas about race and shows that debates about slavery often proved to be among the most powerful obstacles to reconciliation.