This “very satisfying blow-by-blow account of the final stages of the Gettysburg Campaign” fills an important gap in Civil War history (Civil War Books and Authors). Winner of the Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Book Award This fascinating book exposes what has been hiding in plain sight for 150 years: The Gettysburg Campaign did not end at the banks of the Potomac on July 14, but deep in central Virginia two weeks later along the line of the Rappahannock. Contrary to popular belief, once Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slipped across the Potomac back to Virginia, the Lincoln administration pressed George Meade to cross quickly in pursuit—and he did. Rather than follow in Lee’s wake, however, Meade moved south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cat-and-mouse game to outthink his enemy and capture the strategic gaps penetrating the high wooded terrain. Doing so would trap Lee in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley and potentially bring about the decisive victory that had eluded Union arms north of the Potomac. The two weeks that followed resembled a grand chess match with everything at stake—high drama filled with hard marching, cavalry charges, heavy skirmishing, and set-piece fighting that threatened to escalate into a major engagement with the potential to end the war in the Eastern Theater. Throughout, one thing remains clear: Union soldiers from private to general continued to fear the lethality of Lee’s army. Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, the first of three volumes on the campaigns waged between the two adversaries from July 14 through the end of July, 1863, relies on the official records, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other sources to provide a day-by-day account of this fascinating high-stakes affair. The vivid prose, coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature. Named Eastern Theater Book of the Year byCivil War Books and Authors

A comprehensive collection of Civil War maps and battle plans that brought Union and Confederate forces to the largest battle ever fought on American soil. Thousands of books and articles have been written about Gettysburg—but the military operation itself remains one of the most complex and difficult to understand. Here, Bradley M. Gottfried gives readers a unique and thorough study of the campaign that decided the fate of a nation. Enriched with 144 detailed, full-page color maps comprising the entire campaign, The Maps of Gettysburg shows the action as it happened—down to the regimental and battery level, including the marches to and from the battlefield, and virtually every significant event in-between. Paired with each map is a fully detailed text describing the units, personalities, movements, and combat it depicts—including quotes from eyewitnesses—all of which bring the Gettysburg story to life. Perfect for the armchair historian or first-hand visitor to the hallowed ground, “no academic library can afford not to include The Maps of Gettysburg as part of their American Civil War Reference collections” (Midwest Book Review).

The Civil War in the Eastern Theater during the late summer and fall of 1863 was anything but inconsequential. Generals Meade and Lee continued where they had left off, executing daring marches while boldly maneuvering the chess pieces of war in an effort to gain decisive strategic and tactical advantage. Cavalry actions crisscrossed the rolling landscape; bloody battle revealed to both sides the command deficiencies left in the wake of Gettysburg. It was the first and only time in the war Meade exercised control of the Army of the Potomac on his own terms. Jeffrey Wm Hunt brilliant dissects these and others issues in Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station: The Problems of Command and Strategy After Gettysburg, from Brandy Station to the Buckland Races, August 1 to October 31, 1863. The carnage of Gettysburg left both armies in varying states of command chaos as the focus of the war shifted west. Lee further depleted his ranks by dispatching James Longstreet (his best corps commander) and most of his First Corps via rail to reinforce Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. The Union defeat that followed at Chickamauga, in turn, forced Meade to follow suit with the XI and XII Corps. Despite these reductions, the aggressive Lee assumed the strategic offensive against his more careful Northern opponent, who was also busy waging a rearguard action against the politicians in Washington. Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station is a fast-paced, dynamic account of how the Army of Northern Virginia carried the war above the Rappahannock once more in an effort to retrieve the laurels lost in Pennsylvania. When the opportunity beckoned Lee took it, knocking Meade back on his heels with a threat to his army as serious as the one Pope had endured a year earlier. As Lee quickly learned again, A. P. Hill was no Stonewall Jackson, and with Longstreet away Lee’s cudgel was no longer as mighty as he wished. The high tide of the campaign ebbed at Bristoe Station with a signal Confederate defeat. The next move was now up to Meade. Hunt’s follow-up volume to his well-received Meade and Lee After Gettysburg is grounded upon official reports, regimental histories, letters, newspapers, and other archival sources. Together, they provide a day-by-day account of the fascinating high-stakes affair during this three-month period. Coupled with original maps and outstanding photographs, this new study offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature.

A matchless account of the Battle of Gettysburg, drawn from Shelby Foote’s landmark history of the Civil War Shelby Foote’s monumental three-part chronicle, The Civil War: A Narrative, was hailed by Walker Percy as “an unparalleled achievement, an American Iliad, a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist.” Here is the central chapter of the central volume, and therefore the capstone of the arch, in a single volume. Complete with detailed maps, Stars in Their Courses brilliantly recreates the three-day conflict: It is a masterly treatment of a key great battle and the events that preceded it—not as legend has it but as it really was, before it became distorted by controversy and overblown by remembered glory.

The Louisiana Tigers in the Gettysburg Campaign, June -- July 1863, is the definitive account of General Harry T. Hays's remarkable brigade during the critical summer of 1863. While previous studies of the "Louisiana Tigers" have examined the brigade, or its regiments, or its leaders over the course of the American Civil War; and others have concentrated on its one-day role defending East Cemetery Hill on July 2, 1863, The Louisiana Tigers in the Gettysburg Campaign is the first account to focus exclusively and comprehensively on the role the "Louisiana Tigers" played during the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign in its entirety.

The complete text of one of the most important speeches in American history, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to remember not only the grim bloodshed that had just occurred there, but also to remember the American ideals that were being put to the ultimate test by the Civil War. A rousing appeal to the nation’s better angels, The Gettysburg Address remains an inspiring vision of the United States as a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

An award-winning historical study of the important role played by Union and Confederate horse soldiers on the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. The Union army’s victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 3, 1863, is widely considered to have been the turning point in America’s War between the States. But the valuable contributions of the mounted troops, both Northern and Rebel, in the decisive three-day conflict have gone largely unrecognized. Acclaimed Civil War historian Eric J. Wittenberg now gives the cavalries their proper due. In Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions, Wittenberg explores three important mounted engagements undertaken during the battle and how they influenced the final outcome. The courageous but doomed response by Brig. Gen. Elon J. Farnsworth’s cavalry brigade in the wake of Pickett’s Charge is recreated in fascinating detail, revealing the fatal flaws in the general’s plan to lead his riders against entrenched Confederate infantry and artillery. The tenacious assault led by Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt on South Cavalry Field is also examined, as is the strategic victory at Fairfield by Southern troops that nearly destroyed the Sixth US Cavalry and left Hagerstown Road open, enabling General Lee’s eventual retreat. Winner of the prestigious Bachelder-Coddington Award for historical works concerning the Battle of Gettysburg, Eric J. Wittenberg’s Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions rights a long-standing wrong by lifting these all-important engagements out of obscurity. A must-read for Civil War buffs everywhere, it completes the story of the battle that changed American history forever.