The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct is a two volume historical work by George Eggleston, American author who served as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, which took place from 1861 to 1865 between northern United States and southern United States. Eggleston divided the work in two parts, dealing firstly with the causes of war, and then with its conduct, sharing his own experiences, but also providing a critical look from his standpoint of a Confederate soldier.

To be continue from Volume1 In the meantime great events were occurring which were in some respects more important in their bearing on the war than battles would have been. In these events the war recognized itself and adapted itself to its conditions. From the beginning the abolitionists had clamorously and ceaselessly demanded of Mr. Lincoln that he should recognize the actual cause of the war by proclaiming freedom for the slaves at the South. There was no doubt in anybody's mind that the war was simply the culmination of that "irrepressible conflict" between the systems and sentiments of free and slave labor which had constituted the burden of the country's history for nearly half a century. If there had been no slavery there would have been no war. It is true that a very large proportion of the Southern people regretted slavery, deprecated its existence, and earnestly desired to be rid of it. It is also true that the great mass of the Southerners were non-slaveholders, and that their fighting was done not for the perpetuation of that institution, in which they had no interest, but in assertion of those reserved rights of the individual states upon the maintenance of which they sincerely believed that the liberty of the people depended. These people desired to take their states out of the Union, not for the sake of slavery, but for the sake of that right of local self-government which they regarded as the fundamental condition of liberty among men. On the other hand a large proportion of the Northern people cared little or nothing about slavery—many of them even approving the institution as the only practicable arrangement under which blacks and whites could live peaceably together, and as a condition eminently proper for the incapable black man. But these believed in the maintenance of the Union as a condition of liberty and progress, and were ready to sacrifice their lives and their possessions in behalf of that end. Nevertheless it was clear from the beginning that in the last analysis, the war involved as its issue the maintenance of slavery, or the destruction of that system root and branch. Personally Mr. Lincoln hated slavery and very earnestly desired its extermination. But, as he reminded those who beset him with unsolicited advice, he was restrained by his oath of office while they were free to advocate any principle or policy that might seem good in their eyes. Moreover, he had upon him the tremendous task of preserving the Union and in aid of that supreme purpose he was ready to sacrifice all other considerations of what kind soever. In answer to an impassioned appeal from Horace Greeley in August, 1862, Mr. Lincoln set forth his attitude in these words: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." At the beginning Mr. Lincoln had clearly seen the necessity of winning all the support he could to his war measures. He had seen that while practically the whole population of the North would stand by him in a war for the preservation of the Union, there must be a very great and dangerous defection, should he make the war one for the extirpation of slavery in those states in which the institution existed under protection of the Federal Constitution. By thus resolutely refusing to make the war a crusade against slavery, and declaring—as he did in his official utterances—that it was no part of his purpose to interfere with the domestic institutions of any state, Mr. Lincoln had drawn to his support a vast body of influential citizens who would otherwise have opposed, and whose influence was great enough perhaps, if it had been offended, to have robbed him of the means of restoring the disrupted Union. Had he adopted the policy...

More than 60,000 books have been published on the Civil War. Most Americans, though, get their ideas about the war--why it was fought, what was won, what was lost--not from books but from movies, television, and other popular media. In an engaging and accessible survey, Gary W. Gallagher guides readers through the stories told in recent film and art, showing how these stories have both reflected and influenced the political, social, and racial currents of their times.

During the years from 1861 to 1865, one of the greatest wars in all history was fought in this country. There were in all three million three hundred and seventy-eight thousand men engaged in the fighting of it. There are not that many men in all the regular standing armies of Europe combined, even if we include the unpaid hordes of Turkey and the military myriads of the armed camp known to geography as Russia. The actual fighting field of this war of ours was larger than the whole of western Europe, and all of it was trampled over and fought over by great armies. The men killed or mortally wounded in our war numbered on the Northern side alone 110,000. The total number of deaths resulting from military operations on the Northern side alone was 350,000. The figures for the Southern side are not accessible, owing to the loss of records. But as the fighting was equally determined on both sides, and as other conditions were substantially equal, it is certain that the losses of life were relatively about the same on both sides. It is well within the facts, therefore, to say that this war of ours directly caused the death of more than half a million men. No other war in modern history has cost so many lives or half so many. We hear much of our recent war with Spain. Let us take it as a basis of comparison. The total number of men even nominally called into the field in that war was less by nearly two to one than the deaths alone during the Confederate war. The number of men who were actually engaged in the Spanish war numbered only about one tenth as many as those who were buried as victims of the Confederate war's battle fields. Again, the total number of men killed and wounded during the Spanish war—including every man who was touched by a bullet or scratched by a sword or bayonet thrust or hurt by a splinter at sea—was only two hundred sixty-eight. That is fewer than the number who were stricken in each of many before-breakfast skirmishes of the Confederate war, some of which were deemed too insignificant to be reported to headquarters with precision. Looking for higher standards of comparison, we find that 43,449 men fell killed or wounded at Gettysburg alone. That is almost double the loss of the allied forces at Waterloo and probably equal to the total losses on both sides at that greatest and most decisive of European battles. There were more than a dozen other battles of the Confederate war which in slaughter fairly deserved comparison with Waterloo. These included the Seven Days' battle before Richmond, and the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam, Shiloh, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, the Second Manassas (or Bull Run), Stone River, Petersburg, Franklin, Lookout Mountain, Nashville and several others. Still another measure of the magnitude of a war is its duration. It is duration indeed that chiefly determines the amount of human suffering caused by a war, especially to the women and children who are war's chief victims. Measured by this test of duration the Confederate war exceeded all other recent conflicts in the magnitude of the suffering it inflicted. Its first gun was fired at Fort Sumter in April, 1861: its last armed conflict did not occur until May, 1865. Thus for four years and a month the war endured. The Crimean war—one of the longest of nineteenth century conflicts—endured for less than half that length of time and the actual fighting of it lasted less than one fourth as long. The duration of the Confederate war was seven times as great as that of the stupendous Franco-Prussian conflict of 1870, which overthrew the second Napoleonic empire, consolidated Germany and made the republic an enduring fact in France. It was twenty-four times as long as that of the French-Austrian war, which set Italy free, or as the War of 1866 between Austria and Prussia which laid the foundations of the present German empire...

From the Publisher: This latest edition of an official U.S. Government military history classic provides an authoritative historical survey of the organization and accomplishments of the United States Army. This scholarly yet readable book is designed to inculcate an awareness of our nation's military past and to demonstrate that the study of military history is an essential ingredient in leadership development. It is also an essential addition to any personal military history library.

General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.