Military

The most famous Civil War name in Northern Virginia, other than General Lee, belongs to Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost.

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, he quickly rose through the ranks and 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.

Author D. Michael Thomas presents the previously untold story of the Iron Scouts for the first time.

Serving from late 1862 to the war's end, Wade Hampton's Scouts were a key component of the comprehensive intelligence network designed by Generals Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart and Wade Hampton. The Scouts were stationed behind enemy lines on a permanent basis and provided critical military intelligence to their generals. They became proficient in "unconventional" warfare and emerged unscathed in so many close-combat actions that their foes grudgingly dubbed them Hampton's "Iron Scouts."

In 1864, six hundred Confederate prisoners of war, all officers, were taken out of a prison camp in Delaware and transported to South Carolina, where most were confined in a Union stockade prison on Morris Island.

They were placed in front of two Union forts as ""human shields"" during the siege of Charleston and exposed to a fearful barrage of artillery fire from Confederate forts. Many of these men would suffer an even worse ordeal at Union-held Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Georgia, where they were subjected to severe food rationing as retaliatory policy. Author and historian Karen Stokes uses the prisoners' writings to relive the courage, fraternity and struggle of the ""Immortal 600.""

War of Empires

The colonial frontier of Western Pennsylvania set the stage for the fight over control of North America and the promise of the American West. The war began in the Commonwealth and the defenses, roads and skirmishes fought in the Western part of the state defined the war and the early career of George Washington. Join author Robert M. Dunkerly as he reveals the harrowing history of the French and Indian War in Western Pennsylvania.

Discover the true accounts of South Carolinian's as they recount General Sherman's march through the Palmetto State during the Civil War.

During the fateful winter and spring of 1865, thousands of civilians in South Carolina, young and old, black and white, felt the impact of what General William T. Sherman called ""the hard hand of war."" This book tells their stories, many of which were corroborated by the testimony of Sherman's own soldiers and officers, and other eyewitnesses. These historical narratives are taken from letters and diaries of the time, as well as newspaper accounts and memoirs. The author has drawn on the superb resources of the South Carolina Historical Society's collection of manuscripts and publications to present these true, compelling stories of South Carolinians.

Gettysburg is America's most famous battle. Fought on the first three days of July 1863, it was one of the largest and by far the bloodiest of the Civil War.

Yet the importance of this great conflagration cannot be measured in numbers alone, for Gettysburg also represented a pivotal moment in the war. The battle ended General Robert E. Lee's second invasion of Union soil, and never again did a Confederate army reach that far north. Join historian John Hoptak as he narrates the fierce action between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac at such places as McPherson's Ridge, the Railroad Cut, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, Devil's Den, Little Round Top and on Culp's and Cemetery Hills.

The Battle of Brandy Station was the largest cavalry battle ever fought on North American soil. A must-read for Civil War and Virginia history enthusiasts.

Just before dawn on June 9, 1863, Union soldiers materialized from a thick fog near the banks of Virginia's Rappahannock River to ambush sleeping Confederates. The ensuing struggle, which lasted throughout the day and included some 20,500 soldiers, was to become known as the Battle of Brandy Station. By the end, Union casualties were 907 (69 killed, 352 wounded, and 486 missing, primarily captured) and Confederate losses totaled 523. Meticulously captured by historian, preservationist, and author Eric J. Wittenberg, these events marked a major turning point in the Civil War: the waning era of Confederate cavalry dominance in the East gave way to a confident and powerful Union mounted arm.

This fascinating volume features a GPS guided tour of the battlefield with illustrations and maps by master cartographer Steven Stanley.

The effort to win the war began at home--and for the researchers at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, enhancing America's military aviation arsenal was the key to victory.

Formed in 1915, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics established itself over the next 25 years as one of the world's finest research organizations. When World War II began in 1939, the NACA employed a mere 500 workers and maintained a budget slightly in excess of $4 million. To meet the demands of the war, a special partnership was quickly forged between NACA researchers, industry designers, and military planners. The Langley laboratory possessed world class aeronautical research facilities and flight research operations, making it ideally suited to help America win the war.

Military historian Mark Chambers tells the story of the monumental task of developing the planes that spurred Allied victory in World War II.

In the Southern Appalachian Mountains, no character was more loved or despised than George W. Kirk.

This inured Union officer led a group of deserters on numerous raids between Tennessee and North Carolina in 1863, terrorizing Confederate soldiers and civilians alike. At Camp Vance in Morganton, Kirk's mounted raiders showcased guerrilla warfare penetrating deep within Confederate territory. As Home Guards struggled to keep Western North Carolina communities safe, Kirk's men brought fear and violence throughout the region for their ability to strike and create havoc without warning. Civil War historian Michael C. Hardy examines the infamous history of George W. Kirk and the Civil War along the Blue Ridge.

Tour the camps, learn stories of the daily lives of the POWs, and discover the impact they had on the Old Dominion.

During World War II, Virginians watched as German and Italian prisoners invaded the Old Dominion. At least 17,000 Germans and countless Italians lived in over twenty camps across the state and worked on five military installations. Farmers hired POWs to pick apples. Fertilizer companies, lumber yards, and hospitals hired them. At first a phenomenon of war in Virginia's backyard, these former enemy combatants became familiar to many--often developing a rapport with their employers. Among them were die-hired Nazis and Fascists, but they benefited from double standards that placed them in better jobs and conditions than African Americans.

Historians Kathryn Coker and Jason Wetzel tell a different story of the Old Dominion at War.

Look into the eyes of these soldiers and see the faces of those who dared to stare into the face of Death.

The Battle of Fredericksburg, fought December 11-15, 1862, is often remembered for the seemingly futile attacks by the Army of the Potomac against dug in Confederates on Marye's Heights. Less well understood is the fighting south of the heights on what has become known as Slaughter Pen Farm. In this work the images of thirty Union soldiers are published for the first time. They give a face and history to those men who struggled across that bloody landscape, as well as to those that charged up the slope of Marye's Heights into Confederate fire.

Authors Matthew Borders and Joseph Stahl introduce you to these men, their stories and their sacrifice on the bullet swept battlefield of Fredericksburg.

With firsthand accounts, letters and diary entries from the Carter House Archives, local historian James R. Knight paints a vivid picture of the gruesome Battle of Franklin.

In late November 1864, the last Southern army east of the Mississippi that was still free to maneuver started out from northern Alabama on the Confederacy's last offensive. John Bell Hood and his Army of Tennessee had dreams of capturing Nashville and marching on to the Ohio River, but a small Union force under Hood's old West Point roommate stood between him and the state capital. In a desperate attempt to smash John Schofield's line at Franklin, Hood threw most of his men against the Union works, centered on the house of a family named Carter, and lost 30 percent of his attacking force in one afternoon, crippling his army and setting it up for a knockout blow at Nashville two weeks later.

A pivotal moment in American history, as told by our forefathers

On October 7, 1780, American Patriot and Loyalist soldiers battled each other at Kings Mountain, near the border of North and South Carolina. With over one hundred eyewitness accounts, this collection of participant statements from men of both sides includes letters and statements in their original form - the soldiers' own words - unedited and unabridged. Rife with previously unpublished details of this historic turning point in the American Revolution, described as the war's "largest all-American fight," these accounts expose the dramatic happenings of the battle, including new perspectives on the debate over Patriot Colonel William Campbell's bravery during the fight. Robert M. Dunkerley's work is an invaluable resource to historians studying the flow of combat, genealogists tracing their ancestors and anyone interested in Kings Mountain and the Southern Campaign.

Immerse yourself in Kentucky's largest battle, Perryville, with author Christopher Kolakowski. A must-read for Civil War and Kentucky History enthusiasts.

Desperate to seize control of Union-held Kentucky, a border state, the Confederate army launched an invasion into the commonwealth in the fall of 1862. The incursion viciously culminated at an otherwise quiet Bluegrass crossroads and forever altered the landscape of the war.

The Battle of Perryville lasted just one day yet produced nearly eight thousand combined casualties and losses, and some say nary a victor. The Rebel army was forced to retreat, and the United States kept its imperative grasp on Kentucky throughout the war. Famous Confederate diarist Sam Watkins, whose Company Aytch journals were featured as a major narrative thread in Ken Burns' award-winning Civil War documentary series, declared Perryville the hardest fighting that he experienced. Indeed, history would record that Perryville the second bloodiest battle of the Western Theater after Shiloh.

Few know this hallowed ground like Christopher L. Kolakowski, former director of the Perryville Battlefield Preservation Association, who draws on letters, reports, memoirs and other primary sources to offer the most accessible and engaging account of the Kentucky Campaign yet, featuring over sixty historic images and maps.

Join author M. Patrick Hendrix as he follows the tumultuous lives of the men who fought to control the most revered monuments to the war.

In 1829, construction began on a fort atop a rock formation in the mouth of Charleston Harbor. Decades later, Fort Sumter was near completion on December 26, 1860, when Major Robert Anderson occupied it in response to the growing hostilities between the North and South. As a symbol of sedition for the North and holy ground for the South, possession of Fort Sumter was deemed essential to both sides when the Civil War began. By 1864, the fort, heavily bombarded by Union artillery, was a shapeless mass of ruins, mostly bermed rubble and sand with a garrison of Confederate soldiers holding its ground.

Revisit one of the most important and bloodiest days of the Civil War, the Confederate battle at Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, in this exciting view of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in the summer of 1864.

In the summer of 1864, Georgia was the scene of one of the most important campaigns of the Civil War. William Tecumseh Sherman's push southward toward Atlanta threatened the heart of the Confederacy, and Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of Tennessee were the Confederacy's best hope to defend it. In June, Johnston managed to grind Sherman's advance to a halt northwest of Atlanta at Kennesaw Mountain. After weeks of maneuvering, on June 27, Sherman launched a bold attack on Johnston's lines. The Confederate victory was one of the bloodiest days of the entire campaign. And while Sherman's assaults had a frightful cost, Union forces learned important lessons at Kennesaw Mountain that enabled the fall of Atlanta several months later.

Learn more about Fort Pitt, a key military bastion of the American Revolution and guard of the Western "frontier", Pittsburgh, through this vivid illustrated history.

With vivid detail, historian Brady Crytzer traces the full history of Fort Pitt, from empire outpost to a bastion on the frontlines of a new Republic. A keystone to British domination in the territory during the French and Indian War and Pontiac's Rebellion, it was the most technologically advanced fortification in the Western Hemisphere. Early patriots later seized the fort, and it became a rallying point for the fledgling Revolution. Guarding the young settlement of Pittsburgh, Fort Pitt was the last point of civilization at the edge of the new American West.

This book reveals the battles and events that shaped the history of 'The Heart of Dixie' during the Civil War.

Alabama's role in the Civil War cannot be understated. Union raids into northern Alabama, the huge manufacturing infrastructure in central Alabama and the Battle of Mobile Bay all played significant parts. A number of important Civil War figures also called Alabama home. Major General Joseph Wheeler was one of the most remarkable Confederate cavalry commanders in the west. John ""the Gallant"" Pelham earned the nickname for his bravery during the Battle of Fredericksburg. John Semmes commanded two of the most famous commerce raiders of the war--the CSS Sumter and the CSS Alabama. Author Robert C. Jones examines the people and places in Alabama that shaped the Civil War.

If you were a Confederate prisoner during the Civil War, you might have ended up in this infamous military prison in Chicago.

More Confederate soldiers died in Chicago's Camp Douglas than on any Civil War battlefield. Originally constructed in 1861 to train forty thousand Union soldiers from the northern third of Illinois, it was converted to a prison camp in 1862. Nearly thirty thousand Confederate prisoners were housed there until it was shut down in 1865. Today, the history of the camp ranges from unknown to deeply misunderstood. David Keller offers a modern perspective of Camp Douglas and a key piece of scholarship in reckoning with the legacy of other military prisons.

From January to July 1942, more than seventy-five ships sank to North Carolina's "Graveyard of the Atlantic" off the coast of the Outer Banks. A Standard oil tanker sank just sixty miles from Cape Hatteras.

German U-boats sank ships in some of the most harrowing sea fighting close to America's shore. Germany's Operation Drumbeat, led by Admiral Karl Donitz, brought fear to the local communities. The U-85 was the first U-boat sunk by American surface forces, and local divers later discovered a rare Enigma machine aboard. Author Jim Bunch traces the destructive history of world war on the shores of the Outer Banks.

While many institutions of higher education made great sacrifices during the Civil War, few can boast of the dedication and effort made by the University of Notre Dame.

For four years, Notre Dame gave freely of its faculty and students as soldiers, sent its Holy Cross priests to the camps and battlefields as chaplains and dispatched its sisters to the hospitals as nurses. Though far from the battlefields, the war was ever-present on campus, as Notre Dame witnessed fisticuffs among the student body, provided a home to the children of a famous general, responded to political harassment and tried to keep at least some of its community from the fray. At war's end, a proud Notre Dame welcomed back several bona fide war heroes and became home to a unique veterans' organization.

In June 1863, Harrisburg braced for an invasion as the Confederate troops of Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell steadily moved toward the Pennsylvania capital.

Capturing Carlisle en route, Ewell sent forth a brigade of cavalry under Brigadier General Albert Gallatin Jenkins. After occupying Mechanicsburg for two days, Jenkins's troops skirmished with Union militia near Harrisburg. Jenkins then reported back to Ewell that Harrisburg was vulnerable. Ewell, however, received orders from army commander Lee to concentrate southward--toward Gettysburg--immediately. Left in front of Harrisburg, Jenkins had to fight his way out at the Battle of Sporting Hill. The following day, Jeb Stuart's Confederate cavalry made its way to Carlisle and began the infamous shelling of its Union defenders and civilian population. Running out of ammunition and finally making contact with Lee, Stuart also retired south toward Gettysburg. Author Cooper H. Wingert traces the Confederates to the gates of Harrisburg in these northernmost actions of the Gettysburg Campaign.