New Book Releases

One of the oldest counties in Arkansas, Clark County was established in 1818 as part of the Missouri Territory and named for Missouri governor William Clark, also of the Lewis and Clark expedition. 

The presence of the Caddo and Ouachita Rivers and its location on historical travel routes—the Southwest Trail, the Military Road, and the Bankhead Highway—contributed to settlement and economic development from a frontier town to today. Arkadelphia, the county seat since 1842, has been a center of higher education since the late 19th century, with two universities, Henderson State and Ouachita Baptist. Each year the two universities compete in the famed “Battle of the Ravine,” dating back to 1895, the only college football rivalry in the nation for which the visiting team walks to the game. In March 1997, much of Arkadelphia’s main business district and several residential districts were leveled by a devastating F-4 tornado. After the process of recovery and rebuilding, the city continues to flourish as the county’s center of government, commerce, medicine, and education. 

Dr. Lisa Speer is the university archivist and a professor at Ouachita Baptist University. Speer previously served as director of the Arkansas State Archives and state historian from 2013 to 2018. She also serves as vice president of the Clark County Museum board. The photographs featured in this volume came primarily from the archives at Henderson State University, Ouachita Baptist University, and the Clark County Museum.

This volume explores the history of Vicksburg National Cemetery, reveals recent discoveries, and notes how the addition of various elements through the years helped to beautify this sacred ground. It examines the lives of a small fraction of the cemetery’s approximately 18,000 interments, which include veterans of the Mexican-American and Civil Wars through the Korean War and three Vietnam memorials. Included among the interments are cemetery superintendents, a Civil War nurse, a female veteran, a member of a popular local band (the Red Tops), a former Vicksburg alderman, a Tuskegee airman, and a Vick family descendant (Vicksburg’s namesake). Military service is the common thread that all of them share. This book focuses on the untold stories of those interred within the hallowed ground of Vicksburg National Cemetery.

Elizabeth Hoxie Joyner—a retired employee of the National Park Service, museum curator, and author of USS Cairo in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of Modern America series—has tracked down images from a variety of sources around the country to illustrate who these people were, what they did, and the sacrifices they made to protect this great nation. A burial index is also included that documents the section and number of each interment to aid in grave location.

On March 19–21, 1865, nearly 80,000 soldiers clashed near the small hamlet of Bentonville, North Carolina, in a bitter battle that would prove to be the largest ever fought in the state and one of the last major battles of the Civil War.  Over the following decades, residents, descendants, and historians preserved the Bentonville story through monuments, markers, tours, and more. A hundred years after the battle, representatives of the state of North Carolina dedicated a permanent museum and created Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site. Over the following years, North Carolina Historic Sites, with the American Battlefield Trust, has preserved and interpreted the battlefield at Bentonville—with over 2,000 acres preserved as of 2023. Today, the site continues to tell the multitude of Bentonville stories, including the battle, its aftermath, and the community that surrounds it. /Collecting photographs from several North Carolina state agencies, historical societies, and descendants of veterans and community members, this book tells the visual history of the battlefield as a site of memory. Several works exist to tell the history of the battle, but this is the first history of the battlefield itself. Authors Colby Lipscomb and Derrick Brown have decades of experience at the battlefield as visitors and, currently, as staff members. 

Remembering Mississippi's Confederates is a collection of never-before-seen images which document the history of these soldiers.

The Confederate States of America engaged in a battle for national survival that lasted four long and incredibly bloody years. The conflict went on for so long because thousands of rebels were willing to lay down their lives and defend their homes to the last man and last cartridge. Many of these soldiers were Mississippians--approximately 78,000 citizens of the Magnolia State can be documented as having served in the Civil War. Of this number, over 27,500 died either of disease or in combat. Remembering Mississippi's Confederates is a photographic tribute to the men who fought so gallantly for their state. Many of the images in this volume have never been published and come from the proud descendants of the soldiers themselves; others were acquired from collections spread across the United States.

The fourth president of the United States, James Madison, and his wife, Dolley, stamped their influence throughout Culpeper, Orange, Madison, and Rappahannock Counties with their plantation, Montpelier, and the enslaved men and women who supported them.

One of those enslaved men, Paul Jennings, whose sons later became Union soldiers during the Civil War, penned his memoir in 1865. The legacy of slavery undergirds the region, and its ravages are undeniably on the faces of minority residents. The Civil War also has a footprint throughout the region; one example is the Battle of Cedar Mountain where, more than 85 years later, the first regional high school for minority children was built. Celebrants include World War I veteran Newman Nighten Gibson, of the 370th Infantry; Nannie Helen Burroughs, who founded a school for African American girls in Washington, DC; and Edna Lewis, who became a master chef in New York in her 30s and later was honored by the US Postal Service on a forever stamp.

Through photographs of veterans and reunions, monuments, and tombstones, Hardy shows the many ways that the old Confederate soldiers are commemorated across the Old North State.

The American Civil War was scarcely over when a group of ladies met in Raleigh and began to plan commemoration for the honored Confederate dead of North Carolina. In 1867, they held their first memorial service. Two years later in Fayetteville, the first monument to the state's fallen Confederate soldiers was erected. Over the next 14 decades, countless monuments were commissioned in cemeteries and courthouse squares across the state. Following Reconstruction, the veterans themselves began to gather in their local communities, and state and national reunions were held. For many of the Confederate veterans, honor for their previous service continued long after their deaths: accounts of their sacrifice were often chiseled on their grave markers.

West Virginia in the Civil War chronicles the role West Virginians played in the Civil War through the use of vintage photograph

West Virginia, ""Child of the Storm,"" was the only state formed as a result of the Civil War. West Virginia witnessed battles, engagements, and guerrilla actions during the four years of the Civil War. The struggle between eastern and western Virginia over voting rights, taxation, and economic development can be traced back to the formation of the Republic. John Brown's 1859 raid on the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry played a major role in the Civil War, which started in western Virginia with the destruction of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad property. When Virginia voted to secede and join the slave-holding Confederacy, the counties of western Virginia formed the pro-Union government known as the Restored Government of Virginia in Wheeling. West Virginia in the Civil War chronicles the role West Virginians played in the Civil War through the use of vintage photographs.

This pictorial history illustrates the Tennessee River's influence on Northwest Alabama and people, places, and events that have shaped the area’s cultural and natural history.

For centuries, the Tennessee River has shaped the lives of northwest Alabamians. Native peoples made their homes on its shores, living on the rich resources found in its waters and on its banks. Early Europeans and Americans recognized the river's importance in connecting east with west, although traveling the 40-mile stretch of rocky shoals between present-day Decatur and Florence was difficult. Overcoming that navigation challenge led to such 19th-century technological advances as the Tuscumbia, Courtland & Decatur Railroad—the first rail line west of the Appalachian Mountains—and the Muscle Shoals Canal. During the Civil War, skirmishes over control of factories, rail lines, and bridges characterized most military activity in northwest Alabama. In the 20th century, the construction of Wilson Dam and the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority improved the quality of life and increased economic opportunities in northwest Alabama.

Images of America: Tennessee's Confederates draws upon photographs, many previously unpublished, to tell the stories of confederate soldiers from the Volunteer State.

Like other slave-holding border states, Tennessee initially elected not to join the newly formed Confederates States of America. However, with the attack on Fort Sumter and the call for troops to put down the rebellion, Tennessee governor Isham Harris telegrammed President Lincoln, ""Tennessee will not furnish a single man for the purpose of coercion, but 50,000 if necessary for the defense of our rights and those of our Southern brothers."" In early June 1861, the state voted to secede from the Union and soon joined the Confederacy. Ultimately, Tennessee provided nearly 187,000 men to the Confederate cause serving in 110 regiments and 33 battalions. Photographs are from the collections of the Tennessee State Museum, the Tennessee State Library and Archives, the Tennessee Historical Society, and private collections.