Civil War Biography

Twelve Years a Slave is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of twelve years. Northup's account is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar plantation and the daily routine of slave life during the first part of the 19th century.

Bluejackets in the Blubber Room explores key events in US maritime history from the 1820s to the end of the Civil War through the biography of the sailing ship William Badger.

An inspiring account from one of history’s darkest moments. Marione Ingram grew up in Hamburg, Germany, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She was German. She was Jewish. She was a survivor. This is her story. As a young girl, Marione was aware that people of the Jewish faith were regarded as outsiders, the supposed root of Germany’s many problems. She grew up in an apartment building where neighbors were more than happy to report Jews to the Gestapo.

The life of John Marshall, founding father and America's premier chief justice. In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth chief justice of the US. He would hold the post for 34 years (still a record), expounding the Constitution he loved. Before he joined the Court, it was the weakling of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout. After he died, it could never be ignored again.

Award-winning novelist and historian, Duane Schultz, dramatically recreates the treachery of Civil War "Colonel" William Clarke Quantrill's life and the riveting climax of his infamous raid on Lawrence, Kansas. From letters and diaries, Schultz skillfully weaves together this exciting, dark side of Quantrill - a man who was part warrior, part villain.

As we approach the bicentennial of Lincoln'sbirth in 2009, this work provides a genuinely novel, even timely, view of the most written about figure in our history. Tried by War offers a revelatory portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. How Lincoln overcame feckless generals, fickle public opinion, and his own paralyzing fears is a story at once suspenseful and inspiring.

For all the talk of the Civil War "pitting brother against brother", until now there has never been a single book that traces the story of one family ravaged by that conflict. And no family could better illustrate the personal toll the war took than Lincoln's own. Mary Todd Lincoln was one of 14 siblings who were split between the Confederacy and the Union. Three of her brothers fought, and two died, for the South.

In Lincoln and California Brian McGinty explains the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln's lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln's close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union.

"The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865" is an evocative and historically significant diary penned by Eliza Frances Andrews, which vividly captures the tumult and transformation of the American South during the waning days of the Civil War and the onset of Reconstruction.

When the British fought the young United States during the War of 1812, they knew that taking the mouth of the Mississippi River was the key to crippling their former colony. Capturing the city of New Orleans and stopping trade up the river sounded like a simple task - New Orleans was far away from Washington, out of sight and out of mind for the politicians. What the British didn't count on was the power of General Andrew Jackson.

As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider's name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a 24-year-old warrior.

Freedom’s Detective reveals the untold story of the Reconstruction-era US Secret Service and their battle against the Ku Klux Klan, through the career of its controversial chief, Hiram C. Whitle.

Rebirthing Lincoln, a Biography by Southern Historian Howard Ray White is the most impressive and truthfully educational book of the 13 books he has authored to date. White's biography of President Abraham Lincoln properly tells the essential biographical history concerning "how an Illinois lawyer kept secret his illegitimate birth and won the 1860 presidential nomination of the northern states' Republican party".

Timothy O'Sullivan is America's most famous war photographer. You know his work even if you don't know his name: A Harvest of Death, taken at Gettysburg, is an icon of the Civil War. He was also among the first photographers to elevate what was then a trade to the status of fine art. The images of the American West he made after the war, while traveling with the surveys led by Clarence King and George Wheeler, display a prescient awareness of what photography would become; years later, Ansel Adams would declare his work "surrealistic and disturbing."

Lincoln's official secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, enjoyed more access, witnessed more history, and knew Lincoln better than anyone outside of the president's immediate family. Hay and Nicolay were the gatekeepers of the Lincoln legacy. They read poetry and attendeded the theater with the president, commiserated with him over Union army setbacks, and plotted electoral strategy.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Abraham Lincoln called "Billy" Herndon, “My man always above all other men on the globe". They were business partners for 16 years. After Lincoln's assassination Herndon did interviews with Lincoln's family and friends for this biography. Co-author Jesse Weik also conducted many original interviews. The result - although not without flaws - has been recognized as one of the most important biographies of the Great Emancipator ever published.

Growing up in a Quaker family in the South in 1830, Levi Coffin did not support slavery, but he was exposed to its atrocities. Convinced that every person deserved to be free, Levi began helping slaves escape to the North along the Underground Railroad, and during the following 40 years he was able to help over 3,000 people find freedom.

"The real war will never get in the books," Walt Whitman wrote in this diary he kept during the Civil War. Whitman chronicled his visits to Washington, D.C. hospitals where he comforted wounded men and assisted nurses and doctors. This journal, written by one of America's greatest poets and writers, captures the details and ironies of war.

Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. The Other Side of the War reveals the war as experienced by the thousands of women volunteered to work in hospitals and for the Sanitary Commission, the organization that advocated better practices and lobbied for increased supplies. Katharine Prescott Wormeley was one of those volunteers, an American nurse in the Civil War, as well as author, editor, and and one of America’s best-known translators of French language literary works.