Southern War

The Battle of the Crater is known as one of the Civil War's bloodiest struggles - a Union loss with combined casualties of 5,000, many of whom were members of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) under Union Brigadier General Edward Ferrero. The battle was a violent clash of forces as Confederate soldiers fought for the first time against African American soldiers.

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

Once upon a time, Melanie Layton and Tennyson O'Rourke were inseparable - but their friends-4ever promises were shattered when an explosive secret was revealed at Mel's wedding, a secret that destroyed her family. The two haven't spoken for the past twenty-some-odd years, and they'd be happy if they never crossed paths again.

From phenomenally successful fantasy author Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time), writing as Reagan O'Neal, comes The Fallon Blood, a splendid story of the American Revolution, now for the first time in audiobook format. In 1765, Michael Fallon, an Irishman on the run from brutal English overlords...

In this richly diverse volume, Joseph M. Beilein Jr., and Matthew C. Hulbert assemble a team of both rising and eminent scholars to examine guerrilla warfare in the South during the Civil War. Together, they discuss irregular combat as practiced by various communities in multiple contexts, including how it was used by Native Americans, the factors that motivated raiders in the border states, and the women who participated as messengers, informants, collaborators, and combatants.

In this reexamination of Confederate war aims, Joseph L. Harsh analyzes the military policy and grand strategy adopted by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the first two years of the Civil War. Recent critics of Lee have depicted him as a general of tactical brilliance, but one who lacked strategic vision.

On a Mississippi morning in 1859, Emily Matthews begs her father to save a slave, Nathan, about to be auctioned away from his family. Judge Matthews is an abolitionist who runs an illegal school for his slaves, hoping to eventually set them free. One, a woman named Ginny, has become Emily's companion and often her conscience - and understands all too well the hazards an educated slave must face. Yet even Ginny could not predict the tangled, tragic string of events set in motion as Nathan's family arrives at the Matthews farm.

With its emphasis on traditional values, family, faith, military service, good manners, small government, and independent-minded people, the South should certainly rise again. Far from being the backwater of prejudice and ignorance that the liberal media would have you believe, the South has always been the center of American culture.

Lou might be only 12, but she's never been one to take things sitting down. So when her Civil War-era house is about to be condemned, she's determined to save it - either by getting it deemed a historic landmark or by finding the stash of gold rumored to be hidden nearby during the war. As Lou digs into the past, her eyes are opened when she finds that her ancestors ran the gamut of slave owners, renegades, thieves, and abolitionists.

Written in the form of a letter to her granddaughter, the author of this little book describes her plantation childhood, her marriage and parenthood, and her experiences during the Civil War and Reconstruction. In response to what she believed were misconceptions about antebellum Southern slavery, she argues that while some slaveholders were cruel, the majority were conscientious about the well-being of their servants and looked upon them as members of the household.

You were lied to about the nature, character, and cause of the American Civil War, but that is just the start. The entire South - its people, culture, history, customs, both past and present - has been and continues to be lied about and demonized by the unholy trinity of the American establishment: academia, Hollywood, and the media.

In the aftermath of the Battles of Khambula and Gingindlovu, a lull fell over the war-torn Zulu Kingdom. Though British forces under Lord Chelmsford emerged victorious during both encounters, earlier defeats, casualties, and supply shortages required them to withdraw back into Natal. Now with waves of long-awaited reinforcements arriving, Chelmsford prepares to launch a second invasion of Zululand. Death and destruction have taken their toll on the Zulu people. Thousands of families mourn for their loved ones, while refugees flee from the devastation of the border regions.

Memories of motherhood and marriage are fresh for Julia Presley...though tragedy took away both years ago. Finding comfort in the routine of running the Peach Orchard Inn, she lets the historic, mysterious place fill the voids of love and family. No more pleasure of a man's gentle kiss. No more joy in hearing a child call her Mommy. Life is calm, unchanging - until a stranger with a young boy and soul-deep secrets shows up in her Tennessee town and disrupts the loneliness of her world.

As a National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the attempt to rebuild a broken nation. With her NPR assignment finished in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn around the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic, perverse turn of events.

Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. So argues Elizabeth R. Varon in Armies of Deliverance, a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. As the war escalated, Lincoln and his allies built the case that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit the North and South alike.

The purpose of this selection is to document the military career of Wade Hampton III. Six feet tall and sturdily built, Hampton was no armchair warrior. Noted for his patriarchal and caring manner, Hampton would give all of his own personal fortune for the Confederate cause before the Civil War was over. Wounded five times in battle (severely at Gettysburg), at 42 years of age Hampton was described as the idealized statue of a mounted warrior.

As the old gods are eroded by the new church and and ambitious men vie for power, blood is shed throughout the land. In the south, ealdorman Aelfhere believes that for his only daughter, 16-year-old Cynethryth, marriage to a Saxon king is the way to security. And so, against her own wishes, Cynethryth is betrothed. Yet as battle rages around her, Cynethryth too becomes a victim of war. Taken prisoner by the warrior invaders, she is forced into the presence of another Saxon king, who would also have her for his wife. A man she actually loves.

The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War, the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man's war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War.

In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: They could submit to abolition - or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow.

On September 17, 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld boarded a Douglas DC6 propeller plane on the sweltering tarmac of the airport in Leopoldville, the capital of the Congo. Hours later, he would be found dead in an African jungle with an ace of spades playing card placed on his body. Hammarskjöld had been the head of the United Nations for nine years. He was legendary for his dedication to peace on Earth.