Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs, The Civil War: The First Year brings together over 120 pieces by more than sixty participants to create a unique firsthand narrative of this great historical crisis"--Dust jacket flap.

Undoubtedly Bruce Catton's most brilliant book, A Stillness at Appomattox won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for excellence in nonfiction. Catton, our foremost Civil War historian, recounts the most spectacular conflicts between Grant and Lee and details the end of hope for the Confederacy. Utilizing various collections of unpublished letters written by soldiers, personal diaries of spouses and relatives, memoirs of soldiers and...

Faced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without...

Remembered by history as the first modern general, William Tecumseh Sherman wrote his Memoirs ten years after the end of the Civil War. It served as a personal account of his experiences as a powerful Union general, and also as a history of the events that had taken place since the beginning of the Mexican War in 1846. He later reflected on his intentions in writing these Memoirs, stating his wish "to be a witness on the stand before the great tribunal...

A chronicle and analysis of the Civil War, focusing on the multiple meanings of slavery and freedom and how they dissolved and re-formed throughout the course of the conflict.