The Civil War never left South Carolina, from its beginning at Fort Sumter in 1861 through the destructive, harrowing days of Sherman s march through the state in 1865. Included here are the stories of Confederate civilians and soldiers who remained true to their cause throughout the perilous struggle. An English aristocrat risked his life to run the blockade and become one of the defenders of Charleston. The Haskells of Abbeville sent seven sons into Confederate service. Many South Carolina women made heart-rending sacrifices, including a disabled woman from Laurens County whose heroic...

Pamlico Sound is one of the most storied bodies of water among North Carolina's Outer Banks. Early colonists to Roanoke Island used it for protection. Blackbeard the pirate was killed there in 1718, and General Washington relied on it for transportation in the Revolutionary War. It wasn't a surprise, then, that the Confederate bastion of Fort Ocracoke was built in those same waters. Said to be capable of mounting fifty guns, the fort was part of the coastal defense system of the state. After Union victories on nearby Hatteras Island, the fort was destroyed and its whereabouts lost for...

Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau played host to some of the most dramatic military maneuvering of the Civil War. Straddling the entire state of Tennessee, the formidable tableland proved to be a maze of topographical pitfalls and a morass of divided loyalties. As Federal forces sought to capitalize on the capture of Nashville, they moved into a region split by the most vicious guerrilla warfare outside Missouri, including the colorful and intensely violent rivalry between Confederate Champ Ferguson and Unionist "Tinker" Dave Beaty. The bitter conflict affected thousands of ordinary men and...

When the United States was divided by war, future president James Abram Garfield was one of many who stepped forward to defend the Union. While his presidency was tragically cut short by his assassination, Garfield's historic life covered some of the most consequential years of American history. From humble beginnings in Ohio, he rose to become a major general in the Union army. Garfield's military career took him to the backwoods of Kentucky, the fields of Shiloh and Chickamauga and ultimately to the halls of Congress. His service during the war helped to save the Union he would go on to...

Even after a grueling forty-seven-day siege at Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant could not rest on his laurels. Just fifty miles away in Jackson, Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of Relief still posed a threat to Grant s hard-won victory. General William Tecumseh Sherman countered by marching Union troops to Jackson. After a weeklong siege under a hot Mississippi sun, Johnston s army abandoned the city, leaving the fate of Jackson in the hands of Sherman s troops. Historian Jim Woodrick recounts the Civil War devastation and rebirth of Mississippi s capital."

On August 5, 1864, the Civil War arrived at Mobile's doorstep. The Union navy blockaded Mobile Bay and the city for eight months. Confederate general Dabney Maury fought to protect the city and its citizens who refused to leave, such as Octavia LeVert and Augusta Evans. Union admiral Farragut and General Canby slowly starved the city, knowing that the fall of Mobile could end the war. Author Paula Webb details the experiences of the ordeal and the defeat of a Confederate city that echoed through the entire country.

On September 17, 1862, the forces of Major General George B. McClellan and his Union Army of the Potomac confronted Robert E. Lee's entire Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland. The Union forces mounted a powerful assault on Lee's left flank in the idyllic Miller Cornfield. It was the single bloodiest day in the history of the Civil War. The elite combat units of the Union's Iron Brigade and the Confederate Texas Brigade held a dramatic showdown and suffered immense losses through vicious attacks and counterattacks sweeping through the cornstalks. Author...