"I wonder if the new year is to bring us new miseries and sufferings," seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte wrote in her diary on December 31, 1864. In fact, the worst was yet to come. Her later entries portray the city of Columbia, South Carolina, like much of the South, under the grip of Sherman's army. No reader of this diary is likely to forget the defiant, well-bred Emma, who describes a family's anxieties and brave attempts to get on with life while the Civil War rages around them. In a new foreword to the Bison Books edition, Anne Firor Scott, a professor of history at Duke University whose...
"I wonder if the new year is to bring us new miseries and sufferings," seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte wrote in her diary on December 31, 1864. In fac...
The Web of Victory tells of the Union siege of Vicksburg, a campaign that might very well have been the turning point of the Civil War and was without any doubt the turning point in the military career of General Ulysses S. Grant.
If Grant began the campaign as a leader known more for his drinking and shabby appearance than for his strategy, he emerged from the siege with the respect of his president and the admiration -- in some cases grudging admiration -- of his fellow generals. Vicksburg revealed him as a daring, resourceful strategist, a leader who had the courage and inspiration to...
The Web of Victory tells of the Union siege of Vicksburg, a campaign that might very well have been the turning point of the Civil War and was with...
