Most histories of the Civil War focus on battles and top brass. Hardtack and Coffee is one of the few to give a vivid, detailed picture of what ordinary soldiers endured every day in camp, on the march, at the edge of a booming, smoking hell. John D. Billings of Massachusetts enlisted in the Army of the Potomac and curvived the conditions he recorded. The authenticity of his book is heightened by the many drawings that a comrade, Charles W. Reed, made in the field.This is the story of how the Civil War soldier was recruited, provisioned, and disciplined. Described here are the types of...

Wilson s Creek, Pea Ridge, and Prairie Grove were three of the most important battles fought west of the Mississippi River during the Civil War. They influenced the course of the first half of the war in that region by shaping Union military efforts while significantly contributing to Confederate defeat. Wilson s Creek, Pea Ridge, and Prairie Grove, the first book to provide a detailed guide to these battlefields, takes the visitor step-by-step through the major sites of each engagement. With numerous maps and illustrations that enhance the authors descriptions of what happened at each...

The struggle for control of the Mississippi River was the longest and most complex campaign of the Civil War. It was marked by an extraordinary diversity of military and naval operations, including fleet engagements, cavalry raids, amphibious landings, pitched battles, and the two longest sieges in American history. Every existing type of naval vessel, from sailing ship to armored ram, played a role, and military engineers practiced their art on a scale never before witnessed in modern warfare. Union commanders such as Grant, Sherman, Farragut, and Porter demonstrated the skills that would...

The 1862 battle of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas was one of the largest Civil War engagements fought on the western frontier, and it dramatically altered the balance of power in the Trans-Mississippi. This study of the battle is based on research in archives from Connecticut to California and includes a pioneering study of the terrain of the sprawling battlefield, as well as an examination of soldiers' personal experiences, the use of Native American troops, and the role of Pea Ridge in regional folklore.

"A model campaign history that merits recognition as a major contribution...

Originally published in a limited edition in 1866, this memoir of Will Tunnard's experiences of the Civil War in the West, where he served in the famed Third Louisiana Infantry, is one of only a handful of chronicles left by western Confederate soldiers. His account treats the battles of Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, Iuka, and Corinth as well as the siege of Vicksburg. This is a vivid history of these hard-fought campaigns which determined the outcome of the war in the Trans-Mississippi theater.

In the CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST series, this noncombatants' eyewitness account of the war and its destabilizing effects focuses on the civilians of the Arkansas and Missouri describing their precarious and vulnerable positions during the advances and retreats of armies as Confederate and Federal forces marched across their homelands.

William L. Shea offers a gripping narrative of the events surrounding fighting at Prairie Grove, Arkansas, one of the great unsung battles of the Civil War, which effectively ended Confederate offensive operations west of the Mississippi River. Fields of Blood provides a colorful account of a grueling campaign that lasted five months and covered hundreds of miles of rugged Ozark terrain. In a fascinating analysis of the personal, geographical, and strategic elements that led to the fateful clash in northwest Arkansas, Shea describes a campaign notable for rapid marching, bold...

Early 1862, Union forces under Major General Samuel R. Curtis drive Confederate forces led by Brigadier General Sterling Price out of Missouri and into Arkansas. The Confederates, now representing combined forces under General Earl Van Dorn, Commander of the Trans-Mississippi District, counter-attack and strike Curtis's isolated Union army at Pea Ridge in March 1862. Despite being outnumbered and almost surrounded, the Union army wins a stunning victory. Nine months later, a new Confederate army under Major General Thomas C. Hindman tries again. At Prairie Grove in early December, a furious...

William L. Shea offers a gripping narrative of the events surrounding fighting at Prairie Grove, Arkansas, one of the great unsung battles of the Civil War, which effectively ended Confederate offensive operations west of the Mississippi River. Fields of Blood provides a colorful account of a grueling campaign that lasted five months and covered hundreds of miles of rugged Ozark terrain. In a fascinating analysis of the personal, geographical, and strategic elements that led to the fateful clash in northwest Arkansas, Shea describes a campaign notable for rapid marching, bold...