Williamson County in southern Illinois has been the scene of almost unparalleled violence, from the Bloody Vendetta between two families in the 1870s through the Herrin Massacre of 1922, Ku Klux Klan activities that ended in fatalities, and the gang war of the 1920s between the Charlie Birger and Shelton brothers gangs. Paul Angle was fascinated by this more-than-fifty-year history, and his account of violence has become a classic.

As the American Civil War recedes into the past, popular fascination continues to rise. Once a matter that chiefly concerned veterans, separately organized North and South, who gathered to refight old battles and to memorialize the heroes and victims of war, the Civil War has gradually become part of a collective heritage. Issues raised by the war, including its causes and consequences, reverberate through contemporary society. Family and community connections with the war exist everywhere, as do battlefields, memorials, and other physical reminders of the conflict. We, as Americans, are...

Based on nearly five decades of research, this magisterial work is a biographical register and analysis of the people who most directly influenced the course of the Civil War, its high commanders. Numbering 3,396, they include the presidents and their cabinet members, state governors, general officers of the Union and Confederate armies (regular, provisional, volunteers, and militia), and admirals and commodores of the two navies. Civil War High Commands will become a cornerstone reference work on these personalities and the meaning of their commands, and on the Civil War itself....

This volume presents many of the historical sites of the US Civil War, including Gettysburg, Chicamauga and Antietam, as well as monuments, forts, houses and farms, cemeteries, and museums. The author also analyzes the four-year struggle with background on its origins.

This comprehensive volume contains all known documents, both military and private, written by and to Grant during the first six months of the Civil War. Of unusual interest are his letters to his wife, father, and sister which provide the best insight into his complex character. Thirty of the letters to Julia have never before been published.

The letters trace Grant's early career as a Civil War officer to his promotion to brigadier general. His assignments to command at Ironton and Jefferson City, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois, are fully covered. At Cairo, Grant's area of...

Covering the period of Shiloh to the prelude to Vicksburg, Volume 5 of this distinguished series converges on the many dramatic changes taking place in Grant's military career.

The bloody two-day battle of Shiloh, the dominating event covered in this volume, shocked both North and South, caused public opinion to run against Grant, placed his career at a low point, and tested his will to remain in service. The period, therefore, is significant for the portrait emerging of Grant meeting a variety of problems ranging from grand strategy to mundane detail. The volume is particu-larly rich...

In the period covered by Volume 6 of this distinguished series, Grant again drove deep into the Confederacy, dis-playing an instinct for the offensive lacking in other chief commanders. But by the end of the year Confederate suc-cesses had forced Grant to abandon all ground he had won.

It was, nevertheless, an important period in Grant's career. Command of the Army of the Tennessee brought Grant, a former slaveholder, into the heart of the Cotton Kingdom and to issuing the notorious General Order No. 11, expelling the Jews from his department. Increasingly...

Volume 7 documents Grant's winter of discontent. In late December, his Mississippi Central campaign, an overland drive toward Vicksburg, was fatally dis-rupted by Confederate cavalry raids. Forced to withdraw northward, Grant could not apply pressure on the enemy when Major General William T. Sher-man attacked Vicksburg directly. Sher-man suffered a disastrous repulse at Chickasaw Bayou, and Grant pulled back to Memphis and, during the win-ter, continued to cope with the myriad administrative problems of his de-partment.

Balancing the North's need for cotton against the need to...

Following the 1862-63 winter of dis-content, Grant suddenly launched a brilliant campaign against Vicksburg which ultimately bisected the Confeder-acy. A long campaign, which had begun in November 1862, with an advance from Tennessee down the Mississippi Central Railroad and a premature assault on Vicksburg in December by troops under Sherman, and which had been fol-lowed by long months of false starts and apparent inactivity in the bayou country north of the city and across the Mis-sissippi River in Louisiana, suddenly reached a quick and dramatic conclu-sion, as the events in this...