The letters of Theodore Lyman, an aide-de-camp to General George Meade, offer a witty and penetrating inside view of the Civil War. Scholar and Boston Brahmin, Lyman volunteered for service following the battle at Gettysburg. From September 1863 to the end of the war, he wrote letters almost daily to his wife. Colonel Lyman s early letters describe life in winter quarters. Those written after General Grant assumes command chronicle the Army of the Potomac s long-awaited move against the Army of Northern Virginia. Lyman covered the field, delivering messages.

As a general s aide, he was...

"The fall of Atlanta in September 1864 was an important strategic and psychological victory for the war-weary North, virtually assuring that the Union would win the Civil War while assisting Lincoln in his reelection efforts. This concise volume by McMurry . . . closely examines this significant military campaign, places the struggle in its social and political contexts, and includes useful topical appendices and a bibliographical essay. Given its brevity, focus, and the author's unique insights, this readable and well-documented volume will be welcomed by Civil War enthusiasts and scholars...

Historians have traditionally drawn distinctions between Ulysses S. Grant's military and political careers. In Let Us Have Peace, Brooks Simpson questions such distinctions and offers a new understanding of this often enigmatic leader. He argues that during the 1860s Grant was both soldier and politician, for military and civil policy were inevitably intertwined during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. According to Simpson, Grant instinctively understood that war was 'politics by other means.' Moreover, he realized that civil wars presented special challenges: reconciliation, not...

Such is the continuing volume of work on the Civil War that we are regularly in need of an authoritative and accessible brief synthesis to keep us up to date with this endlessly fascinating subject. Brooks Simpson meets that need for the 1990s in America's Civil War, a wonderful feat of compression in which he addresses all the great issues of the war in 200 pages of clear and readable prose. Rightly, he puts the military history of the conflict at the center of the picture, but he excels in relating the drama of the war itself to the politics of both Union and Confederacy, to the stresses...

During and after the Civil War, four presidents faced the challenge of reuniting the nation and of providing justice for black Americans--and of achieving a balance between those goals. This first book to collectively examine the Reconstruction policies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes reveals how they confronted and responded to the complex issues presented during that contested era in American politics.

Brooks Simpson examines the policies of each administration in depth and evaluates them in terms of their political, social, and...

The first major modern edition of the wartime correspondence of General William T. Sherman, this volume features more than 400 letters written between the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the day Sherman bade farewell to his troops in 1865. Together, they trace Sherman's rise from obscurity to become one of the Union's most famous and effective warriors.
Arranged chronologically and grouped into chapters that correspond to significant phases in Sherman's life, the letters--many of which have never before been published--reveal Sherman's thoughts on politics, military operations,...