The definitive firsthand narrative of our nation's greatest conflict, now in a collector's boxed set: Has there ever been another historical crisis of the magnitude of 1861 65 in which so many people were so articulate? wondered Edmund Wilson in his 1962 classic "Patriotic Gore." Reflecting the unprecedented, widespread literacy of nineteenth century Americans, an astonishing number of writers white and black, male and female, soldiers and politicians, public intellectuals and private citizens left vivid first-hand accounts of the Civil War. For the last four years, to mark the...