The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage 
by Stephen Crane

The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a "red badge of courage," to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standard-bearer.

Although Crane was born after the war, and had not at the time experienced battle first-hand, the novel is known for its realism. He began writing what would become his second novel in 1893, using various contemporary and written accounts (such as those published previously by Century Magazine) as inspiration. It is believed that he based the fictional battle on that of Chancellorsville; he may also have interviewed veterans of the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commonly known as the Orange Blossoms. Initially shortened and serialized in newspapers in December 1894, the novel was published in full in October 1895. A longer version of the work, based on Crane's original manuscript, was published in 1982.

The novel is known for its distinctive style, which includes realistic battle sequences as well as the repeated use of color imagery, and ironic tone. Separating itself from a traditional war narrative, Crane's story reflects the inner experience of its protagonist (a soldier fleeing from combat) rather than the external world around him. Also notable for its use of what Crane called a "psychological portrayal of fear", the novel's allegorical and symbolic qualities are often debated by critics. Several of the themes that the story explores are maturation, heroism, cowardice, and the indifference of nature. The Red Badge of Courage garnered widespread acclaim, what H. G. Wells called "an orgy of praise", shortly after its publication, making Crane an instant celebrity at the age of twenty-four. The novel and its author did have their initial detractors, however, including author and veteran Ambrose Bierce. Adapted several times for the screen, the novel became a bestseller. It has never been out of print and is now thought to be Crane's most important work and a major American text.

The Coming Fury

The Centennial History of the Civil War, Part 1: The Coming Fury
by Bruce Catton

 This one is about the complex legal issues that led to the Civil War and to the most momentous decision in U. S. history: how should President Lincoln respond to the secessions and the seizures of federal property in the South? It raises many interesting questions, not the least of which is, did he make the right decision? Was the bloodbath worth it? If Lincoln had known the consequences, would he have made the same decision? If he had let the South go, would it have brought peace? How long would slavery have continued?

Was secession a Constitutional right, as the Confererates claimed? If not, why did Lincoln recognize West Virginia’s right to secede from Virginia? Was this a hypocritical double standard? Private property was protected by the Constitution; did that include private property in slaves? Lincoln thought it did. Was he justified in suspending habeas corpus in Maryland? What is a nation? Is it a compact among sovereign states? Or is it a sovereignty over constituent states? When federals violated the Fugitive Slave Law, did that constitute recognition that the South was an independent country? 

The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience

The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience
by Emory M. Thomas


This volume, first published in 1971, has made us look again at the events surrounding the Civil War. The Confederate Southerners likened themselves to the American revolutionaries of 1776. Although both revolutions sought independence and the overthrow of an existing political system, the Confederates battled for a political separation to conserve rather than to create. The result, however, was a transformation of the antebellum traditions they were fighting to preserve.

Hard-Tack and Coffee

Hardtack & Coffee or The Unwritten Story of Army Life
by John D. Billings

 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 survived 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 men found in any outfit; their not very uniform uniforms; crowded tents and makeshift shelters; difficulties in keeping clean, warm, and dry; their pleasure in a cup of coffee; food rations, dominated by salt pork and the versatile cracker or hardtack; their brave pastimes in the face of death; punishments for various offenses; treatment in sick bay; firearms and signals and modes of transportation. Comprehensive and anecdotal, Hardtack and Coffee is striking for the pulse of life that runs through it.

Hallowed Ground

Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg
by James M. McPherson

“[I]n a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract.”
—President Abraham Lincoln

James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks us through the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle ever fought by Americans. 

The events that occurred at Gettysburg are etched into our collective memory, as they served to change the course of the Civil War and with it the course of history. More than any other place in the United States, Gettysburg is indeed hallowed ground. It’s no surprise that it is one of the nation’s most visited sites (nearly two million annual visitors), attracting tourists, military buffs, and students of American history. 

McPherson, who has led countless tours of Gettysburg over the years, makes stops at Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Cemetery Hill, and Little Round Top, among other key locations. He reflects on the meaning of the battle, describes the events of those terrible three days in July 1863, and places the struggle in the greater context of American and world history. Along the way, he intersperses stories of his own encounters with the place over several decades, as well as debunking several popular myths about the battle itself.

What brought those 165,000 soldiers—75,000 Confederate, 90,000 Union—to Gettysburg? Why did they lock themselves in such a death grip across these once bucolic fields until 11,000 of them were killed or mortally wounded, another 29,000 were wounded and survived, and about 10,000 were “missing”—mostly captured? What was accomplished by all of this carnage? Join James M. McPherson on a walk across this hallowed ground as he be encompasses the depth of meaning and historical impact of a place that helped define the nation’s character.

At Gettysburg

At Gettysburg, or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle
by Tillie Pierce Alleman

The experience of a little girl, during three days of a hard fought battle, as portrayed in this volume is certainly of rare occurrence, and very likely has never been realized before. Such a narrative as the following, is worthy of preservation among the pages of our nations literature. The story is told with such marked faithfulness, such honesty of expression, such vividness of portrayal, that those who lived in, and passed through those scenes, or similar ones, will at once recognize the situations, and surroundings, as natural and real.

While perusing its pages, the veteran will again live in the days gone by; when he tramped the dusty march, joined in the terrible charge, or suffered in the army hospital. The Heroine of this book, performed her part well; but it is doubtful whether, at the time, she fully realized the heart-felt thanks, and noble thoughts that sprang from the "Boys in Blue," in response to her heroism and kindness. How vividly is presented the weary march to the field of conflict; our eagerness to quaff the sparkling water, as she handed it to us, fresh from the cooling spring. We thanked her, but she did not hear the full gratitude that was in our hearts. Who but a soldier can know the welling emotions in that dying general's breast, when, perhaps for the first time in many months, he gazed into an innocent and child-like face, seeing naught but tender love and deep sympathy.

Did she not in part, take the place of those near and dear to his heart, but who, on that fearful night were many miles away? How his thoughts must have flashed homeward! And oh! the tender chords that must have been touched in his valiant soul! No wonder he looked "so earnestly" in her face. He was feasting on the sympathies that sprang from her heart and illumined her countenance. She did greater things than she knew, and her reward will follow. But we shall refer to no more scenes. They are many and varied. In their contemplation, the reader will experience his own thoughts and emotions. We have been asked to write a preface to her narrative; but we cannot slight this opportunity of thanking her in the name of the "Boys in Blue," and all patriots, for what she did. We are truly glad to have this touching and thrilling story of her experience at the battle of Gettysburg, even though after many years; and our only regret is, that many of our comrades have answered to the last roll-call, before its publication. We will rejoice in its publication, and wide circulation; for it is deserving a welcome, not only in public libraries, but in the family circle of every American. It cannot fail to interest and instruct both old and young. The book will speak for itself.

Harriet Tubman:Imagining a Life

Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life

by Beverly Lowry

Best known as a hero of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has been the subject of hundreds of books for young people. Full-scale biographies, however, have been scarce, though three — by Jean Humez, Catherine Clinton and Kate Clifford Larson — have appeared since the year 2000. “Harriet Tubman,” the novelist Beverly Lowry’s contribution, is labeled a biography, but the subtitle, “Imagining a Life,” qualifies that claim. In an author’s note, Lowry painstakingly explains her decision “to emphasize the visual elements of Harriet’s story — what things looked like, places and clothes, faces, plants, the sky — and to thread information from the sources” listed in her bibliography “in order to come up with one version of what life might have been like for the American hero Harriet Tubman.” She also makes us aware that Tubman was one of the first American celebrities to market her own story for profit, so the first full record of her life contains material that she and her original biographer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, thought would sell.

Fictionalized biographies are troubling to readers who want to know at all times what’s fact and what’s invention. Lowry signals, unobtrusively but clearly, when she is gliding into the imagined phases of her narrative. Particularly in the first half of the book, this method produces vivid scenes of Tubman’s life as she (might well have) lived it.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross around 1822, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She was the property of Edward Brodess, an unprosperous farmer who staved off bankruptcy by hiring out or selling his slaves. First hired out at the age of 6, Minty, as she was known, was beaten for poor performance of housework she’d never been taught to do. Her hire-masters tried using her to check muskrat traps, and kept her wading through cold water during a bout of measles until she collapsed. Still, she preferred outdoor labor. In her early 20s, she made a deal with one of her hire-masters, Brodess’s stepbrother A. C. Thompson, which permitted her to find her own jobs and keep whatever earnings were left after both Thompson and Brodess had satisfied their claims.

When Tubman was 13, her skull was fractured by a two-pound lead weight launched in a dispute between an overseer and another slave. Brodess promptly tried to sell his damaged property, but found no takers. Minty recovered but soon began having visions and conversations with God. She had witnessed the Leonid meteor shower of 1833, a revelation of falling stars that many thought portended a great upheaval in the order of things. In later life, Tubman would claim she had always known how to follow the North Star, which led to freedom.

On the non-astral plane, she also learned, much later in life, that a term in Brodess’s great-grandfather’s will should have set her mother, and her mother’s children, free at age 45. As it happened, she did not have to wait that long. At 26, when she heard that Brodess was trying to sell her again, she asked God to kill him. He died about a week later. His widow was still more desperate to raise money by selling slaves. Minty, now married to John Tubman, tried to escape with three of her brothers in September 1849, but they lost their nerve. A few days later she went alone. After crossing to freedom she took her mother’s name, Harriet.

A year later, Harriet returned to rescue family members who had been put up for sale. Slaves who were not her relatives asked her to help them escape too. The recent passage of the Fugitive Slave Act meant that escapees could be recaptured even in the North. The Underground Railroad ramped up in response, now conveying fugitives all the way to Canada.

Relying on her visions, her sixth sense for danger and her colloquies with God, Harriet ran extraordinary risks in her numerous returns to slave territory, once (in an episode rendered well by Lowry) brushing elbows with her former master A. C. Thompson. Slaves began calling her Moses, after her habit of singing “Go Down Moses” to discreetly announce her presence. John Brown, with his more martial bent, called her “General Tubman.”

By the outbreak of the Civil War, Tubman had gotten most of her family north, and become a symbol of the possibility of freedom to a great many more. Though she would become a star on the abolitionist lecture circuit, she always had to struggle to finance her expeditions and to support the growing circle of family and friends she had helped establish in Canada and upstate New York. Though she served in the United States Army as a scout and spy, the government would repeatedly deny her a pension. In 1865 she was severely beaten for refusing to leave a whites-only car on a train from Philadelphia to New York. After a slow recovery, she returned to her large dependent household, begging for food when she couldn’t find work. Under these circumstances, in 1868, she began collaborating with Sarah Bradford in the marketing of her legend.

Lowry, a white Southerner, makes painfully sure we know she knows that slavery was a Bad Thing. The hardships Harriet Tubman suffered in the North come through just as clearly through uncommented description. Though she insists her work is not scholarly, Lowry’s dramatic retelling seems thoroughly researched, and she succeeds in animating the icon that Tubman helped to make of herself. “I am as proud of being a black woman,” she told the conductor of the train where she was beaten, “as you are of being white.” That pride shines through in the marvelous photographs of Tubman that illustrate the book — images that, amplifying Lowry’s words, show forth her indomitable desire to be herself in freedom.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman
by Judith Bentley

Harriet Tubman, Moses of Her People is the biography of one of America’s greatest women. Harriet Tubman is most famous for her work escorting slaves north on the Underground Railroad, work that earned her the name Moses. Not only an abolitionist, she also worked as a spy and a nurse for the Union army during the Civil War and then became involved in the women’s suffrage movement after the war. She risked her life and safety to bring her family and friends north, never losing a passenger from her “train.”

Civil War Stories

Civil War Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Newspaperman, short-story writer, poet and satirist, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) stands among the most striking and unusual literary figures that America has ever produced. During the Civil War, he enlisted in the Indiana infantry. Most of the sixteen stories in the above collection are based on Bierce’s recollections of the war.

In The Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce defined "war" as "a by-product of the arts of peace." A Civil War veteran, Bierce had absolutely no illusions about "courage," "honor," and "glory" on the battlefield. These stories form one of the great antiwar statements in American literature. Included here are the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Chickamauga, The Mocking Bird, The Coup de Grâce, Parker Anderson, Philosopher, and other stories celebrated for their intensity, startling insight, and mastery of form.

Confederate Guerrilla Sue Mundy

Confederate Guerrilla Sue Mundy: A Biography of Kentucky Soldier Jerome Clarke
by Thomas Shelby Watson with Perry A. Brantley

In 1864, George D. Prentice, editor of the pro-Union Louisville Daily Journal, created the persona of Sue Mundy, a Civil War guerrilla who was in actuality a young man named Marcellus Jerome Clarke. This volume offers an in-depth, historically accurate account of Clarke's exploits in Kentucky during the Civil War. The work begins with a summary of Kentucky's prewar position: primarily pro-Union yet decidedly anti-Lincoln. The author then discusses the ways in which this paradox gave rise to the guerrilla threat that terrorized Kentuckians during the final years of the war. Special emphasis is placed on previously unknown facts, names and deeds with dialogue taken directly from testimony in court-martial proceedings. While the main focus of the work is Clarke himself, other perpetrators of guerrilla warfare including William Clarke Quantrill, Sam Berry and Henry Magruder are also covered, as are guerrilla hunters Edwin Terrell and James Bridgewater. The last months of Quantrill's life in Kentucky and his final battle are discussed in detail. Previously unpublished photographs accompany this fascinating Civil War history.

Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee: The South's Faithful Servant

by Larry T. Russell

Although only 32 pages this basic biography is perfect for anyone wanting to know a brief biography about the South's greatest general and includes full color pages and photographs.

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career United States Army officer, a combat engineer, becoming the outstanding general of the Confederate army in the American Civil War and a postwar icon of the South's "lost cause."

A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Army for thirty-two years. He is best known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War.

In early 1861, President Abraham Lincoln invited Lee to take command of the entire Union Army. Lee declined because his home state of Virginia was seceding from the Union, despite Lee's wishes. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state. Lee's eventual role in the newly established Confederacy was to serve as a senior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Lee's first field command for the Confederate States came in June 1862 when he took command of the Confederate forces in the East (which Lee himself renamed the "Army of Northern Virginia").

This is Holy Ground

This is Holy Ground: A History of the Gettysburg Battlefield, 1863-2009
by Barbara L. Platt

A history of the preservation, exploitation, upkeep, and expansion of the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania. The book begins just after the battle ends and continues upto 2009 after the new Visitor Center was opened, and documents the opinions of local citizens, National Park employees, politicians, and esteemed historians with regards to the amazing winding road of obstacles that this park has had to endure to maintain its presence of being all things to all people.

Letters Home III

Letters Home III: Camp Life & Battles

edited by Alan Sessarego

A collection of original Civil War Soldiers' letters and photographs.

Letters Home II

Letters Home II: Camp Life & Battles
edited by Alan Sessarego

A collection of original Civil War Soldiers' letters and photographs put together by collector Alan Sessarego.

Stars in Their Courses

Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign
by Shelby Foote

Shelby Foote, who cut such a courtly figure in Ken Burns's PBS series The Civil War, is an uncommonly graceful writer as well, and this careful study of the 1863 Gettysburg campaign assumes the contours of a classical tragedy. Foote positions readers on the field of battle itself, among swirling smoke and clattering grapeshot, and invites us to feel for ourselves its hellishness: "men on both sides were hollering as they milled about and fired, some cursing, others praying ... not a commingling of shouts and yells but rather like a vast mournful roar." Foote's fine book is history as literature, and a welcome addition to any Civil War buff's library.

The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3

The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox
by Shelby Foote

Considered one of the definitive Civil War narratives as well as one of the 20th-century's greatest works of nonfiction, this third volume of a three-volume history presents the true events, the battles, and biographies of significant figures on both sides of the conflict.

The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 2

The Civil War: A Narrative, Fredericksburg to Meridian
by Shelby Foote

"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be better." —Atlantic

"Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail." —The New York Times Book Review

"The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled." —Walter Mills

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Although the American anti-slavery movement had existed at least as long as the nation itself, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) galvanized public opinion as nothing had before. The book sold 10,000copies in its first week and 300,000 in its first year. Its vivid dramatization of slavery’s cruelties so aroused readers that it is said Abraham Lincoln told Stowe her work had been a catalyst for the Civil War.

Today the novel is often labeled condescending, but its characters—Tom, Topsy, Little Eva, Eliza, and the evil Simon Legree—still have the power to move our hearts. Though “Uncle Tom” has become a synonym for a fawning black yes-man, Stowe’s Tom is actually American literature’s first black hero, a man who suffers for refusing to obey his white oppressors. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a living, relevant story, passionate in its vivid depiction of the cruelest forms of injustice and inhumanity—and the courage it takes to fight against them.

Harriet Beecher Stowe first published her groundbreaking novel Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 as an outcry against slavery after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. The book sold more copies than any book other than the Bible and caused Abraham Lincoln to exclaim upon meeting her, during the Civil War, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville

The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville
by Shelby Foote

The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) is a three volume, 2,968-page, 1.2 million-word history of the American Civil War by Shelby Foote. Although previously known as a novelist, Foote is most famous for this non-fictional narrative history. While it touches on political and social themes, the main thrust of the work is military history.

The first volume covers the roots of the war to the Battle of Perryville on October 8, 1862. All the significant battles are here, from Bull Run through Shiloh, the Seven Days Battles, Second Bull Run to Antietam, and Perryville in the fall of 1862, but so are the smaller and often equally important engagements on both land and sea: Ball's Bluff, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Island No. Ten, New Orleans, Monitor versus Merrimac, and Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign.

Race and Reunion

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

by David W. Blight

No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion. In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial. Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.