Traces the development of Southern nationalism from its foundations in the Old South through the establishment of the Confederacy and the first years of the Civil War.

This volume is a study of the efforts of the Confederate authorities...to secure foreign recognition and support. It considers also the forces which controlled the European powers and defeated the attempt to divide the American Union...It attempts to give a careful and purely historical presentation of the theories, purposes, policies, diplomatic efforts, and difficulties of the Secessionists...It traces the inner working of the diplomatic machine...

Although much has been written about the ways in which Confederate politics affected the course of the Civil War, George Rable is the first historian to investigate Confederate political culture in its own right. Focusing on the assumptions, values, and beliefs that formed the foundation of Confederate political ideology, Rable reveals how Southerners attempted to purify the political process and avoid what they saw as the evils of parties and partisanship....

"The former Confederate states have continually mythologized the South's defeat to the North, depicting the Civil War as unnecessary, or as a fight over states' Constitutional rights, or as a David v. Goliath struggle in which the North waged 'total war' over an underdog South. In The Myth of the Lost Cause, historian Edward Bonekemper deconstructs this multi-faceted myth, revealing the truth about the war that nearly tore the nation apart 150 years...

The author of a full-length biography of Robert E. Lee here portrays other men who challenged the Union. Coming under Bradford's penetrating eye are J. E. B. Stuart, Joseph E. Johnston, James Longstreet, P.G.T. Beauregard, Judah Benjamin, and others. A dramatic recounting of the Battle of Gettysburg rounds out this collection of profiles from 1912-1914.

When her new husband joins the hastily organized Confederate Army, Geneva changes her name to Jimmy, dons a uniform, and enlists to be with her beloved.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, this book is a powerful new reckoning with Jefferson Davis as military commander of the Confederacy. History has not been kind to Jefferson Davis. His cause went down in disastrous defeat and left the South impoverished for generations. If that cause had succeeded, it would have torn the United States in two and preserved the institution of slavery. Many Americans in Davis's own time...

Provides the birth and death dates, astrological sign, nicknames, famous words, and little-known or bizarre facts about the lives of over twenty-five people on the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War.

"Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation. When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn't have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In an age when diplomats often were spies, Bunch's job...

Kenneth Noe examines the motives and subsequent performance of "later enlisters." He offers a nuanced view of men who have often been cast as less patriotic and less committed to the cause, rekindling the debate over who these later enlistees were, why they joined, and why they stayed and fought. --from publisher description