Civil War Past Readings

2023

E.L. Doctorow, The March
James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
David Dixon, The Lost Gettysburg Address: Charles Anderson’s Civil War
Brian H. Reid, The Scourge of War: The Life of W.T. Sherman
Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
David Blight, Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom
Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie
Steven Woodworth, The Chattanooga Campaign
Clint Crowe, Caught in the Maelstrom: The Indian Nations in the Civil War 1861–1865
Owen Parry, Our Simple Gifts: Civil War Christmas Tales

Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals
T. H. Williams, Lincoln and His Generals
Jay Winik, April 1865
Sven Beckert, Slavery’s Capitalism
Roger Lowenstein, Ways and Means; Lincoln and His Cabinet and Financing the War
Personal Memoirs of General U.S. Grant
Mark Bilelski, A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy: The Fall of New Orleans
Dred Scott Forum: any sources, diverse points of view

Jeff Schaara, Smoke at Dawn
Edward Achorn, Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abe Lincoln
Joshua Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based on Personal Reminiscences of the 5th Army Corps
Timothy B. Smith, The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi
Allen Gosnell, Guns on the Western Waters: The Story of Gunboats in the Civil War
David Herbert Donald, We Are Lincoln Men
Megan Kate Nelson, The Three Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West
C. Van Woodward (editor), The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 2nd edition
Zachary A. Fry, A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac

Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings
Cate Lineberry, Live Free or Die: Robert Smalls Story
Allen Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglass: The Debates that Defined America
Robert M. Browning, Lincoln’s Trident: The West Gulf Blockading Squadron
Brian Lusky, Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of the Free Labor in Civil War America
Donald Stoker, The Grand Design Strategy and The U.S. Civil War

Ron Chernow, Grant
William C. Davis, The Cause Lost
Richard White, Republic for Which it Stands
Shelby Foote, Shiloh
Drew Faust, Republic of Suffering
Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War
Charles Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: A Psycho Biography
James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Men Who Fought
David Blight, Fredrick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
Joanne B. Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
Cory M. Pfarr, Longstreet at Gettysburg: A Critical Assessment
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women and Slave Owners in the American South

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
Harriett Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Robert P. Broadwater, Battle of Despair: Bentonville and the N.C. Campaign
Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, A Savage War: A Military History;
James Robertson, Standing Like a Stone Wall: The Life of General Thomas Jackson
Jeff Shaara, The Fateful Lightning: A Novel of the Civil War
Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army

Kenneth S. Greenberg, editor, The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents, second ed.
Gregory J. Wallance, Two Men Before the Storm: Arba Crane’s Recollection of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court Case That Started the Civil War
Ethan Greenberg, Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body
Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox

Drew Faust, Mothers of Invention; Women of the Slaveholding South in the Civil War
James McPherson, The War that Forged a Nation; Why the Civil War Still Matters
Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations
Christopher Dickey, Our Man in Charleston
Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties
Gordon Rhea, Carrying the Flag, The Story of Private Charles Whilden, the Confederacy’s Most Unlikely Hero
Sven Beckert, The Empire of Cotton
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
Paul Alan Cimbala, Veterans North and South: The Transition from Soldier to Civilian after the American Civil War
James M. McPherson, Antietam: The Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War

Karen Abbott, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
Jay Wernick, April, 1865
James McPherson, Embattled Rebel, Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief
James Oakes, Freedom National: Destruction of Slavery in the United States
Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind
Joan Cashin, The War Was You and Me
Jim Downs, Sick From Freedom
Craig Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals
Jane Singer and John Stewart, Lincoln’s Secret Spy: The Civil War Case That Changed The Future Of Espionage
Edward Steers and Harold Holzer, eds., The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators (“Washington’s 1865 Guantanamo”)

James Conroy, Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865
Jack Hurst, Born to Battle: Grant and Forrest: Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga
Bruce Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South
Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
Brian R. Dirck, Lincoln & Davis, Imagining America 1809-1865
Jeffrey Wert, General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier, A Biography
Peter Carlson, Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey
Charles Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy