A Yankee Privates Civil War

Upon joining the Union army at the age of 19, Robert Hale Strong experienced the intensity of battle and horrors of war, which he vividly recaptures in this moving memoir. Strong recounts true tales of punishment, revenge, devotion, and quiet heroism as well as the survival methods of the average soldier.

Memoirs of an Illinois farm boy who at nineteen enlisted in the 105th infantry regiment from his state.

On an "I will if you will" dare, John Haley enlisted in the 17th Maine Regiment in August 1862 "for three years, unless sooner discharged." ("Discharged, shot, or starved" would have been more accurate, Haley later wryly observed.) Though a reluctant soldier at first, he served steadfastly in the Army of the Potomac for nearly three years, participating in some of the most significant battles of the Civil War. John Haley was not the only soldier to record each day's events in his journal by firelight or by picket's lantern, for his was a literate generation. He was unusual in that he later painstakingly rewrote his battlefield notes, "reflecting at leisure" and adding fascinating political and personal commentary to produce the remarkable volume he calls Haley's Chronicles.

Diary of a Yankee Engineer is a poignant firsthand account of a soldier's experiences during the Civil War. Westervelt's words, intended not for the history books but for the education of his young son, present an authentic and humble vision of military life and of the North's struggle in the Civil War.

This provocative study proves the existence of a de facto Confederate policy of giving no quarter to captured black combatants during the Civil War—killing them instead of treating them as prisoners of war. Rather than looking at the massacres as a series of discrete and random events, this work examines each as part of a ruthless but standard practice. Author George S. Burkhardt details a fascinating case that the Confederates followed a consistent pattern of murder against the black soldiers who served in Northern armies after Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. He shows subsequent retaliation by black soldiers and further escalation by the Confederates, including the execution of some captured white Federal soldiers, those proscribed as cavalry raiders, foragers, or house-burners, and even some captured in traditional battles. Further disproving the notion of Confederates as victims who were merely trying to defend their homes, Burkhardt explores the motivations behind the soldiers’ actions and shows the Confederates’ rage at the sight of former slaves—still considered property, not men—fighting them as equals on the battlefield. Burkhardt’s narrative approach recovers important dimensions of the war that until now have not been fully explored by historians, effectively describing the systemic pattern that pushed the conflict toward a black flag, take-no-prisoners struggle.

Stories of New England soldiers who perished in this bloody battle, based on their diaries and letters. The Battle of Antietam, in September 1862, was the single bloodiest day of the Civil War. In the intense conflict and its aftermath across the farm fields and woodlots near Sharpsburg, Maryland, more than two hundred men from Connecticut died. Their grave sites are scattered throughout the Nutmeg State, from Willington to Madison and Brooklyn to Bristol. Here, author John Banks chronicles their mostly forgotten stories using diaries, pension records, and soldiers’ letters. Learn of Henry Adams, a twenty-two-year-old private from East Windsor who lay incapacitated in a cornfield for nearly two days before he was found; Private Horace Lay of Hartford, who died with his wife by his side in a small church that served as a hospital after the battle; and Captain Frederick Barber of Manchester, who survived a field operation only to die days later. This book tells the stories of these and many more brave Yankees who fought in the fields of Antietam. Includes photos

Like Chicago from Mrs. O'Leary's cow, or San Francisco from the earthquake of 1906, Atlanta has earned distinction as one of the most burned cities in American history. During the Civil War, Atlanta was wrecked, but not by burning alone. Longtime Atlantan Stephen Davis tells the story of what the Yankees did to his city. General William T. Sherman's Union forces had invested the city by late July 1864. Northern artillerymen, on Sherman's direct orders, began shelling the interior of Atlanta on 20 July, knowing that civilians still lived there and continued despite their knowledge that women and children were being killed and wounded. Countless buildings were damaged by Northern missiles and the fires they caused. Davis provides the most extensive account of the Federal shelling of Atlanta, relying on contemporary newspaper accounts more than any previous scholar. The Yankees took Atlanta in early September by cutting its last railroad, which caused Confederate forces to evacuate and allowed Sherman's troops to march in the next day. The Federal army's two and a half-month occupation of the city is rarely covered in books on the Atlanta campaign. Davis makes a point that Sherman's "wrecking" continued during the occupation when Northern soldiers stripped houses and tore other structures down for wood to build their shanties and huts. Before setting out on his "march to the sea," Sherman directed his engineers to demolish the city's railroad complex and what remained of its industrial plant. He cautioned them not to use fire until the day before the army was to set out on its march. Yet fires began the night of 11 November--deliberate arson committed against orders by Northern soldiers. Davis details the "burning" of Atlanta, and studies those accounts that attempt to estimate the extent of destruction in the city.

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Letters from Vermont schoolteacher in the Union Army to the Montpelier Green Mountain Freeman newspaper.

Reconstructed Yankee is a fictional biography based on the life of freeman and Afro-Confederate Silas Chandler, and is woven into actual historical events. It examines the most forgotten and maligned soldiers of America's Civil War. Caleb Parker, a Free Person Of Color living in the Confederacy, and his best friend, Tom Parker (whose father once owned and freed Caleb's father), join the Union militia to avoid forced enrollment in the Confederate army. Yankee atrocities and personal tragedies lead them to change loyalties, and they spend the bloodiest months of the war as Confederates. After experiencing gruesome battle, Caleb deides to abandon war and death. Returning to North Carolina, Caleb fears for his family's safety, and he moves north where his hopes for the freedoms promised by emancipation are crushed. Caleb's story looks at the mixed blessings of the first years of emancipation and the conflicts that followed. Maples causes the reader to re-think why and for what the common man fought, and to re-examine the issues of race in nineteenth century America.