A Pictorial History Of The Confederacy

From the first meeting of the delegates to the final surrender. Illustrations from contemporary sources.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed that historian Benson J. Lossing did more than any other man to make history interesting and popular. Lossing wrote his comprehensive three-volume history of the Civil War at a time when the facts were still fresh. Originally published in 1866, Volume One covers the period from the political conventions held in the spring of 1860 to midsummer 1861 and the Battle of Bull Run. Lossing accompanies his narratives of marches, battles, and sieges with maps and plans, includes biographical sketches of the prominent people from both sides of the conflict, and illustrates his history with hundreds of drawings and engravings by the author and others.

The fascination with the Confederacy and its heroes seems to grow ever stronger. Arranged chronologically and geographically, this book features descriptions of more than forty battles of the War Between the States, along with battle maps that show where the antagonists were located. The first section discusses and provides images from 1860 to Fort Sumter. The author then discusses battles that occurred in 1861 in northern Virginia and in the South and West, providing several photographs. The sections for the years 1862 to 1865 are arranged similarly and each also includes background about the Southern battle flags from various groups such as the Texas Rangers (8th Texas Cavalry) and the Confederate Navy. The book features a wide selection of rarely seen photographs of such Confederate heroes as Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, Jubal Early, Nathan Bedford Forest, A.P. Hill and Jeb Stuart, along with details of their military careers and personal lives that are little known to the average reader.