Michael Shaara wrote only one Civil War novel, about Gettysburg, which did not sell well in his lifetime. Jeff has written a series of novels--the Vicksburg book is the second in a four-book trilogy (bad math) on the western campaigns. He had a lot of interesting points that are not well known.
He told from a soldier's point of view what it would have been like to be part of Pickett's Charge, very effectively--but he did not reveal that he was describing Pickett's Charge until the very end.
He told how his father took him to Gettysburg in 1964 when he was 12. His father knew the story of how Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock had been friends before the war and were both in California when the war started. When they parted Armistead, who supported the South, told Hancock that if he ever fought against him that he hoped God would strike him dead. Shaara told of how his father found the marker at Gettyburg where Armistead fell (during Pickett's Charge, I believe) and how for the first time in his life he saw his father crying. It was at that point that Michael Shaara decided to write his novel about Gettysburg, which took him 7 years.
Here, this would appear to be that show:
“A Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg”
Jeff Shaara
http://www.booktv.org/Program/14605/A+Chain+of+Thunder+A+Novel+of+the+Siege+of+Vicksburg.aspx
BookTV is a CSPAN2 web site.