[stainlessbanner]

Ok FReepers, any books you would add to the list?

[stainlessbanner]

Add your favorites to the list.

If you want on/off this bump list, FReepmail me

[kimosabe31]

bump

[exit82]

I would like to add two:

1. The Annals of the Civil War--Written by Leading Participants North and South--Da Capo Press 1994

This is a reprint of the series " The Annals of the War" published in 1878 as a series by the Philadelphia Weekly Times, edited then by Alexander McClure. McClure paired North and South soldiers and commanders on the same topic, and their first hand accounts, even 125 years after they were written, are fascinating. They often show that there is more than one side to a story, and that history is always written from a perspective.

2. My Story of the War, by Mary Livermore,1889. Mary Livermore was one of the leaders of the US Sanitary Commission, which sought to improve soldier medical care and hospital coditions. Her first person accounts of her four years on the Commission,including two personal visits with Abraham Lincoln, are a valuable memoir of that time period, and show the enormity of the suffering of the wounded and dying soldiers, and the state of medical care, during the Civil War. Especially poignant are the stories she tells of soldiers' last words and requests--heartbreaking at times. I have an original 1889 version, autographed by her.

[Pelham]

Destruction and Reconstruction, by Richard Taylor.

Richard Taylor, the son of President Zachary Taylor, was a Confederate general in the western theater. This is perhaps the best and most literate memoir written by a principal from the war. Very illuminating of some of the battles in the neglected western theater. Taylor at one point lured a fleet of Union gunboats up... the Red River, I believe it was, trapping them as the water fell. Kirby-Smith's failure to understand what Taylor was doing squandered the opportunity to capture them. A Confederate flotilla on the Mississippi would have added great complications to Grant and Foote in the west, where the War ultimately was decided.

The Black Flower, Howard Bahr

The experience of a rifleman during two days of the Battle of Franklin. A vivid rendering, a truly excellent book. I'd rate it equal, and maybe better than, the Shaara books.

[Al B.]

"Lee's Lieutenants," by Douglas Southall Freeman....the 3-volume history of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Freeman was a 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his biographies of Lee and George Washington.

[SteveH]

The first thing one learns from reading the books listed above is that America did not need a war to end slavery. Every other Western country that held slaves in the nineteeth century – which included Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Jamaica – freed them peacefully. The South would have done the same before the century was over. If anything, the fact that seven slaveholding states seceded from the Union when Lincoln was elected president would have sped up the process. As several of the historians above point out, many people in the North considered the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law to be an abomination, and the law would have been repealed if Lincoln had allowed the Southern states to go their own way. The Constitution of the Confederate States of American prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9); with their supply thus restricted, and slaves now having a place to escape to, slavery in the Confederacy would have ended as it did elsewhere, without war.

This seems logically weak (especially if one puts oneself in the shoes of a slave in the 1850's South) and seems to be contradicted by the following:

With no corporate, property, or income taxes then in force, the government’s principal source of revenue was import tariffs; and the South, with the greater number of ports, paid 87 percent of the taxes that the federal government collected to fund its operations and pay government salaries. Lincoln was willing to let the South keep its slaves and enforce the Fugitive Slave Law so long as the Southern states remained in the Union and continued to pay its disproportionate percentage of taxes.

So (perhaps someone with more historical sense can help me here) on one side many countries were abolishing slavery, but on the other side were consuming goods made from raw materials which were produced by slavery condoning countries. As the latter became fewer and fewer, it seems to me that the economics in favor of their remaining slavery condoning states became stronger, not weaker, with the passing of time and the overall decrease in the number of slavery condoning countries. (I also suspect that other countries not listed, such as Haiti, had to undergo a revolution at some point to evolve politically, though of course Haiti continues to have massive problems with poverty, etc. today.)

I have relatives who fought on the side of the Confederacy so I would like nothing more than to believe the romantic notion that the South fought entirely for noble ideals. I also note that Lincoln was no political innocent, following in the footsteps of Hamilton and blazing a path for the cause of federal supremacy over more local rule. I believe that many Southerners, such as Lee, had noble ideals, but that there were many others who were crowded by economics, greed, or a combination, to benefit unfairly from the forced labors of others, and could have continued to do so indefinitely were it not for war. Therefore it seems to me a hard sell to convince anyone that the South could have freed its slaves of its own volition without Lincoln's war and power grabbing politics. In fact, it seems one could make the argument that if the South had modernized its politics and culture and freed the slaves of its own volition, Lincoln as a political force would not have been able to muster enough support to put himself in the presidency in the first place, and the federalist movement in the USA would have been at least delayed.

(An interesting question is would it have happened at all? -- I believe probably so, though to a lesser degree, brought about by other incidents such as WWI and WWII; although the US entry into both wars was somewhat predicated by artificial means, the general fact seems to be that there needs to be some mechanism to permit the US to defend itself effectively and quickly from sneak attacks, nuclear attacks, terrorist attacks, etc., and the old method of having Congress debate and resolve to declare war, then muster an army, etc.-- the 18th century model -- would have left the US defensively weak and open to attack by the early 20th century if not the late 19th century.)

[Physicist]

The Story of the 48th by Joseph Gould. It's a regimental history of the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, with which four members of my family served, including my father's paternal grandfather.

[aomagrat]

"Company Aitch" by Sam Watkins.

[Constitution Day]

A Civil War Book Collection for 2002

Harrumph. There was nothing "Civil" about it!
8^)

(Bump for later reading, thanks for the ping!)

[Non-Sequitur]

I believe the seven books listed above belong in every serious American Civil War book collectors’ library. Read them, particularly Charles Adams’ When in the Course of Human Events and Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln, and you will begin to view America’s Civil War in a new, more penetrating, and truer light.

Barf alert.

[Ditto]

The Constitution of the Confederate States of American prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9); with their supply thus restricted, and slaves now having a place to escape to, slavery in the Confederacy would have ended as it did elsewhere, without war.

What a bunch of crap! The importation of slaves was ended in 1808 and the slave population of the US grew by nearly 4 times from slightly over 1 million in 1810 to nearly 4 million in 1860. At the heighth of the Underground Railroad, only a few thousand slaves escaped each year. And with the slave population increasingly concentrated in the deep south cotton belt, the chances of any slave making it hundreds of miles to freedom in the north were slim to none.

The slaveocrats banned importation of slaves in the Confederate constitution for one reason --- it was in their economic interest to do so. If more slaves were imported it would decrease the value of their existing slaves. That is not even to mention that the Atlantic slave trade was all but dead by 1860 thanks to the efforts of the British Navy. That clause was like giving up Brussels sprouts for Lent!

[Non-Sequitur]

But in the interest of scholarship I'll add a few suggestions to the list. If one is interested in the details of major battles then I suggest two authors: Stephen Sears and Peter Cozzens. Stephen Sears has written excellent single volume books on Chancellorsville, Antietam, and the Seven Days battles in 1862. He has also edited the papers of several Union generals and wrote an excellent biography of George McClellan. Cozzens has specialized on the west and his books on Chattanooga, Chickamauga, and Stones River form an excellent trilogy on that theater. Byron Farwell has written probably the best biography of Thomas Jackson there is. The number of really excellent books on the Civil War are too numerous to mention, really. It all depends on what part you're interested in.

[fagin62]

I prefer first-hand accounts, free of any "revisionist history". A few of my favorites...
Co.Aytch by Sam Watkins
Battlefield And Prison Pen by John W. Urban (1882)
Andersonville Diary by John Ransom
I Rode With Stonewall by Henry Kyd Douglas
Recollections And Letters Of General Robert E. Lee by his son Captain Robert E. Lee (1904)

[Non-Sequitur]

It's a shame that of all the great leaders of the war only Lee didn't publish a memoir. Probably because he lived for such a short time afterwards. Pity, it would have been fascinating reading.

[strela]

Two glaring omissions:

"Hardtack and Coffee" - the author escapes me at present, but it is a great look at the every day lives of soldiers on both sides.

"Mr. Lincoln's Navy" - same problem (I'm not at home). An excellent account of an under-reported group of fighting men.

I'll post the authors of both of these fine books later.

[shuckmaster]

Here's my list of favorites!

[Non-Sequitur]

Another good choice is a recent publication. "Gettysburg: A testing of Courage" by Noah Andre Trudeau is a really excellent single volume book on the battle and the events leading up to it. If you want to delve into Gettysburg in almost excrutiating detail then Harry W. Pfanz has at least 3 volumes out, with I don't know how many more to come.

[4CJ]

If you'd like to read an excellent book about the relations between the sections (past and current) I'd recommend Frank Conner's The South Under Siege 1833-2000: A History of the Relations Between the North and the South.

[stainlessbanner]

Other books I recommend, not previously mentioned:

Tilley - Facts the Historians Leave Out.
Davis - The Civil War: Strange and Facinating Facts
Winney & Taylor - Florida in the Civil War

On my to-read list:

Rubin Jr. Louis - I'll Take My Stand : The South and the Agrarian Tradition
Davis Burke - Jeb Stuart : The Last Cavalier
Perkins Howard Cecil - Northern Editorials on Secession
Otto J Scott - The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement
Brennan Patrick - Secessionville: Assault on Charleston
Koger Larry - Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860