This book offers an anthology of texts that includes letters, journals, poetry, newspaper articles, pamphlets, sermons, narratives, and short fiction written in and about America beginning with collected oral stories from Native American tribes and ending with the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Many major and minor authors are included, providing a sampling of the different styles, topics, cultures, and concerns present during the formation and development of America through the mid-nineteenth century.

The American Yawp constructs a coherent and accessible narrative from all the best of recent historical scholarship. Without losing sight of politics and power, it incorporates transnational perspectives, integrates diverse voices, recovers narratives of resistance, and explores the complex process of cultural creation. It looks for America in crowded slave cabins, bustling markets, congested tenements, and marbled halls. It navigates between maternity wards, prisons, streets, bars, and boardrooms. Whitman’s America, like ours, cut across the narrow boundaries that strangle many narratives. Balancing academic rigor with popular readability, The American Yawp offers a multi-layered, democratic alternative to the American past.

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's attempt to invade the North.

The Battle of Antietam has been called the bloodiest single day in American History. By the end of the evening, 17 September 1862, an estimated 4,000 American soldiers had been killed and over 18,000 wounded in and around the small farming community of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Emory Upton, then a captain with the Union artillery battery, later wrote, “I have heard of ‘the dead lying in heaps,’ but never saw it till this battle. Whole ranks fell together.” The battle had been a day of confusion, tactical blunders, individual heroics, and the effects of just plain luck. It brought to an end a Confederate campaign to “liberate” the border state of Maryland and possibly to take the war into Pennsylvania. A little more than one hundred and forty years later, the Antietam battlefield is one of the best-preserved Civil War battlefields in the National Park System.

When Joseph Hooker had relieved Ambrose Burnside after the disastrous Fredericksburg campaign, he found the Army of the Potomac in a low state of morale. Desertion was increasing, and the army's own interior administration - never good - had deteriorated.

The battle of Chickamauga, fought on 19-20 September 1863, was the bloodiest battle in the western theater during the American Civil War. Along the banks of Chickamauga Creek in Northwest Georgia, less than a day's march south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Union Army of the Cumberland led by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans clashed with Confederate General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee in a two day mêlée that left almost 35,000 men dead, wounded, or missing.

Cheers rang out in the streets of Washington on July 16, 1861 as Gen. Irvin McDowell’s Federal army, 35,000 strong, marched out to begin the long-awaited campaign to capture Richmond and end the war. It was an army of green recruits, few of whom had the faintest idea of the magnitude of the task facing them.

McDowell’s lumbering columns were headed for the vital railroad junction at Manassas. Here the Orange and Alexandria Railroad met the Manassas Gap Railroad, which led west to the Shenandoah Valley. If McDowell could seize this junction, he would stand astride the best overland approach to the Confederate capital.

On July 18, McDowell’s army reached Centreville. Five miles ahead a small meandering stream named Bull Run crossed the route of the Union advance. Guarding the fords from Union Mills to the Stone Bridge were 22,000 Southern troops under the command of Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard. McDowell first attempted to move toward the Confederate right flank, but his troops were checked at Blackburn’s Ford. He then spent the next two days scouting the Southern left flank. In the meantime, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army, stationed in the Shenandoah Valley with 10,000 Confederate troops, were ordered to support Beauregard. Johnston gave an opposing Union army the slip and, employing the Manassas Gap Railroad, started his brigades toward Manassas Junction, with most arriving July 20 and 21.

At the start of the Fredericksburg Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac managed to steal a march on the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But owing to the failure of the Federals' pontoon bridge equipment to arrive at the crossing of the Rappahannock River as scheduled, the Southerners were able to block the road to Richmond. The Union commander, General Burnside, decided to launch a frontal assault against the Confederate position at Fredericksburg, resulting in one of the Union Army's most lopsided tactical defeats of the Civil War.

n late June 1863, more than two years into the American Civil War, Union and Confederate military forces converged on the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After a series of military successes, Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia into Union territory in his second invasion of the North. He hoped that a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania would convince Northern politicians to abandon the war. The Union Army of the Potomac, led initially by General Joseph Hooker and then General George Meade, crossed the Potomac River to pursue Lee’s forces.

Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place.

Archives Specialist Rebecca Sharp will discuss The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. This published source contains information about Civil War medical and surgical procedures as well as case studies.

Between 1861 and 1865, the Union and Confederate navies fought for control over inland and coastal waterways. Through four years of war, the United States Navy rose to the challenge of blockading more than 3,500 miles of coastline, coordinating amphibious attacks, and bombarding coastal fortifications held by the Confederate armed forces. The ingenuity and self-sacrifice of those who served U.S. Navy throughout the Civil War ultimately ensured victory for the Union.

Eastern National is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War with electronic editions of eParks' National Park Civil War Series of books. Read them online or own your own paper edition by visiting our Civil War Series store.

In the overland campaign of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant with the Army of the Potomac battled General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for six weeks across central Virginia. At the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna and Totopotomoy Creek, Lee repeatedly stalled, but failed to stop, Grant's southward progress toward Richmond. The next logical military objective for Grant was the crossroads styled by locals Old Cold Harbor.

This textbook examines U.S. History from before European Contact through Reconstruction, while focusing on the people and their history. Prior to its publication, History in the Making underwent a rigorous double blind peer review, a process that involved over thirty scholars who reviewed the materially carefully, objectively, and candidly in order to ensure not only its scholarly integrity but also its high standard of quality. This book provides a strong emphasis on critical thinking about US History by providing several key features in each chapter. Learning Objectives at the beginning of each chapter help students to understand what they will learn in each chapter. Before You Move On sections at the end of each main section are designed to encourage students to reflect on important concepts and test their knowledge as they read. In addition, each chapter includes Critical Thinking Exercises that ask the student to deeply explore chapter content, Key Terms, and a Chronology of events.

Veterans of the Fifth Corps considered the night march of May 7-8 one of their worst military experiences. "The column would start, march probably one hundred yards, then halt, and just as the men were about to lie down, would start again, repeating this over and over..."

This review describes medical and surgical care during the American Civil War. This era is often referred to in a negative way as the Middle Ages of medicine in the United States. Many misconceptions exist regarding the quality of care during the war. It is commonly believed that surgery was often done without anesthesia, that many unnecessary amputations were done, and that care was not state of the art for the times. None of these assertions is true. Physicians were practicing in an era before the germ theory of disease was established, before sterile technique and antisepsis were known, with very few effective medications, and often operating 48 to 72 hours with no sleep. Each side was woefully unprepared, in all aspects, for the extent of the war and misjudged the degree to which each would fight for their cause. Despite this, many medical advances and discoveries occurred as a result of the work of dedicated physicians on both sides of the conflict.

At this midpoint in the Spottsylvania Campaign (May 7-20), Union forces under Grant and Confederate forces under Lee were facing off to the south and east of Spottsylvania Court House. On May 12, Grant ordered Hancock to assault Ewell's position in the "mule's shoe" salient. This map attempts to depict the action during that assault. It shows Ewell's position at the start of the assault and the position he held after the Union forces breached the lines.

In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United States on a political platform that opposed the expansion of slavery, South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. Six more states would follow in the ensuing months: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In February 1861, they formed the Confederate States of America, an entity considered illegal by the United States government. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. This began the first battle of the deadliest conflict in US history, the American Civil War. This primary source set uses documents, illustrations, and maps to explore events and ideas that drove the formation of the Confederate States of America and the United States’ descent into civil war.