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In the aftermath of the September 1862 Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued the most significant presidential decree in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, which would forever free all slaves in territory not under Union control. Nevertheless, his chief military commander in the field, Major General George B. McClellan, was outraged. Within days, two former Union officers nefariously crossed the lines into rebeldom, an initiative resulting in an elaborate subterfuge to scam Lincoln into withdrawing the Proclamation in return for nebulous promises of peace. This book tells the story, obscured in a veil of secrecy for 150 years, of the cloak and dagger chess match between Union detectives and Southern operatives in the months before emancipation become effective. Despite an ominous warning by author Herman Melville five years before, the scheme to perpetuate slavery almost succeeded, for it was engineered by a man the National Police Gazette once declared the "King of the Confidence Men."
Robert Hubard was an enlisted man and officer of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia (CSA) from 1861 through 1865. He wrote his memoir during an extended convalescence spent at his father's Virginia plantation after being wounded at the battle of Five Forks on April 1, 1865. Hubard served under such Confederate luminaries as Jeb Stuart, Fitz Lee, Wade Hampton, and Thomas L. Rosser. He and his unit fought at the battles of Antietam, on the Chambersburg Raid, in the Shenandoah Valley, at Fredericksburg, Kelly's Ford, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, and down into Virginia from the Wilderness to nearly the end of the war at Five Forks.
Confederate Artillery Organizations: An Alphabetical Listing of the Officers and Batteries of the Confederacy, 18611865 is a remarkable, immensely useful, and exceedingly rare book containing the names of the officers and every Confederate artillery unit. It is so rare that most scholars in the field dont even know of its existence. It was originally published as simply Confederate Artillery Organizations by the U.S. War Department in 1898, one of Marcus J.Wrights compilation aids to help assemble and organize the massive publication that would appear as the 128-volume The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880-1901), known...
An in-depth look at a Confederate general and the first blood spilled at Gettysburg, with maps, photos, and a guide to historic sites. This book examines the key role played by Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell’s Second Corps during the final days in June. It is the first in-depth study of these crucial summer days that not only shaped the course of the Gettysburg Campaign but altered the course of our nation’s history. In two powerful columns, Ewell’s Corps swept toward the strategically important Susquehanna River and the Pennsylvania capital looming beyond. Fear coursed through the local populace while Washington and Harrisburg scrambled to meet the threat. One of Ewell’s columns included a ...
The Battle of Tom’s Brook, recalled one Confederate soldier, was “the greatest disaster that ever befell our cavalry during the whole war.” The fight took place during the last autumn of the Civil War, when the Union General Phil Sheridan vowed to turn the crop-rich Shenandoah Valley into “a desert.” Farms and homes were burned, livestock slaughtered, and Southern families suffered. The story of the Tom’s Brook cavalry affair centers on two young men who had risen to prominence as soldiers: George A. Custer and Thomas L. Rosser. They had been fast friends since their teenage days at West Point, but the war sent them down separate paths—Custer to the Union army and Rosser to the...
The abstracts of wills and administrations are arranged throughout in more or less chronological order by the name of the deceased. The will records give the name of the testator, names of legatees (often showing relationships), summaries of bequests made in the will, date of the will, date of recording, and the page number of the will book wherein the full will is recorded. The administration records generally provide the dates of inventory and appraisal, names of auditors and appraisers, and references concerning the settlement of the estate. The approximately 2,500 wills and administrations in this work refer to approximately 8,000 persons. Many of the wills furnish evidence of North Carolina connections as well.