May and June 1864 in Virginia witnessed some of the most brutal and bloody fighting of the Civil War. After the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna, and Cold Harbor, combined losses for the two armies exceeded 80,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. And the result after all that carnage was a stalemate outside the gates of Richmond. Federal Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant remained undeterred and set his armies toward their next target: The logistical powerhouse of Petersburg. Grant’s surprising maneuver, which included the construction of a massive pontoon bridge across the broad James River and a surprise march against Petersburg, caught Confederate commander Robert E. Lee by surprise. Petersburg was but lightly guarded and seemed at the mercy of the aggressive Federal commander. Its fall would cut the lifelines into Richmond and force the evacuation of the Southern capital. The capture of the city would ensure President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection and eliminate whatever thin hopes the Confederacy still had for victory.Petersburg was fortified, its garrison small but determined to hold the city. Department commander, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, realized the danger and shifted as many men as he could spare into the defenses and took the field himself. North of the river, meanwhile, Lee remained unconvinced that Grant had stolen a march on him. Three days of battle (June 15-17) followed. The Federals bungled the effort, and somehow the understrength Confederates managed to fight the Federals to a standstill. Reinforcements from Lee’s army finally arrived on June 18. Petersburg would hold—for now.Beauregard had won one of the Confederacy’s most impressive victories and one of the Confederacy last strategic victories.Sean Chick’s A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 6-18, 1864 provides fresh and renewed attention to one of the most important, fascinating, and yet oddly forgotten battles of the Civil War. Inside are original maps, new research, and dozens of images—many published here for the first time. A Grand Opening Squandered is the first in a series on the Petersburg Campaign, which will provide readers with a strong introduction to the war’s longest campaign.

May 1864. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia spent three days in brutal close-quarter combat in the Wilderness that left the tangled thickets aflame. No one could imagine a more infernal battlefield. Then they marched down the road to Spotsylvania Court House.Even the march itself was unprecedented. For three years, the armies had fought and disengaged. That changed on the night of May 7. Instead of leaving the Wilderness to regroup, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant led the Federal army southward, skirmishing with Confederates all the way. “There will be no turning back,” he had declared. He lived up to his word. By dawn on May 8, the armies had tangled their way ten miles down the road and opened another large-scale fight that would last until May 21. “One thing is certain of this campaign thus far,” explained Dr. Daniel Holt of the 121st New York: “more blood has been shed, more lives lost, and more human suffering undergone than ever before in a season.”The fighting launched a score of new place names and events that would sear themselves into the American consciousness, including Laurel Hill, Upton’s assault, the Mule Shoe, the Bloody Angle, and Harris Farm. The casualties exacted at Spotsylvania would exceed those of the Wilderness by thousands. The fighting would severely test the offensive capabilities of Confederate commander Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army, just as the defensive posture his men embraced would, in turn, test the limits of Federal endurance.In A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8-21, 1864, author Chris Mackowski has crafted a meticulous and comprehensible study of this endlessly fascinating campaign. Mackowski, long-familiar with the battle of Spotsylvania Court House, is a former historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. Chris continues to give tours of the battlefield as the historian in residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the battlefield’s eastern front.His intimate knowledge of the landscape and nearly two decades of insight, together with primary source materials, outstanding maps, and helpful images, combine to create a readable and satisfying single-volume account the campaign has so richly deserved.

The bloody two-week siege of Spanish Fort, Alabama (March 26-April 8, 1865) was one of the final battles of the Civil War. Despite its importance and fascinating history, surprisingly little has been written about it. The fall of the fort was considered by many the key to the surrender of the important seaport of Mobile, which fell to Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby on April 12, 1865. Paul Brueske’s Digging all Night and Fighting All Day: The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 is the first full-length study of this subject.General U. S. Grant had long had his eyes set on capturing Mobile. Its fall would eliminate the vital logistical center and put one of the final nails in the coffin of the Confederacy. On January 18, 1865, Grant ordered General Canby to move against Mobile, Montgomery, and Selma, and destroy anything useful to the enemy’s war effort. The reduction of Spanish Fort, along with Fort Blakeley—the primary obstacles to taking Mobile—was a prerequisite to capturing the city.After the devastating battles of Franklin and Nashville in Tennessee in late 1864, many Federals believed Mobile’s garrison—which included a few battered brigades and most of the artillery units from the Army of Tennessee—did not have much fight left and would evacuate the city rather than fight. They did not. Despite being outnumbered about 10 to 1, 33-year-old Brig. Gen. Randall Lee Gibson mounted a skillful and spirited defense that “considerably astonished” his Union opponents. The siege and battle that unfolded on the rough and uneven bluffs of Mobile Bay’s eastern shore, fought mainly by veterans of the principal battles of the Western Theater, witnessed every offensive and defensive art known to war.Paul Brueske, a graduate student of History at the University of South Alabama, marshaled scores of primary source materials, including letters, diaries, reports, and newspaper accounts, to produce an outstanding study of a little-known but astonishingly important event rife with acts of heroism that rivaled any battle of the war.

The Maps of Second Bull Run: An Atlas of the Second Bull Run/Manassas Campaign from the Formation of the Army of Virginia Through the Battle of Chantilly, June 26 – September 1, 1862, continues Bradley M. Gottfried’s efforts to study and illustrate the major campaigns of the Civil War’s Eastern Theater. This is his tenth book in the ongoing Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series. President Abraham Lincoln’s frustration with George B. McClellan’s inability to defeat Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and capture Richmond dramatically increased after the unsuccessful Seven Days’ Battles. The president combined three small armies into the new Army of Virginia and placed it under Maj. Gen. John Pope, who had overseen several successes in the Western Theater.Pope’s growing aggressiveness, combined with McClellan’s passive posture on the Peninsula, forced Lee to turn his attention toward the new threat from the north. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson moved his wing of the Army of Northern Virginia to confront Pope. A bloody battle at Cedar Mountain on August 9 halted Pope’s move south, and Jackson’s raid on the vast stores at Manassas Junction triggered another confrontation, this time at Kettle Run.As Jackson settled into a defensive position on the plains of Manassas, and with McClellan’s troops having abandoned the Peninsula, Lee moved his other wing under James Longstreet rapidly north. Pope missed an opportunity to prevent the junction of Lee’s wings by not stopping Longstreet at Thoroughfare Gap.The Battle of Second Bull Run began on the evening of August 28 when Jackson tangled with Union troops at the Brawner Farm. Pope spent much of the following day hammering Jackson’s front, with no idea that Longstreet had arrived on the field. The Union assaults continued on August 30 until Longstreet launched a massive assault that rolled up the Union left flank and collapsed Pope’s army. The retreat was briefly interrupted by some of Jackson’s units at Chantilly, which ended the campaign.The Maps of Second Bull Run plow new ground by breaking down the entire campaign into sixteen map sets or “action sections,” enriched with 122 detailed full-page color maps. These cartographic originals bore down to the regimental and battery level. They include the march to and from the battlefields and virtually every significant event in between. At least two—and as many as ten—maps accompany each map set. Keyed to each piece of cartography is a full-facing page of detailed text describing the units, personalities, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) depicted on the accompanying map, all of which make the cavalry actions come alive.This presentation allows readers to easily find a map and text on virtually any portion of the campaign. Serious students will appreciate the extensive endnotes and complete order of battle and take the book with them to the battlefields. A final bonus is that the maps unlock every other book or article written on any aspect of the campaign.Perfect for the easy chair or for stomping the hallowed grounds, The Maps of Second Bull Run is a seminal work that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious and casual student of the battle.

Disasters threatened Vicksburg on both ends of the Mississippi River early in the war. South of the mighty bastion, New Orleans—one of the Confederacy’s most important cities—fell in April 1862. Memphis to the north fell two months later. Vicksburg, Mississippi, stood defiantly between the captured cities atop 300-foot bluffs that dominated the wide mighty river. So long as “the Hill City” remained in Rebel hands, the Confederacy controlled river traffic and maintained a vital connection between the Trans-Mississippi states and those east of the river. Vicksburg was the “Gibraltar of the Confederacy.”Federal Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had learned how to use rivers as “water highways” to drive deep into the heartland of the Confederacy. His skillful utilization of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers helped capture Forts Henry and Donelson and Nashville and opened the state of Tennessee and northern Mississippi to United States forces. His next goal was on the Mississippi River, “the Father of Waters” itself. That meant capturing Vicksburg.Doing so would require unparalleled cooperation from the U.S. Navy and the help of an ambitious naval commander, Admiral David Dixon Porter. The general and the admiral would spend many long months probing, maneuvering, bombarding, assaulting, and even digging in their joint effort to find a way to get at the nearly unreachable Confederate Gibraltar.Two major obstacles stood in their way. The first was Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton and his Confederate army. Pemberton, a native Pennsylvanian who had thrown his lot in with the Confederacy, was promoted and dispatched to protect the river city after a poor performance along the southeast Atlantic coast. He had never commanded an army in the field. Many in the South doubted his loyalty as well as his abilities as a commander.The second difficulty perhaps even more formidable than Pemberton’s army was the terrain. That part of Mississippi was riddled with alluvial lowlands filled with malarial swamps and canebrakes, woods, deep bayous, and steep ridges. High-water floods and low-water navigation dangers abounded.The capture of Vicksburg was one of the longest and most complicated campaigns of the Civil War. Sadly, much of it remains murky or almost entirely forgotten to most students of the war. Historian Matt Atkinson’s Confederate Gibraltar: The Vicksburg Campaign from the Fall of New Orleans through the Battles in the Bayou is the first of three volumes on this Herculean effort to split the Confederacy asunder and open the Mississippi River to the sea.

The Johnson-Gilmor Raid represents one of three attempts to free prisoners of war during the American Civil War. Like the other two, it was destined to fail for a variety of reasons, mostly because the timetable for the operation was a schedule impossible to meet. The mounted raid was a fascinating act of increasing desperation by the Confederate high command in the summer of 1864, and award-winning cavalry historian Eric J. Wittenberg presents the gripping story in detail for the first time in Destined to Fail: The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864. The thundering high-stakes operation was intended to ease the suffering of 15,000 Confederate prisoners held at Point Lookout, Maryland, a peninsula at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. The story includes a motley cast of characters on both sides and fast-paced drama in a deeply researched study that draws upon published and unpublished primary sources, including contemporary newspapers. Part of Wittenberg’s cogent analysis compares and contrasts this raid to a pair of other unsuccessful attempts to free Union prisoners of war – the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid of February-March 1864, and the Stoneman Raid on Macon, Georgia of July 1864 – as well as Gen. George S. Patton’s attempt to free his son-in-law and other American prisoners in March of 1945. This book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in the Civil War, high-stakes cavalry operations, or the politics of Civil War high command.

Today, Germantown is a busy neighborhood in Philadelphia. On October 4, 1777, it was a small village on the outskirts of the colonial capital that hosted one of the largest battles of the American Revolution. George Washington’s attempt to recapture Philadelphia has been misunderstood and long overshadowed by the battles of Brandywine, Saratoga, and the difficult winter that followed at Valley Forge. Michael C. Harris, the award-winning author of Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777 (2014), has produced the first full-length book on the Battle of Germantown, lifting the pivotal engagement out of its undeserved obscurity.General Sir William Howe launched his campaign to capture Philadelphia in late July 1777. His army sailed aboard a 265-ship armada from New York and six difficult weeks later landed near Elkton, Maryland, moved north into Pennsylvania, and defeated Washington’s American army at Brandywine on September 11. Philadelphia fell soon thereafter.When he spotted an opportunity to defeat part of Howe’s army, Washington devised and launched a complex four-column attack, marching his men most of the night to strike the British early on the morning of October 4. Obscured by ground fog, the attack caught the British garrison at Germantown by surprise. With the enemy collapsing and his reserves yet to fire a shot, Philadelphia seemed within Washington’s grasp—until a series of poor decisions by the American high command around the Chew House brought about a stunning reversal of fortune that swept the Americans from the field. Although a tactical defeat, Germantown proved Continental soldiers could stand toe-to-toe with British and Hessian Regulars.Germantown is the first complete study to merge the strategic, tactical, political, and naval history of this complex regional operation and set-piece battle into a single compelling account. Harris’s sweeping prose, which begins where his award-winning Brandywine left off, relies extensively on original archival research and (to the extent possible today) personal knowledge of the terrain. Germantown is no mere retelling, but a major reinterpretation of the battle, troop movements, and decision-making (including the fascinating chess match for control of the forts along the Schuylkill River) that nearly drove the British out of Philadelphia. Twenty-seven original maps, together with illustrations and modern photos, extensive explanatory footnotes, appendices, and an order of battle support the text and provide contextual understanding of the movement of the armies and the strategic and tactical implications of this grand matching of wills.Michael Harris’s Germantown, now in paperback, sets the standard for Revolutionary War battle studies and will please the most discriminating reader.

Gettysburg for Kids and Grown-ups, Too! is a book like no other. It is a family-friendly story of the Battle of Gettysburg for everyone, no matter their age. Powerful modern images enhance an easy-to-read narrative. Fascinating sidebars create an engaging volume that is informative and entertaining but also sympathetic and reverent. Our familiar guides, Liam and Jaden, now joined by their teen brother Jesse, lead young readers and their families on a journey through the Gettysburg story that is immediate and alive.

According to historian Richard McMurry, the 1864 campaign “through the woods and across the hills, valleys, and streams of North Georgia was one of the biggest, longest, and most spellbinding of the American Civil War. It was also one of the most important.” Despite its decisive impact on the war, the Georgia campaigns have still not received the attention they deserve. In the 1990s, editors Savas and Woodbury put together two volumes of wide-ranging and especially thoughtful essays by leading historians and students of war with footnotes, original maps, photos, and index that quickly sold out. Long out of print, they are once more being made available with a new Foreword by award-winning author Steve Davis in The Campaign for Atlanta & Sherman’s March to the Sea. Volume 2 “A Policy So Disastrous: Joseph E. Johnston’s Atlanta Campaign,” by Richard M. McMurry; “Sherman’s Pioneers in the Campaign for Atlanta,” by Philip Shiman; “Waltz Between the Rivers: An Overview of the Atlanta Campaign from the Oostanaula to the Etowah,” by William R. Scaife; “Dalton to Cartersville: Images of the Georgia Campaign: A Photographic Essay,” by William E. Erquitt; “The Western & Atlantic Railroad in the Campaign for Atlanta,” by James G. Bogle; “The Forgotten “Hell Hole:’ The Battle of Pickett’s Mill,” by Jeffrey Dean; “From Atlanta to Savannah: A Sociological Perspective of William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea,” by Charles E. Vetter; “Lines of Battle: The Unpublished Reports of Confederate Brig. Gen. James Holtzclaw’s Brigade,” edited by Zack Waters.

By the time Albert Castel’s Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 appeared in 1992, Savas Woodbury Publishers had already made important contributions to the campaign scholarship by publishing a collection of original essays by some of the field’s most noted authors, including Steven Woodworth, writing about the Confederacy’s command options in the Winter of 1863-64. Editors Theodore P. Savas and David A. Woodbury next assembled another group of articles that included such luminaries as Richard McMurry and William R. Scaife. The pair of paperbacks were published together in 1994 in a special hardcover edition with fold-out maps entitled The Campaign for Atlanta & Sherman’s March to the Sea, Volumes I and II. Now, almost three decades later, Savas Beatie proudly announces the publication of its third volume in the series. Once again, cutting-edge scholarship is presented in such essays as Brian Wills’ “Forrest and Atlanta” and Larry Daniel’s “The Adairsville Affair.” Stephen Davis wonders why the battle of Jonesboro (August 31-September 1) still draws so much attention when Federal troops had already cut Hood’s last railroad line into Atlanta, sealing the fate of the city even before the battle had begun.Additional essays address the impact of Sherman’s campaigns on Georgia women, Joe Johnston’s self-aggrandizing campaign accounts, and more.Like its predecessors, The Campaign for Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea, Volume 3 will be highly sought by students of the campaign, and western theatrists in general.

July 1863 was a momentous month in the Civil War. News of Gettysburg and Vicksburg electrified the North and devastated the South. Sandwiched geographically between those victories and lost in the heady tumult of events was news that William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland had driven Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee entirely out of Middle Tennessee. The brilliant campaign nearly cleared the state of Rebels and changed the calculus of the Civil War in the Western Theater. Despite its decisive significance, few readers even today know of these events. The publication of Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the Course of Civil War, June 23 - July 4, 1863 by award-winning authors David A. Powell and Eric J. Wittenberg, forever rectifies that oversight. On June 23, 1863, Rosecrans, with some 60,000 men, initiated a classic campaign of maneuver against Bragg’s 40,000. Confronted with rugged terrain and a heavily entrenched foe, Rosecrans intended to defeat Bragg through strategy rather than bloodshed by outflanking him and seizing control of Bragg’s supply line, the Nashville& Chattanooga Railroad, at Tullahoma and thus force him to fight a battle outside of his extensive earthworks. It almost worked. The complex and fascinating campaign included deceit, hard marching, fighting, and incredible luck - both good and bad. Rosecrans executed a pair of feints against Guy’s Gap and Liberty Gap to deceive the Rebels into thinking the main blow would fall somewhere other than where it was designed to strike. An ineffective Confederate response exposed one of Bragg’s flanks - and his entire army - to complete disaster. Torrential rains and consequential decisions in the field wreaked havoc on the best-laid plans. Still Bragg hesitated, teetering on the brink of losing the second most important field army in the Confederacy. The hour was late and time was short, and his limited withdrawal left the armies poised for a climactic engagement that may have decided the fate of Middle Tennessee, and perhaps the war. Finally fully alert to the mortal threat facing him, Bragg pulled back from the iron jaws of defeat about to engulf him and retreated - this time all the way to Chattanooga, the gateway to the rest of the Southern Confederacy. Powell and Wittenberg mined hundreds of archival and firsthand accounts to craft a splendid study of this overlooked campaign that set the stage for the Battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, the removal of Rosecrans and Bragg from the chessboard of war, the elevation of U.S. Grant to command all Union armies, and the early stages of William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. Tullahoma - one of the most brilliantly executed major campaigns of the war—was pivotal to Union success in 1863 and beyond. And now readers everywhere will know precisely why.

This brilliant campaign nearly cleared the state of Rebels and changed the calculus of the Civil War in the Western Theater; however, few people today even know about it. The complex and fascinating campaign included deceit, hard marching, fighting, and incredible luck—both good and bad. Powell and Wittenberg mined hundreds of archival and firsthand accounts to craft a splendid study of this overlooked campaign that set the stage for the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, the removal of Rosecrans and Bragg from the chessboard of war, the elevation of U. S. Grant to command all Union armies, and the early stages of William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.

The fighting on the first day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, was heavy, confusing, and decisive. Much of it consisted of short and often separate simultaneous engagements or “firefights,” a term the soldiers themselves often used to describe the close, vicious, and bloody combat. Several books have studied this important inaugural day of Gettysburg, but none have done so from the perspective of the rank and file of both armies. John Michael Priest’s “Strong Men of the Regiment Sobbed Like Children”: John Reynolds’s I Corps at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, rectifies this oversight.When dawn broke on July 1, no one on either side could have conceived what was about to take place. Anticipating a fight and with a keen appreciation for terrain, Gen. John Buford deployed his Union cavalry in a giant arc north and west of Gettysburg to slow down any Confederate advance until Gen. John Reynolds could bring up his I Corps infantry. By the time the foot soldiers arrived, A. P. Hill’s heavy Confederate formations had pushed back the troopers from the west, and Dick Ewell’s Corps would soon arrive from the north, threatening the town and its key road network. Reynolds, who would die early in the fighting, poured his troops in as they arrived. The road system and undulating ground broke up command control, and the various ridges, tall ground cover, and powder smoke made target recognition difficult. Brigades and regiments often engaged on their own initiatives without the direction of a division or corps commander. The men of both armies fought with determination born of desperation, valor, and fear. By the time the fighting ended, the I Corps was in shambles and in pell-mell retreat for Cemetery Hill.Priest, who the legendary Edwin Bearss hailed as “the Ernie Pyle of the Civil War,” spent nine years researching this new study and walking the ground of the first day’s fight to immerse readers into the uncertain world of the rank-and-file experience. He consulted more than 300 primary sources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper account, recollections, casualty lists, and drill manuals, to present the battle from the ground up. Nineteen detailed regimental maps illustrate the ebb and flow of the battle. The result is a fast-paced narrative with some events not always in agreement with conventional views, something Priest thoroughly explains in the footnotes.Readers will close the book fully understanding why a veteran New Yorker spoke for the survivors of both armies when he wrote, “Strong men of the regiment sobbed like children.”

So much has been written about Gettysburg, goes the well-worn cliché, that there is nothing new left to write. Now in paperback, The Second Day at Gettysburg: The Attack and Defense of Cemetery Ridge, July 2, 1863, by David L. Shultz and Scott L. Mingus Sr. aptly demonstrates that there is indeed still much to learn about the war’s largest and bloodiest battle.Based upon a faulty early-morning reconnaissance, General Robert E. Lee decided to attack up the Emmitsburg Road in an effort to collapse the left flank of General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac and decisively defeat it. The effort got underway when General James Longstreet’s First Corps troops crushed General Sickles’ Peach Orchard salient and turned north and east to drive deeply into the Union rear. A third Confederate division under Richard Anderson, part of A. P. Hill’s Third Corps, joined in the attack, slamming one brigade after another into the overstretched Union line stitched northward along the Emmitsburg Road. The bloody fighting stair-stepped its way up Cemetery Ridge, tearing open a large gap in the center of the Federal line that threatened to split the Union army in two. The fate of the Battle of Gettysburg hung in the balance.Despite the importance of the position, surprisingly few Union troops were available to defend the yawning gap on the ridge. Major General Winfield S. Hancock’s Second Corps had been reduced to less than one division when his other two were sucked southward to reinforce the collapsing Third Corps front. Reprising Horatio at the Bridge, the gallant commander cobbled together a wide variety of infantry and artillery commands and threw them into the action, refusing to yield even one acre of ground. The long and intense fighting included hand-to-hand combat and the personal heroics of which legends are made.Veteran Gettysburg authors Shultz and Mingus merge their subject matter expertise and keen understanding of the complex undulating terrain and physical features to produce the most detailed study of this action ever written. In addition to demonstrating how the fighting on the far Union left directly affected the combat to come in the center of General Meade’s line, the authors also address some of the most commonly overlooked aspects of the fighting: what routes did some of the key units take to reach the front? What could the commanders actually see, and when could they see it? How did the fences, roads, farms, trees, ravines, creeks, and others obstacles directly affect tactical decisions, and ultimately the battle itself?Based upon extensive research and graced with dozens of photographs and detailed original maps, The Second Day at Gettysburg offers a balanced, compelling, and ultimately satisfying account of one of the most overlooked and yet important aspects of the defining battle of the American Civil War.

Almost everyone is familiar with the name of at least one Revolutionary War battle. Some, like Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, and Yorktown are nearly household names. Others are less well known but readily recognized when mentioned. An engagement in a New England colony during the war’s sixth year, commanded by one of history’s most famous military names, is not among them. Matthew E. Reardon has set out to rectify that oversight with the publication of The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4-13, 1781.By 1781, Britian was at risk of losing the colonies. The combined Franco-American armies of Gens. George Washington and Jean-Baptiste comte de Rochambeau spent much of that August deceiving British General Sir Henry Clinton into believing they were moving on him to lay siege against to New York City. In fact, they were moving south toward Yorktown, Virginia, in a bid to trap Lord Cornwallis’ army against the sea. Clinton, meanwhile, dispatched former American general Benedict Arnold across Long Island Sound to attack New London, hoping the move would derail reinforcements and supplies headed toward the city.Situated in southeastern Connecticut, New London was the center of the state’s naval activities. State and continental vessels were constructed within its harbor, which doubled as a haven for American privateers. Arnold landed on September 6 and, in a textbook operation, defeated local militia, took possession of the town, harbor, and forts, and set New London’s waterfront ablaze. But that is not how it is remembered. The state government’s vicious propaganda campaign against the British and Arnold, who was already infamous for his treachery, created a narrative of partial truths, myths and legends that persist to this day. The true story, however, is much more than the bloody fighting and “massacre” at Fort Griswold.The Traitor’s Homecoming utilizes dozens of newly discovered British and American primary sources to weave together a balanced military study of an often forgotten and misunderstood campaign. Indeed, Reardon achieves a major reinterpretation of the battle while dismantling its myths. Thirteen original maps and numerous illustrations and modern photographs flesh out this groundbreaking study.

The November 1864 battle of Franklin left the Army of Tennessee stunned. In only a few hours, the army lost 6,000 men and a score of generals. Rather than pause, John Bell Hood marched his army north to Nashville. He had risked everything on a successful campaign and saw his offensive as the Confederacy’s last hope. There was no time to mourn. There was no question of attacking Nashville. Too many Federals occupied too many strong positions. But Hood knew he could force them to attack him and, in doing so, he could win a defensive victory that might rescue the Confederacy from the chasm of collapse. Unfortunately for Hood, he faced George Thomas. He was one of the Union’s best commanders, and he had planned and prepared his forces. But with battle imminent, the ground iced over, Thomas had to wait. An impatient Ulysses S. Grant nearly sacked him, but on December 15-16, Thomas struck and routed Hood’s army. He then chased him out of Tennessee and into Mississippi in a grueling winter campaign. After Nashville, the Army of Tennessee was never again a major fighting force. Combined with William Tecumseh Sherman’s march through Georgia and the Carolinas and Grant’s capture of Petersburg and Richmond, Nashville was the first peal in the long death knell of the Confederate States of America. In They Came Only to Die: The Battle of Nashville, historian Sean Michael Chick offers a fast-paced, well analyzed narrative of John Bell Hood’s final campaign, complete with the most accurate maps yet made of this crucial battle.