Books in the The American Crisis Series: Books on the Civil War Era series

General John Bell Hood tried everything he could: Surprise attack. Flanking march. Cavalry raid into the enemy's rear lines. Simply enduring his opponent's semi-siege of the city. But nothing he tried worked.

The ironclads and gunboats protected army forces and convoyed much needed supplies to far-flung Federal forces. They patrolled thousands of miles of rivers and fought battles that were every bit as harrowing as land engagements. This book describes the Civil War as fought on the rivers of the West.

During the hottest days of the summer of 1863, while the nation's attention was focused on a small town in Pennsylvania known as Gettysburg, another momentous battle was being fought along the banks of the Mississippi. In the longest single campaign of the war, the siege of Vicksburg left 19,000 dead and wounded on both sides, gave the Union Army control of the Mississippi, and left the Confederacy cut in half. In this highly-anticipated new work, Christopher Waldrep takes a fresh look at how the Vicksburg campaign was fought and remembered. He begins with a gripping account of the battle, deftly recounting the experiences of African-American troops fighting for the Union. Waldrep shows how as the scars of battle faded, the memory of the war was shaped both by the Northerners who controlled the battlefield and by the legacies of race and slavery that played out over the decades that followed.

Of all the places and events in this nation's history, Gettysburg may well be the name best known to Americans. This book offers an overview of the entire battle, its drama, and its meaning. It ranges from Lee's decision to take his successful Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania to the withdrawal of the battle-battered Confederate army.

This is the story of the rise and fall of the Reconstruction-era Klan, focusing especially on Major Merrill and the Seventh Cavalry's efforts to expose the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan to the light of day.

William Barker Cushing is considered one of the navy's greatest heroes of the Civil War. After his expulsion from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1861, Cushing managed to get an appointment as a master's mate on one of the warships of a blockading squadron. Cushing's daring and exceptional performance in battle led to a spectacular rise in rank, responsibility, and reputation. His military career culminated in his torpedoing of the Confederate ironclad Albemarle on the Roanoke River in 1864, an operation he executed under heavy enemy fire. This new and fully annotated edition of Cushing's memoir, originally written in 1867-1868, conveys the excitement and drama of a truly extraordinary Civil War naval career.

In the spring of 1864, as the armies of Grant and Lee waged a highly scrutinized and celebrated battle for the state of Virginia, a no-less important, but historically obscured engagement was being conducted in the pine barrens of northern Louisiana.

The war between the United States and Mexico was decades in the making. Although Texas was an independent republic from 1836 to 1845, Texans retained an affiliation with the United States that virtually assured annexation at some point.

While fighting on land holds center stage, there is also a focus on the Civil War at sea.