Free Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson Page B

of the Confederacy, the most detailed and the most recent both contain good accounts of secession and the establishment of a new Confederate government: E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1950); and Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York, 1979)
    Essential for understanding the response of the North and especially of Republicans to southern secession are books by two of the foremost historians of this era: David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven, 1942, reissued with new preface, 1962); and Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–61 (Baton Rouge, 1950). For the failure of the Washington peace conference to resolve the secession crisis, see Robert G. Gunderson, Old Gentleman's Convention: The Washington Peace Conference of 1861 (Madison, 1961). The issues and the action at Fort Sumter are dramatically laid out by Richard N. Current, Lincoln and the First Shot (Philadelphia, 1963); and William A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter (New York, 1957).
    The military campaigns of the Civil War have evoked some of the most vivid writing in American historical literature, only a tiny sample of which can be included here. The most graphic epic, nearly three thousand pages by a novelist who is also a fine historian, is Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative , 3 vols. (New York, 1958–74), which leans slightly South in its sympathies. Leaning slightly the other way and written in a similarly readable style is Bruce Catton, The Centennial History of the Civil War: Vol. I: The Coming Fury; Vol. II: Terrible Swift Sword; Vol. III: Never Call Retreat (Garden City, 1961–65). Another trilogy by a prolific historian of the Civil War is in progress, with two volumes having thus far appeared: William C. Davis, The Imperiled Union: 1861–1865: Vol. I: The Deep Waters of the Proud and Vol. II: Stand in the Day of Battle (Garden City, N.Y. 1982–83). Two marvelous volumes on Civil War soldiers, by one of the giants of Civil War historiography, are based on research in hundreds of collections of letters, diaries, and memoirs, published and unpublished: Bell Irvin Wiley's The Life of Johnny Reb (Indianapolis, 1943) and The Life of Billy Yank (Indianapolis, 1952). Ella Lonn, Desertion During the Civil War (New York, 1928), provides data on that melancholy subject. For the war at sea and on the rivers, see especially Virgil Carrington Jones, The Civil War at Sea , 3 vols. (New York, 1960–62).
    Retrospective accounts of campaigns and battles by participants, first published in Scribner's Magazine two decades after the war and then gathered in four large volumes (available today in an inexpensive reprint edition) are Clarence C. Buel and Robert U. Johnson, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (New York, 1888, reprint ed. Secaucus, N.J., 1982). The official records of military operations, published a generation or more after the war by the U.S. government, are also accessible today in libraries, second-hand bookstores, and reprint editions: War of the Rebellion . . . Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies , 128 vols. (Washington, 1880–1901) and Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion , 30 vols. (Washington, 1894–1922). The Civil War took place at the dawn of the age of photography, and many thousand wet-plate photographs of soldiers, battlefields, political leaders, and other images of the war have survived and can be viewed in modern publications, most of which also include a fine narrative text to accompany the pictures. See especially Francis T. Miller, ed., The Photographic History of the Civil War , 10 vols. (New York, 1911, reprint ed., 1957); and William C. Davis, ed., The Image of War 1861–1865 , 6 vols. (Garden City, N.Y., 1981–84). Another visual aid to understanding Civil War campaigns and battles is maps; the best,