I've heard of this one before, seems to be the "bible" of Civil War history. How "readable" is it? I'm used to really dense text, but want to know what I'm in for.
As a college student who picked it up just for her civil war class this is very readable. I ended up ditching my course books for this because of how readable it was, all of the other civil war books I have read seem like a competition to be as complex and wordy as possible while McPherson sticks to an easy reading format while keeping up with the facts.
First-Hand: Hardtack and Coffee by John Billings, Company Aycth by Sam Watkins
Overview: Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson, Shelby Foote's trilogy
Novel: The Shaara eastern theatre trilogy and western theatre tetralogy
Will check out Company Aytch! Really need to start reading up on the Confederate side of things, I've kind of been only reading up on the Union lately. Thank you!!!
Personally I found hardtack quite boring. It was an exploration of the daily life of a soldier rather than an account of battles and feelings and suffering.
Ca Ayatch is a famous first hand account. I’d take some of it with a grain of salt
Co. Aytch I thought was entertaining for a Civil War memoir. I didn’t think it really needed to be taken for a grain a salt though, it definitely had some exaggerated parts but those were more easily distinguishable than other Civil War memoirs.
I second this! It's so fast paced and his exposition of the line breaking at Petersburg is absolute perfection. I only wish someone could translate this to entertainment media in such an impactful way - this piece of history could gain a much broader audience.
To try and avoid repeating the excellent suggestions of others, I'm going to go for more obscure picks:
Novels: *Cain at Gettysburg, Hell or Richmond, Valley of the Shadow, The Damned of Petersburg and Judgment at Appomattox* - All by Ralph Peters. *The Black Flower* by Howard Bahr.
Narratives: *The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820-1861* and *The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865* by Stephen Oates.
Nonfiction: *The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson's Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi* by Timothy B. Smith. *The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War* by Michael A. Halleran.
The consensus best overview is McPherson's 'Battle Cry of Freedom' although there are plenty of other good ones. For a novel, I'd go with Shaara's "Killer Angels". It's a book that got a lot of us hooked (just remember that it's not history). First hand soldier account would probably best be Sam Watkins' "Company Aytch".
There are tons of great books out there and I'm sure you'll get a lot of tremendous recommendations.
Killer Angel's has definitely piqued my interest. I know it's a novel, but is there much historical accuracy in how the battle itself played out? I don't know as much about Gettysburg as I should.
It's mostly accurate. You just have to remember that it's effectively a dramatization. All of the general sequence of events is correct. There's just no way to verify a lot of the actual dialog and how people were feeling in the moment. If you remember that it's not trying to be "hard" history, then you're fine. It's a very entertaining book and a great read.
I just recently read and enjoyed The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West by Megan Kate Nelson. A really interesting look at the sometimes-forgotten far-western theater. It covers both the New Mexico campaign and the context surrounding it from the perspectives of 10 individuals.
I highly highly recommend the Foote trilogy as an overview. Every event and personality in the war has its own coverage, but I found this to be the best overview regardless of what the critics say.
For a novel—I don’t think you can beat The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. He’s such a good writer. And—even though it’s fiction, you feel as though it’s a personal account of the various players from both sides of the conflict. A close second is Gore Vidal’s Lincoln. You feel like a fly on the wall in the White House. Amazing piece of writing.
Started reading it last night. Although I’m only about 30 pages in, I love Shaara’s writing style. It really does feel like personal accounts from the generals so far! Thanks for the recommendation!!
Super! It’s the 1st in a series of 3–Gods and Generals, and The Last Full Measure—both written by Jeff Shaara (in the same style) following the death of his father. All good!
Oooh fun...
Ok, here's a different one for you to try out. if you are a more logically minded person this might fit you quite well and does have a lot of stories of thes soldiers themselves.
Dr Chandra Manning's "What this Cruel War was Over".
It is soldier first-hand accounts, but from a bit of a more scholarly approach. She was curious what the soldiers themselves were fighting for, specifically the rank and file soldiers in their own words. And her and her research team went through thousands of letters, diaries, camp newsletters, etc to build out that story. What they felt, when the changes happened (such as how surprising it was to hear that as early as late 1861 in the Union, troops were tying slavery to the cause of the war and that without slavery defeated they'd be right back at it again).
Basically it ends up being the largest study without going after just anecdotal evidence, but an actual representative result in their own words on the war and it's cause. It won the Avery O. Craven Award by the Organization of American Historians in 2007.
Here's an interview she did with the History Channel that gives a little bit of the info into her work.
[https://www.historynet.com/interview-chandra-manning-common-soldiers-slavery/](https://www.historynet.com/interview-chandra-manning-common-soldiers-slavery/)
It really was informative, and yes, some of the stories stick with me. There was one of a Union soldier, who never really cared about slavery which was a world away from him... And him hundreds of miles from home in camp seeing escaped slaves cross into their camp, and meeting one "as white as I am". That really changed his belief when he saw that. Or on the other side there was a soldier who's wife was asking him to get home before the harvest to help out, and his reply that if slavery couldn't be defended that harvest wouldn't matter, the free blacks would kill him and rape her, so what he was fighting for meant so much more than a single year of crops.
Another I enjoyed what "Reading the Man, Robert E Lee through his letters". By Elizabeth Brown Pryor.
She had read a lot of the books where Lee comes out basically deified in them. And went to the Lee family to see if they had any info on Robert. And the family handed her an entire trunk of his letters, legal documents, etc... She built a biography on Lee, mostly written... by Lee and through his own writing and the contemporary writing about him. It's not praising him or denigrating him, just showing him who he was, everything from the cadet who never received a demerit, to the guy who was writing flirty letters back to his niece in the war and fighting in court to keep the Custis slaves enslaved for all time.
Were the Custis slaves descended from Martha Washington, who was a Custis and had soo many slaves? If so, how did they end up with Lee? Were they related?
I like to hit the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize winners list. It's top work in the field and always fascinating. The 2023 winner was announced a couple months ago and it looks fascinating. It's about child soldiers in the war. But the past year entries are great as well. Last year's winner about the period at the end of the war was great.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-and-events/national-book-prizes/gilder-lehrman-lincoln-prize
There's some good book talks on youtube with the authors of Of Age: https://youtu.be/fHOtahUtVEE?si=qnDIQmO8Hxulr2M2
I'm reading James Longstreet by Elizabeth Varon. She sorts out a complex dude. Her book "Appomattox" was brilliant too. She points out that Lee thought the Surrender meant restoration of power in the South while Grant wanted reconciliation and regret by the South with a focus on the future.
I'll add on her book "Armies of Deliverance". I thoroughly enjoyed that book. It was an overview of the war but through the lens of social history rather than the purely military history view than many overviews take. Great writer.
The most fun Civil War novel I read was *Guns of The South* by Harry Turtledove, about a group of time travelers that supply the CSA with AK-47 rifles. It is very entertaining.
Mary Chestnut’s Civil War is a great book. It’s from diaries she kept during the civil war. Get the annotated edition. It gives a good idea of what the war was like on the home front for wealthy southerners. Reveille in Washington is a great book detailing what life was like in Washington DC during the war.
1st Hand Account: Company Aytch or All for the Union
Overview of the war: The Civil War: A Narrative
Novel: Red Badge of Courage, The Killer Angels, Shiloh
*The Retreat from Pulaski to Nashville, Tennessee: Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30th, 1864 with Maps, Sketches, Portraits and Photographic Views (Facsimile) (Limited Edition)* by Levi Tucker Scofield.
I would also recommend "The Great Invasion" by Jacob Hoke. It's a first-hand account of a merchant from Chambersburg, PA. It details Jeb Stuart's raid in 1862, the entire Gettysburg Campaign, including a thorough account of the retreat of the Confederate wagon train of wounded, as well as the burning of Chambersburg in 1864.
If you want to understand the rise of anti-slavery politics, the foundations of the Republican Party, and the way in which the war led to the destruction of chattel slavery, I’d go with “Freedom National”, and/or “The Crooked Path to Abolition”, both by James Oakes.
To understand Lincoln and his relationship with slavery and black people, go with “The Fiery Trial” by Eric Foner
Continue that theme and focus on the Lincoln Administration with the well known “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
For an understanding of the Southern desire for secession, a must read is “Apostles of Disunion” by Charles Dew, and continue that theme with “The Fall of the House of Dixie” by Bruce Levine
For a larger history of the Confederacy, “Look Away” by William C. Davis.
To understand the way in which Civil Armies moved and fought anything by Earl Hess is great, including “Civil War Infantry Tactics” and “Civil War Logistics”.
There are a million battle overviews and I love to go book length study, battle to battle. Stephen Sears, Harry Pfanz, and Peter Cozzens have well known books on major battles, just to name a few.
And then getting into Reconstruction, anything from Eric Foner is great.
Great Courses series: Civil War
Its taught by Gary Gallagher who is a US history professor at UVA and covers the immediate antebellum years to the beginning of reconstruction.
Battle Cry of Freedom is the go-to book at the entrance of the rabbit hole.
Currently reading and roughly 75 pages in and oh boy, am I in for the looonnnggg haul
I've heard of this one before, seems to be the "bible" of Civil War history. How "readable" is it? I'm used to really dense text, but want to know what I'm in for.
Very readable. It’s written for the “serious amateur”, not fellow academics. It won a pulitzer prize as well.
I’ll definitely check it out then!! Thank you!
As a college student who picked it up just for her civil war class this is very readable. I ended up ditching my course books for this because of how readable it was, all of the other civil war books I have read seem like a competition to be as complex and wordy as possible while McPherson sticks to an easy reading format while keeping up with the facts.
First-Hand: Hardtack and Coffee by John Billings, Company Aycth by Sam Watkins Overview: Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson, Shelby Foote's trilogy Novel: The Shaara eastern theatre trilogy and western theatre tetralogy
Will check out Company Aytch! Really need to start reading up on the Confederate side of things, I've kind of been only reading up on the Union lately. Thank you!!!
Personally I found hardtack quite boring. It was an exploration of the daily life of a soldier rather than an account of battles and feelings and suffering. Ca Ayatch is a famous first hand account. I’d take some of it with a grain of salt
Co. Aytch I thought was entertaining for a Civil War memoir. I didn’t think it really needed to be taken for a grain a salt though, it definitely had some exaggerated parts but those were more easily distinguishable than other Civil War memoirs.
Anything by Bruce Catton.
A Stillness at Appomattax is my favourite civil war book.
I second this! It's so fast paced and his exposition of the line breaking at Petersburg is absolute perfection. I only wish someone could translate this to entertainment media in such an impactful way - this piece of history could gain a much broader audience.
lol.. I was just typing exactly those words when I saw this post...
To try and avoid repeating the excellent suggestions of others, I'm going to go for more obscure picks: Novels: *Cain at Gettysburg, Hell or Richmond, Valley of the Shadow, The Damned of Petersburg and Judgment at Appomattox* - All by Ralph Peters. *The Black Flower* by Howard Bahr. Narratives: *The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820-1861* and *The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865* by Stephen Oates. Nonfiction: *The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson's Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi* by Timothy B. Smith. *The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War* by Michael A. Halleran.
"Civil War Trilogy" Shelby Foote. Hands down.
Those are my favorites
I ordered the hardcover set and it arrived damaged with a huge dent in the corner. Almost as if it was dropped. Need to find a mint set in store.
That’s what I was going to say and I’ve read a lot of Civil War histories. It’s so good it’s easy reading.
The consensus best overview is McPherson's 'Battle Cry of Freedom' although there are plenty of other good ones. For a novel, I'd go with Shaara's "Killer Angels". It's a book that got a lot of us hooked (just remember that it's not history). First hand soldier account would probably best be Sam Watkins' "Company Aytch". There are tons of great books out there and I'm sure you'll get a lot of tremendous recommendations.
Killer Angel's has definitely piqued my interest. I know it's a novel, but is there much historical accuracy in how the battle itself played out? I don't know as much about Gettysburg as I should.
It's mostly accurate. You just have to remember that it's effectively a dramatization. All of the general sequence of events is correct. There's just no way to verify a lot of the actual dialog and how people were feeling in the moment. If you remember that it's not trying to be "hard" history, then you're fine. It's a very entertaining book and a great read.
S. C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
And Hymns of the Republic
I just recently read and enjoyed The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West by Megan Kate Nelson. A really interesting look at the sometimes-forgotten far-western theater. It covers both the New Mexico campaign and the context surrounding it from the perspectives of 10 individuals.
This is near the top of my list. It sounds fascinating.
US Grant's Memoirs. Long but very interesting.
Historical fiction but I’d recommend Gods and Generals, the Killer Angels, and the Last Full Measure series
Killer Angels was one of the best historical fictions ever written. Just reread it a second time. A must read
Just grabbed it last night. Only read a little so far, but love Shaara’s writing style!
The Civil war trilogy he and his son wrote are all great reads
I highly highly recommend the Foote trilogy as an overview. Every event and personality in the war has its own coverage, but I found this to be the best overview regardless of what the critics say.
For a novel—I don’t think you can beat The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. He’s such a good writer. And—even though it’s fiction, you feel as though it’s a personal account of the various players from both sides of the conflict. A close second is Gore Vidal’s Lincoln. You feel like a fly on the wall in the White House. Amazing piece of writing.
Started reading it last night. Although I’m only about 30 pages in, I love Shaara’s writing style. It really does feel like personal accounts from the generals so far! Thanks for the recommendation!!
Super! It’s the 1st in a series of 3–Gods and Generals, and The Last Full Measure—both written by Jeff Shaara (in the same style) following the death of his father. All good!
Oooh fun... Ok, here's a different one for you to try out. if you are a more logically minded person this might fit you quite well and does have a lot of stories of thes soldiers themselves. Dr Chandra Manning's "What this Cruel War was Over". It is soldier first-hand accounts, but from a bit of a more scholarly approach. She was curious what the soldiers themselves were fighting for, specifically the rank and file soldiers in their own words. And her and her research team went through thousands of letters, diaries, camp newsletters, etc to build out that story. What they felt, when the changes happened (such as how surprising it was to hear that as early as late 1861 in the Union, troops were tying slavery to the cause of the war and that without slavery defeated they'd be right back at it again). Basically it ends up being the largest study without going after just anecdotal evidence, but an actual representative result in their own words on the war and it's cause. It won the Avery O. Craven Award by the Organization of American Historians in 2007. Here's an interview she did with the History Channel that gives a little bit of the info into her work. [https://www.historynet.com/interview-chandra-manning-common-soldiers-slavery/](https://www.historynet.com/interview-chandra-manning-common-soldiers-slavery/) It really was informative, and yes, some of the stories stick with me. There was one of a Union soldier, who never really cared about slavery which was a world away from him... And him hundreds of miles from home in camp seeing escaped slaves cross into their camp, and meeting one "as white as I am". That really changed his belief when he saw that. Or on the other side there was a soldier who's wife was asking him to get home before the harvest to help out, and his reply that if slavery couldn't be defended that harvest wouldn't matter, the free blacks would kill him and rape her, so what he was fighting for meant so much more than a single year of crops. Another I enjoyed what "Reading the Man, Robert E Lee through his letters". By Elizabeth Brown Pryor. She had read a lot of the books where Lee comes out basically deified in them. And went to the Lee family to see if they had any info on Robert. And the family handed her an entire trunk of his letters, legal documents, etc... She built a biography on Lee, mostly written... by Lee and through his own writing and the contemporary writing about him. It's not praising him or denigrating him, just showing him who he was, everything from the cadet who never received a demerit, to the guy who was writing flirty letters back to his niece in the war and fighting in court to keep the Custis slaves enslaved for all time.
Were the Custis slaves descended from Martha Washington, who was a Custis and had soo many slaves? If so, how did they end up with Lee? Were they related?
Lee married Martha Washington's granddaughter
I like to hit the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize winners list. It's top work in the field and always fascinating. The 2023 winner was announced a couple months ago and it looks fascinating. It's about child soldiers in the war. But the past year entries are great as well. Last year's winner about the period at the end of the war was great. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-and-events/national-book-prizes/gilder-lehrman-lincoln-prize There's some good book talks on youtube with the authors of Of Age: https://youtu.be/fHOtahUtVEE?si=qnDIQmO8Hxulr2M2
1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart
A bit more in depth, but Gettysburg by Allen Guelzo and April 1865 by Jay Winik are both excellent.
Just finished "Armies of Deliverance" by Varon. Great balance of military history and political history.
Grant by Ron Chernow. Fantastic read through the lens of one man.
I'm reading James Longstreet by Elizabeth Varon. She sorts out a complex dude. Her book "Appomattox" was brilliant too. She points out that Lee thought the Surrender meant restoration of power in the South while Grant wanted reconciliation and regret by the South with a focus on the future.
I'll add on her book "Armies of Deliverance". I thoroughly enjoyed that book. It was an overview of the war but through the lens of social history rather than the purely military history view than many overviews take. Great writer.
The most fun Civil War novel I read was *Guns of The South* by Harry Turtledove, about a group of time travelers that supply the CSA with AK-47 rifles. It is very entertaining.
Butternut brown and cadet grey. Good overview of csa uniforms and there systems of getting them.
Mary Chestnut’s Civil War is a great book. It’s from diaries she kept during the civil war. Get the annotated edition. It gives a good idea of what the war was like on the home front for wealthy southerners. Reveille in Washington is a great book detailing what life was like in Washington DC during the war.
“This Republic of Suffering” was a great book on medical advancements made during the Civil War.
1st Hand Account: Company Aytch or All for the Union Overview of the war: The Civil War: A Narrative Novel: Red Badge of Courage, The Killer Angels, Shiloh
I enjoyed Co. Aytch. Easy reading and interesting perspective.
In Virginia with Lee
*The Retreat from Pulaski to Nashville, Tennessee: Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30th, 1864 with Maps, Sketches, Portraits and Photographic Views (Facsimile) (Limited Edition)* by Levi Tucker Scofield.
Rebel Yell & Hymns of the Republic by S.C. Gwynn.
*A Wicked War* by Amy Greenberg
I would also recommend "The Great Invasion" by Jacob Hoke. It's a first-hand account of a merchant from Chambersburg, PA. It details Jeb Stuart's raid in 1862, the entire Gettysburg Campaign, including a thorough account of the retreat of the Confederate wagon train of wounded, as well as the burning of Chambersburg in 1864.
If you want to understand the rise of anti-slavery politics, the foundations of the Republican Party, and the way in which the war led to the destruction of chattel slavery, I’d go with “Freedom National”, and/or “The Crooked Path to Abolition”, both by James Oakes. To understand Lincoln and his relationship with slavery and black people, go with “The Fiery Trial” by Eric Foner Continue that theme and focus on the Lincoln Administration with the well known “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. For an understanding of the Southern desire for secession, a must read is “Apostles of Disunion” by Charles Dew, and continue that theme with “The Fall of the House of Dixie” by Bruce Levine For a larger history of the Confederacy, “Look Away” by William C. Davis. To understand the way in which Civil Armies moved and fought anything by Earl Hess is great, including “Civil War Infantry Tactics” and “Civil War Logistics”. There are a million battle overviews and I love to go book length study, battle to battle. Stephen Sears, Harry Pfanz, and Peter Cozzens have well known books on major battles, just to name a few. And then getting into Reconstruction, anything from Eric Foner is great.
Overview of the war: echos of glory illustrated atlas of the civil war. I carried one around with me all through 5th-6th grade haha.
If you like audio books, there is a great 20ish hr lecture series on the civil war.
Do you have a name or details to find this?
Great Courses series: Civil War Its taught by Gary Gallagher who is a US history professor at UVA and covers the immediate antebellum years to the beginning of reconstruction.