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Q: US Civil War ( Answered,   0 Comments )
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Subject: US Civil War
Category: Reference, Education and News > Education
Asked by: muggscofc-ga
List Price: $40.00
Posted: 08 Nov 2004 10:16 PST
Expires: 08 Dec 2004 10:16 PST
Question ID: 426158
US Civil War.  I am in the process of studying the civil war and need
8 primary sources and 6 secondary sources that will help lead me to
the conclusion of why the South lost the war. I'm not asking for the
answer, but just sites that have reputable sources that I can use. 
Some primary sources could be correspondence letters from soldiers,
family, etc.  I already have a number of books, but would like some
online references as well.
Answer  
Subject: Re: US Civil War
Answered By: omnivorous-ga on 08 Nov 2004 12:51 PST
 
Muggcofc --

Though you may already have some of these books, here would be 8 that
I would recommend.   Being written by those directed the war, the
first six set the tone for the debate over the American Civil War for
a century afterwards:

1.  The book that Ulysses S. Grant completed the week that he died of 
throat cancer.  It's still stunningly relevant; I only wish that
someone would update it with modern maps.  You can find it in most
public libraries:
"Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant"

Online at:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/history/grant.html

2.  "From Manassas to Appomattox," James Longstreet.  Longstreets
books touched off a firestorm of attacks by relatives of other
Southern generals because of his criticism of the final day of the
Gettysburg campaign, among other things.  The criticism came was led
by the widow of Gen. George Pickett, the general who led the ill-fated
charge at Gettysburg:
Also online:
http://www.wtj.com/archives/longstreet/

3.  Robert E. Lee never wrote about the war but his letters and
relevant papers were collected and published in London in 1904 -- and
according to one web source, republished in 1964 (though that may be a
typo):
"Recollections and Letters of General R. E. Lee," R.E. Lee

The next two books are worth considering from the standpoint of the South:

4.  "Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the The War Between the
States," Gen. Jubal Anderson Early, reprinted by Broadfoot Publishing
in 1989.

5.  "Four Years with General Lee," Walter H. Taylor, reprinted by
Indiana University Press in 1962.

And the memoirs of a leading northern general:

6.  "Memoirs," William Tecumseh Sherman, 1875.  They are excerpted here online:
http://www.wtj.com/archives/sherman/


In the past 20 years, a number of Civil War diaries have appeared that
had (amazingly) gone unpublished for more than 100 years.  They give
quite a different texture to the war but are best read after
understanding something about the major characters and battles of the
war.  When I read it, I also kept an atlas in hand so that I could
tell where they were in each state:

7.  "Hard Marching Every Day : the Civil War Letters of Private Wilbur
Fisk, 1861-1865"
Published in 1992:
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/fishar.html

8.  The diaries of Elisha Hunt Rhodes were published just a few years
before Fisk's diaries and were widely quoted in Ken Burns' documentary
film on the Civil War:
"All For the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt
Rhodes," Robert Hunt Rhodes, 1985
http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=101

---

Here are some other first-hand tales from the Civil War, though some
of these are out-of-print:
BookGuy.com
"Soldiers' Letters and Diaries: Union"
http://www.bookguy.com/CivilWar/ltrfedrl.htm

"Confederate Diaries"
http://www.bookguy.com/CivilWar/ltrconfd.htm

---

Okay, now let's deal with some good online sources.  I'm going to
treat this part broadly because the Library of Congress has an
excellent collection of images:

1.  Library of Congress
"Civil War Photographs" (143 links here)
http://search.loc.gov:8765/query.html?col=loc&qt=Civil+War&qp=url%3A%2Frr%2Fprint%2F&submit.x=10&submit.y=10

2.  The National Archives has a wonderful site with relevant documents
from the U.S. Supreme Court that deal with the key issues leading up
to the Civil War.  The site also covers the Court's role during the
post-war Reconstruction period:
National Archives (NARA)
"Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)"
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/american_originals/civilwar.html


3.  At some point in your research you're going to be confused about
battles: they often have two or more names.   Places like Bull Run are
the location of multiple battles.  And how serious were they?  A guy
by the name of Daniel Harvey has put together an excellent chronology
of the war:
"Chronological list of Civil War Battles" (Harvey, 1996)
http://users.aol.com/dlharvey/engage.htm

4.  Lots of collections of links for the war have limitations,
particularly because they get created and are not updated.  The
University of Kentucky has a VERY complete selection and they do keep
it up-to-date:
"The American Civil War Home Page," (Hoemann, 2004)
http://www.sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html

5.  The turning point of the war was the Battle of Gettysburg and the
National Park Service maintains an excellent page with a variety of
ways of looking at the battle, from maps to accounts of ordinary
soldiers' lives:
National Park Service
"Gettysburg National Military Park"
http://www.nps.gov/gett/home.htm

6.  This war had many, many aspects -- new technologies, spying,
liberation of slaves, radical changes in government financial
structure.  One aspect that hasn't been dealt with well in al of the
links above is the naval portion of the war, which allowed the North
to strangle the South economically via blockade.  Here's a site with
the naval chronology:
Naval Historical Center
"A brief Naval Chronology of the Civil War (1861-65)"
http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/civilwar.htm

To help with the naval side of the war, you might want to consult the
book "Divided Waters -- A Naval History of the Civil War," written by
Ivan Musicant.  It shows up on the "A" list of reading among active
naval officers. It was originally written in 1943 but was reprinted by
Harper Collins in 1995.

Another excellent book at handling the war in as unbiased a fashion as
possible is Jeffry D. Wert's biography of Gen. James Longstreet.  It
explains how the South continued to fight the war during the
Reconstruction period:
"General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial
Soldier," Wert, 1993.


Google search strategy:
U.S. Grant "personal memoirs"
"Hard Marching Every Day"
"Supreme Court" + "Civil War"
"Civil War" websites
"naval history" + "Civil War"

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA
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