Confederate Tide Rising

This analysis of the military policy and strategy adopted by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the first two years of the Civil War, argues that their policies allowed the Confederacy to survive longer than it otherwise could have and were the policies best designed to win Southern independence.

Dark Tide book description The long simmering conflict between the Union and the Confederate States of Mexico has become international in scope. The Spanish Civil War is raging. Consul George Patton leads Mexico's Praetorian Guard using his new "lightning war" tactics as Ezekiel Sinclair's descendants, Jeremiah and Esther, battle for the Union. Union led Alliance forces confront the CSM and the Hegemony around the globe. Worldwide conflict drives scientific research to develop more powerful and deadly weapons of mass destruction. As tensions grow and armies prepare for the ultimate conflict OSS Director J. E. Hoover and Secretary of War Franklin Roosevelt battle a pacifist Union government and relentless foreign enemies in a desperate race to save the Union from annihilation. A Dark Tide Rising is the penultimate book in the classic alternative history series, An Alternative History of the Confederacy. The concluding work, The Armageddon Resolution will be available in 2016.

An “eloquent and judicious”* analysis of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, from one of leading Civil War historians—now in paperback. From the time Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 1, 1862, until the Battle of Gettysburg thirteen months later, the Confederate army compiled a record of military achievement almost unparalleled in our nation’s history. How it happened—the relative contributions of Lee, his top command, opposing Union generals, and of course the rebel army itself—is the subject of Civil War historian Jeffry D. Wert’s fascinating new history. Wert shows how the audacity and aggression that fueled Lee’s victories ultimately proved disastrous at Gettysburg. But, as Wert explains, Lee had little choice: outnumbered by an opponent with superior resources, he had to take the fight to the enemy in order to win. When an equally combative Union general—Ulysses S. Grant—took command of northern forces in 1864, Lee was defeated. A Glorious Army draws on the latest scholarship to provide fresh assessments of Lee; his top commanders Longstreet, Jackson, and Stuart; and a shrewd battle strategy that still offers lessons to military commanders today.

Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth Varon offers both a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Lincoln's Union coalition sought to deliver the South from slaveholder tyranny and deliver to it the blessings of modern civilization. Over the course of the war, supporters of black freedom built the case that slavery was the obstacle to national reunion and that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit Northern and Southern whites alike. To sustain their morale, Northerners played up evidence of white Southern Unionism, of antislavery progress in the slaveholding border states, and of disaffection among Confederates. But the Union's emphasis on Southern deliverance served, ironically, not only to galvanize loyal Amer icans but also to galvanize disloyal ones. Confederates, fighting to establish an independent slaveholding republic, scorned the Northern promise of liberation and argued that the emancipation of blacks was synonymous with the subjugation of the white South.

"Civil War memoir by a member of the Confederate Senate. Describing his travels between Richmond and Texas and analyzing the Confederate defeat, Williamson S. Oldham stresses the failure of the Congress to represent the sentiments of its citizens and the effects of CSA political and military measures on the country"--Provided by publisher.

During the summer of 1862, a Confederate resurgence threatened to turn the tide of the Civil War. When the Union's earlier multitheater thrust into the South proved to be a strategic overreach, the Confederacy saw its chance to reverse the loss of the Upper South through counteroffensives from the Chesapeake to the Mississippi. Benjamin Franklin Cooling tells this story in Counter-Thrust, recounting in harrowing detail Robert E. Lee's flouting of his antagonist George B. McClellan's drive to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond and describing the Confederate hero's long-dreamt-of offensive to reclaim central and northern Virginia before crossing the Potomac. Counter-Thrust also provides a window into the Union's internal conflict at building a successful military leadership team during this defining period. Cooling shows us Lincoln's administration in disarray, with relations between the president and field commander McClellan strained to the breaking point. He also shows how the fortunes of war shifted abruptly in the Union's favor, climaxing at Antietam with the bloodiest single day in American history--and in Lincoln's decision to announce a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Here in all its gritty detail and considerable depth is a critical moment in the unfolding of the Civil War and of American history.

He was one of the most embattled heads of state in American history. Charged with building a new nation while waging a war for its very independence, he accepted his responsibilities reluctantly but carried them out with a fierce dedication to his ideals. Those efforts ultimately foundered on the shoals of Confederate defeat, leaving Davis stranded in public memory as both valiant leader and desolate loser. Now two renowned Civil War historians, Herman Hattaway and Richard Beringer, take a new and closer look at Davis's presidency. In the process, they provide a clearer image of his leadership and ability to handle domestic, diplomatic, and military matters under the most trying circumstances-without the considerable industrial and population resources of the North and without the formal recognition of other nations. Hattaway and Beringer examine Davis's strengths and weaknesses as president in light of both traditional evidence and current theories of presidential leadership. They show us a man so respected that northern colleagues regretted his departure from the U.S. Senate, but so bent on Southern independence he was willing to impose unthinkable burdens on his citizens-an apologist for slavery who was committed to state rights, even while growing nationalism in his new country called for a stronger central government. In assessing Davis's actual administration of the Confederate state, the authors analyze the Confederate government's constitution, institutions, infrastructure, and cabinet-level administrators. They also integrate events of Davis's presidency with the ongoing war as it encroached upon the South, offering a panoramic view of military strategy as seen from the president's office. They tell how Davis reacted to the outcomes of key battles and campaigns in order to assess his leadership abilities, his relations with civilian and military authorities, and-his own personal competency notwithstanding-his poor judgment in selecting generals. Rich in detail and exhilaratingly told with generous selections from Davis's own letters and speeches, Hattaway and Beringer provide the most insightful account available of the first and only Confederate presidency-suggesting that perhaps it was the Confederate government, rather than Davis himself, that failed. More than that, it shows us Jefferson Davis as an American leader and offers a new appreciation of his place in our country's history.

"Provocative and compelling…[a] wild ride through Civil War history."—Library Journal What if Lee had avoided defeat at Gettysburg? What if a military stalemate had developed, coupled with growing antiwar sentiment? What if Lincoln had been defeated in the 1864 election and Great Britain had recognized the Confederacy? What would have been the careers of an independent Confederate States of America and a defeated United States? "No historian has thought through such 'what if' questions as seriously as Roger Ransom," says the Washington Post Book World. A master of historical analysis, Roger L. Ransom follows the consequences of the "what if" scenario over an extended period of time, exploring such issues as the fate of slavery in a CSA, how the economies of the USA and the CSA would have developed, and how their foreign policies would have differed. The result is a fascinating historical vision that is a source of insight into the critical events of the Civil War period as they actually happened.