The Damned Red Flags Of The Rebellion

A unique study that analyzes the most powerful symbol of the Civil War from the perspective of both sides. Includes 41 full-color photos of flags captured at Gettysburg.

A fresh examination of Pickett’s Charge, drawing from numerous soldiers’ accounts—includes maps and illustrations. Both a scholarly and a revisionist interpretation of the most famous charge in American history, Into the Fight uses a wide array of sources, ranging from the monuments on the Gettysburg battlefield to the accounts of the participants themselves, to rewrite the conventional thinking about this unusually emotional, yet serious, moment in our Civil War. Starting with a fresh point of view, and with no axes to grind, Into the Fight challenges all interested in that stunning moment in history to rethink their assumptions. Praise for the work of John Michael Priest “[A] stirring narrative of the common soldier’s experiences on the southern end of the battlefield on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg.” —Civil War News “Priest’s distinctive style is rife with anecdotes, many drawn from obscure diaries and letters, artfully stitched together in an original manner.” —David G. Martin, author of The Shiloh Campaign

Their nickname was the Bloody First, given to them in recognition of their courageous conduct and supreme sacrifice in battle. In the midst of the Battle of Fredericksburg, General James Kemper declared, Men of the First Virginia Regimentyou who have on so many hard-fought fields gained the name of the Bloody Firsttoday your country calls on you again to stand between her and her enemy, and I know you will do your duty. The Bloody First follows the exploits of this brave group of young men who left their families and went off to war in defense of their homeland. Through their own words, newspaper accounts, official reports, correspondence, and articles, we can relive their hardships and pain as they experience the most devastating war in our nations history. Three days before the Battle of Manassas, they were the first Confederate unit to engage in battle with the Union Army along the banks of Bull Run, and four years later their remnants were at Appomattox Court House for the final surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Among their many battle honors, the Bloody First made that immortal charge up Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg, as part of Kempers brigade in Picketts division. On that day, July 3, 1863, they suffered the highest percentage of casualties of any regiment in Kempers brigade. The Bloody First tells their story, keeping their memory and their history alive today.

The Civil War Relived in 40 Stories! Between the first shots fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, the nation was irrevocably changed, as were the lives of the soldiers and civilians who lived through the war. This is an extraordinary collection of stories about that epochal conflict, bringing the victories and defeats, the valor and the heartbreak, alive with personal intensity. Includes entries by: Ambrose Bierce Stephan Crane Mark Twain Abraham Lincoln Ulysses S. Grant Walt Whitman Frederick L. Hitchcock Louisa May Alcott Carlton McCarthy Abner Doubleday Theodore Roosevelt and many others.

Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History An Economist Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier. Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett’s Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story of army life in the Civil War: from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks, to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny, one of history’s epic battles is given extraordinarily vivid new life.