Henry Carter Hull

Diverse perspectives on Lincoln's assassination, its aftermath, and its place in national memory from some of today's leading Lincoln scholars. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most significant events in US history. It continues to attract the interest of scholars, writers, and armchair historians, ranging from painstaking new research to wild-eyed speculation. Now leading scholars of Lincoln and his murder offer in...

With a new preface and updated historiographical essay. Based on recent scholarship and deep research in primary sources, especially the letters and diaries of "ordinary people," The Northern Home Front during the Civil War is the first full narrative history and analysis of the northern home front in almost a quarter-century. It examines the mobilization, recruitment, management, politics, costs, and experience of war from the perspective of the...

Among collections of letters written between American soldiers and their spouses, the Civil War correspondence of William and Jane Standard stands out for conveying the complexity of the motives and experiences of Union soldiers and their families. The Standards of Lewiston in Fulton County, Illinois, were antiwar Copperheads. Their attitudes toward Abraham Lincoln, "Black Republicans," and especially African Americans are, frankly, troubling to modern...

The 27th United States Colored Troops (USCT), composed largely of free black Ohio men, served in the Union army from April 1864 to September 1865 in Virginia and North Carolina. It was the first time most members of the unit had traveled so far from home. The men faced daily battles against racism and against inferior treatment, training, and supplies. They suffered from the physical difficulties of military life, the horrors of warfare, and homesickness...

Private Silas W. Haven, a native New Englander transplanted to Iowa, enlisted in 1862 to fight in a war that he believed was God's punishment for the sin of slavery. Only through the war's purifying bloodshed, thought Haven, could the nation be redeemed and the Union saved. Marching off to war with the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, Haven left behind his wife Jane and their three young children. Over the course of four years, he wrote her nearly two...

On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia met in the Battle of Hampton Roads-the first time ironclad vessels would engage each other in combat. For four hours the two ships pummeled one another as thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians watched from the shorelines. Although the battle ended in a draw, this engagement would change the nature of naval warfare by informing both vessel design and battle tactics. The "wooden...

The Union states of what is now the Midwest have received far less attention from historians than those of the East, and much of Michigan's Civil War story remains untold. The eloquent letters of James W. King shed light on a Civil War regiment that played important roles in the battles of Stones River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge. King enlisted in the 11th Michigan in 1861 as a private and rose to the rank of quartermaster sergeant. His correspondence...

The chronicle of a Union soldier's seven months in captivity. Besides the risks of death or wounding in combat, the average Civil War soldier faced the constant threat of being captured by the enemy. It is estimated that one out of every seven soldiers was taken captive-more than 194,000 of them from Union regiments-and held in prison camps infamous for breeding disease and death. Sgt. Lyle G. Adair of the 111th United States Colored Troops joined...

A first-person account of the last campaigns of the Civil War… Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman is already well-known to students and scholars of the Civil War for his extensive letters first published in 1922. As a member of General George Meade's staff from September 1863 until the end of the war, Lyman provided colorful commentary on the inner workings of the Army of the Potomac. Now, with the discovery and publication of Lyman's "private notebooks,"...

In language that resonates with power and beauty, this compilation of personal letters written from 1844 to 1864 tells the compelling story of controversial newspaper editor Will Tomlinson, his opinionated wife (Eliza Wylie Tomlinson), and their two children (Byers and Belle) in the treacherous borderlands around that "abolitionist hellhole," Ripley, Ohio. The Printer's Kiss includes many of Tomlinson's columns that appeared in the Ripley Bee, the...