"On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war. Smoke Jensen The Beginning follows the Jensen clan during these volatile years, from Civil War battles to border state raids to the kind of frontier justice achieved only by bullets and blood. William W. Johnstone chronicles...

An intimate, authoritative history of the first black soldiers to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War Soon after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, abolitionists began to call for the creation of black regiments. At first, the South and most of the North responded with outrage-southerners promised to execute any black soldiers captured in battle, while many northerners claimed that blacks lacked the necessary...

"By fall of 1863, Union forces had taken control of Tidewater Virginia and established a toehold in eastern North Carolina, including along the Outer Banks. Thousands of freed slaves and runaways flooded the Union lines, but Confederate irregulars still roamed the region. In December, the newly formed African Brigade, a unit of these former slaves led by General Edward Augustus Wild-a one-armed, impassioned abolitionist-set out from Portsmouth to...

"O Captain, My Captain tells the story of one of America's greatest poets and how he was inspired by one of America's greatest presidents. Whitman and Lincoln shared the national stage in Washington, DC, during the Civil War. Though the two men never met, Whitman would often see Lincoln's carriage on the road. The president was never far from the poet's mind, and Lincoln's "grace under pressure" was something Whitman returned to again and again in...

"In The Yankee Widow, gifted storyteller Linda Lael Miller explores the complexities and heartbreak that families experienced as men took up arms to preserve the nation and defend their way of life. Told in a smart, assured and compelling voice, this is the story of Caroline, the young wife and childhood sweetheart of Jacob, who together live on a farm raising their daughter, Rachel, just outside of Gettysburg. When Jacob joins the Northern army to...

In 1863, a young Black woman who embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army crosses paths with a Jewish seamstress who helps her discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save. 1863. In New Orleans Stella, an ingenious young Black woman, embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he...

The Civil War has turned neighbor against neighbor-but for one scientist spy and her philosopher soldier, war could bind them together . . . For all of the War Between the States, Marlie Lynch has helped the cause in peace: with coded letters about anti-Rebel uprisings in her Carolina woods, tisanes and poultices for Union prisoners, and silent aid to fleeing slave and Freeman alike. Her formerly enslaved mother's traditions and the name of a white...

An assassination plot that could end the Civil War, and a hidden enemy that could destroy a secret league of unsung heroes ... Daniel Cumberland, born free in Massachusetts, studied law with dreams of helping his people--dreams that died the night he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Daniel is rescued, but he's a changed man. When he's offered entry into the Loyal League, the covert organization of Black spies who helped free him, he seizes the...