Middle School-The American Civil War: Public Library Books/Resources

In the Civil War, the most violent war that America has ever experienced, brothers fought against brothers and millions of lives were changed forever. In this book you'll find seven stories of real people whose important acts made them a part of history. These dramatic and thoroughly researched stories put you in the shoes of Northerners and Southerners as they live out the great dramas of the war. You'll run through the streets of Richmond with hungry women who are rioting to protest unfair food prices. You'll suffer Southerner Eugenia Phillip's humiliating imprisonment on a desolate island. You'll go full speed ahead into Mobile Bay at the side of Admiral David Farragut. You'll carry the Stars and Stripes through the thick of battle along with one of the Union's African American divisions. You'll be there at Lincoln's second inaugural, and with Generals Grant and Lee when they sign the surrender ending the war! Doreen Rappaport and Joan Verniero's vivid histories have won critical praised for bringing true stories to life in realistic detail -- a style that Kirkus Reviews called "a model of excellent historical writing." In United No More! Their signature approach sheds new and human light on the events of the great and terrible Civil War.

The men and women represented in this book had the extraordinary opportunity of witnessing the end of a 200-year struggle for freedom: the Civil War. Gathered here are the stirring testimonies of many African Americans including slaves who endured their last years of servitude before escaping from their masters, soldiers who fought for the freedom of their brethren and for equal rights, and reporters who covered the defeat of their oppressors. These African American voices include the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass on the meaning of the war; Martin R. Delany on his meeting with Lincoln to gain permission to raise an army of African Americans; Susie King Taylor on her life as laundress and nurse to a Union regiment in the deep South; Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress, on Abraham Lincoln’s journey to Richmond after its fall; Elijah P. Marrs on rising from slave to Union sergeant while fighting for his freedom in Kentucky; and letters from black soldiers to black newspapers. Each testimony is presented unabridged, allowing the full flavor of these voices to be heard, and each is supplemented with introductions and notes that provide rich context.

During the 1880s, a German-born, Boston-based picture publisher successfully commissioned the most ambitious series of battle prints ever published. Louis Prang, best known as the "father of the Christmas card," hired noted military and marine artists to create original scenes of combat, and then reproduced their works in a wildly popular portfolio of chromolithographs. He called the set Prang's War Pictures.They were offered to an eager public accompanied by "descriptive texts" that told the story of each engagement through eyewitness recollection by the heroes of each action. The set proved both appealing and influential, selling vigorously in various editions for a generation, and elevating the stature of military illustration in America. For 20 years, Civil War prints for the masses had featured uninspired, one-dimensional views of armies in hand-to-hand combat.Prang and his artists demonstrated genuine skill and imaginative perspective. They showed both real carnage and important technological advances, revealing both the broad sweep of panoramic battlefields and the intimate action of individual combatants.These famously sepia-toned chromos went on to become familiar illustrations in books and magazines-often offered as definitive examples of Civil War art. But until now, the complete set of 18 chromos has never been collected in a single volume. And the original "Descriptive Texts" first offered Prang's customers as marketing brochures to boost sales-a priceless historical archive in and of themselves-have never been published since, anywhere.Holzer reunites pictures and texts in an authoritative, milestone volume orchestrating prints and descriptions that resurrect Prang's original conception of battle art for the masses for a new generation. The book also features reproductions of the original works of art that inspired the prints, created on commission by battle painter Thure de Thulstrup and naval specialist Julian Oliver Davidson-now housed in art collections around the country-but seldom seen since they were commissioned by Prang as models for his ambitious chromolithographs. This long-needed complete Prang portfolio will undoubtedly become an essential collectible for Civil War aficionados in the country, as well as for libraries and university collections increasingly aware of the importance of art and iconography in defining the Civil War experience and the impact of Civil War memory.

America's first arms race reached a blazing conclusion on May 9, 1862, when the CSS Virginia charged its full 275 foot length of ironclad momentum toward the USS Monitor. On the shores, crowds waited for the explosive collision between the two bulwarks of the sea. The clash of these mighty military machines, destined to fight each other for the first and last time in the second year of the American Civil War, instantly brought the age of wooden naval ships to an end.Using vivid paintings, cross-section diagrams, and technical drawings, Patrick O'Brien unfurls the story of the battle that immediately changed the course U.S. naval warfare.

Stuart Murray draws upon Berkshire County, Massachusetts diaries, letters, newspapers, military reports, church journals, and gravestones to tell the stories of the black Union soldiers drawn from New England factories and farms, and comprising the 54th Regiment. Here the reader will encounter Medal of Honor winners, Confederate generals, women volunteers, prisoners of war, leading abolitionists, pacifists, shopkeepers, poets, writers, artists, politicians, and a host of others, all contributing to a vivid portraits of the horrors and glories of the Civil War.