How to Read Civil War Literature

The Civil War scarred the heart of the United States and shaped its history, so much so that we move into the 21st century still battling over flags and eagerly awaiting every new historical discussion of its people and events.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

The People

1. Read several biographies of Abraham Lincoln, whose presidency encompassed and addressed the moral imperative of the Civil War.
2. Turn back to American history of the early 19th century and review the Dred Scott case and the Missouri Compromise.
3. Start with biographies of U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, the central military figures in the Civil War.
4. Move on to their influential lieutenants, men like Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and William Tecumseh Sherman.
5. Look for in-depth works about Union Gen. George McClellan, who may have dithered away a chance for an early Union victory.
6. Look up John Singleton Mosby, a leader of partisan bands behind the Union lines whose raids delayed the ultimate Union victory.
7. Follow the adventures of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who escaped from Fort Donelson to stymie Grant's Mississippi campaign and inflict deadly cavalry raids on Union troops until the end of the war.
8. Check the Civil War record of George Armstrong Custer, who graduated at the bottom of his class at West Point to earn the rank of brevet brigadier general.
9. Learn about the women who served and suffered, too. Begin with Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.
10. Delve into some of the lesser-known figures like John Pelham, the Confederate "boy major" of artillery, and Joshua L. Chamberlain, a young college professor from Maine, who some credit with saving the day at Gettysburg.

The Places

11. Visit the fields of the Battle of First Bull Run, where spectators from Washington, D.C. learned the war was to be blood and terror rather than pageantry.
12. Look up the history of little-known battles like the Battle of Wilson's Creek in southwest Missouri, a fight so bloody that historian Shelby Foote termed it "reciprocal murder."
13. Read about "Kansas, Bloody Kansas" and the Border War.
14. Follow Grant's Tennessee campaign, his meeting with Johnston and Beauregard at Shiloh, and then the siege of Vicksburg.
15. Think carefully about the Battle of Antietam - or Sharpsburg - the bloodiest single day in the Civil War and, perhaps, a lost chance to pursue and defeat the Army of Virginia.
16. Follow Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg and read how any hope for a Confederate victory broke down with the failure of the "mad and reckless movement."
17. Follow "Unconditional Surrender" Grant as he continued to pursue the Army of Virginia through the Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Spotsylvania and on to Appomattox.

The History

18. Read the trilogy of Shelby Foote, books that encompass the war from Fort Sumter to Appomattox.
19. Look up the varied writings of the late Bruce Catton.
20. Read the modern historian James M. McPherson, who has penned "Battle Cry of Freedom," "Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution" and "The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox."
21. Check out works by historians Henry Steele Commager and Douglas Southall Freeman.
22. Delve deeply into personal histories of the war by reading John Bell Hood's "Advance and Retreat" and Joshua L. Chamberlain's "The Passing of the Armies."