Ocean State Libraries

"A Diary From Dixie" is Mary Boykin Chesnut's celebrated firsthand account of life in the Confederate South during the Civil War years of 1861-1865. Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate Senator and Brigadier General described the life of an upper-class planter society confronting the encroaching realities of the end of slavery and her peers' way of life. Full of important personages and eminently readable, the Diary was quoted extensively in Ken Burns'...

Includes diary entries, personal letters, and archival photographs to describe the experiences of boys, sixteen years old or younger, who fought in the Civil War.

A biography of the two gifted Civil War commanders from a New York Times–bestselling author: “A great story . . . History at its best” (Publishers Weekly).
Their names are forever linked in the history of the Civil War, but Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant could not have been more dissimilar. Lee came from a world of Southern gentility and aristocratic privilege while Grant had coarser, more...

"Robert E. Lee seemed destined for greatness. His father was a Revolutionary War hero and at West Point he graduated second in his class! In 1861, when the Southern states seceded from the Union, Lee was offered the opportunity to command the Union forces. However, even though he was against the war, his loyalty to his home state of Virginia wouldn't let him fight for the North."--Amazon.com.

On the eve of the Civil War, one soldier embodied the legacy of George Washington and the hopes of a divided land. Both North and South knew Robert E. Lee as the son of Washington's most famous eulogist and the son-in-law of Washington's adopted child. Each side sought his services for high command. Lee could choose only one. The decision he made would change history. In The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee and His Civil War, former...

He was a fierce and controversial Civil War officer, an unschooled but brilliant cavalryman, an epic figure in America's most celebrated war. A superb tactician and ferocious fighter, Nathan Bedford Forrest revolutionized the way armies fought in the course of rising from private to lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. In this detailed and fascinating account of the legend of the “Wizard of the Saddle,” we see a man whose strengths and...

"Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation. When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn't have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In an age when diplomats often were spies, Bunch's job...