Back The Civil War: The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It

The Civil War: The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It

148 pieces by more than ninety participants More

Edited by Brooks D. Simpson

“These books follow the war in all its uncertainties and accidents and contingencies. They let us live in the minds of people who didn’t yet know how it would all come out, and while specialists may have long known and studied most of these pages, I suspect that their ready availability will forever change the way that ordinary readers learn about the war. It is one of the best things that the Library has ever published.”— Michael Gorra, The Daily Beast

Overview
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Purchase all four Civil War volumes in a boxed set and save $45.00!

After 150 years the Civil War still holds a central place in American history and self-understanding. It is our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic—our Iliad, but also our Bible, a story of sin and judgment, suffering and despair, death and resurrection in a “new birth of freedom.” The Civil War: The Third Year brings together letters, diary entries, speeches, newspaper and magazine articles, presidential messages, and poems to provide an incomparable literary portrait of a nation at war with itself, illuminating the military and political events that brought the Union closer to victory and slavery closer to destruction.

This third volume of a highly acclaimed four-volume series begins with the Army of the Potomac’s dismal “Mud March” in January 1863 and ends with Ulysses S. Grant’s appointment as Union general-in-chief in March 1864. It collects 149 pieces by more than eighty participants and observers, among them Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman, Robert E. Lee, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Mary Chesnut, Clement Vallandigham, Henry Adams, Charlotte Forten, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, as well as Union officers Robert Gould Shaw, Charles B. Haydon, and Henry Livermore Abbott; Confederate diarists Catherine Edmondston, Kate Stone, and Judith McGuire; and Alabama soldier Samuel Pickens, Iowa housewife Catharine Peirce, and Kentucky preacher George Richard Browder.

The selections include vivid and haunting firsthand accounts of some of the war’s most famous battles—Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Fort Wagner, Chickamauga, Chattanooga—as well as the merciless guerrilla war in Missouri and Kansas; the Richmond bread riot and the New York draft riots; and the controversies surrounding the use of black soldiers and the curtailment of civil liberties in wartime.

The Civil War: The Third Year includes an introduction, headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, full-color endpaper maps, and an index. A fourth volume will gather writings from the final year of the conflict.

Brooks D. Simpson, editor, is Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University. He is the author of Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 and Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865, and the co-editor of Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Civil War: The Third Year as Told by Those Who Lived It is kept in print by a gift from the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund, made in memory of William B. Warren.
Table of Contents

Edmund DeWitt Patterson: Journal, January 20, 1863 • Picket Duty and Snowballs: Virginia
Theodore A. Dodge: Journal, January 21–24, 1863 • The Mud March: Virginia
Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams Jr., January 23, 1863 • Emancipation and Public Opinion: London
George G. Meade to Margaret Meade, January 23, 26, and 28, 1863 • A Change in Command: Virginia
Abraham Lincoln to Joseph Hooker, January 26, 1863 • Advising a New Commander: Washington, D.C.,
John A. Andrew to Francis Shaw, January 30, 1863 • Raising a Black Regiment: Massachusetts
William Parker Cutler: Diary, February 2 and 9, 1863 • Debating Black Soldiers: Washington, D.C.
George Templeton Strong: Diary, February 3–5, 1863 • “These be dark blue days”: New York
Oliver W. Norton to Edwin Norton, February 6, 1863 • “The soldier’s pest”: Virginia
Robert E. Lee to Mary Lee, February 8, 1863 • Short Rations: Virginia
Robert Gould Shaw to Annie Haggerty, February 8, 1863 • Accepting a Colonelcy: Virginia
Richard Cobden to Charles Sumner, February 13, 1863 • Emancipation and Intervention: London
Isaac Funk: Speech in the Illinois State Senate, February 14, 1863 • “These traitors right here”: Springfield
Taylor Peirce to Catharine Peirce, February 16, 1863 • “His wife crying over him”: Missouri
William T. Sherman to Thomas Ewing Sr., February 17, 1863, and to John Sherman, February 18, 1863 • The Menace of the Press: Louisiana
Clement L. Vallandigham: Speech in Congress, February 23, 1863 • Opposing Conscription: Washington, D.C.
Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican, February 25, 1863 • “Vile and traitorous resolutions”: Virginia
Charles C. Jones Jr. to Charles C. Jones Sr. and Mary Jones, March 3, 1863 • Defending Fort McAllister: Georgia
Charles C. Jones Sr. to Charles C. Jones Jr., March 4, 1863 • “Fight more manfully than ever”: Georgia
Harriet Jacobs to Lydia Maria Child, March 18, 1863 • Black Refugees: Virginia
William Henry Harrison Clayton to Nide and Rachel Pugh, March 26, 1863 • Unionist Refugees: Missouri
Henry W. Halleck to Ulysses S. Grant, March 31, 1863 • Withdrawing Slaves from the Enemy: Washington, D.C.
Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, April 1, 1863 • The Army before Vicksburg: Louisiana
Frederick Douglass: Why Should a Colored Man Enlist?, April 1863 • “A war for Emancipation”
Jefferson Davis to William M. Brooks, April 2, 1863 • Defending General Pemberton: Virginia
John B. Jones: Diary, April 2–4, 1863 • The Richmond Bread Riot: Virginia
Whitelaw Reid to the Cincinnati Gazette, April 4, 1863 • The Necessity of Fighting
Charles S. Wainwright: Diary, April 5–12, 1863 • Lincoln Reviews the Army: Virginia
Francis Lieber: No Party Now, But All for Our Country, April 11, 1863 • Loyalty to the Nation: New York
Catharine Peirce to Taylor Peirce, April 12, 1863 • Home and Family News: Iowa
James A. Connolly to Mary Dunn Connolly, April 20, 1863 • “Fighting goes like fortunes”: Tennessee
Ulysses S. Grant to Jesse Root Grant, April 21, 1863 • “I am doing my best”: Louisiana
David Hunter to Jefferson Davis, April 23, 1863 • Threatening Retaliation: South Carolina
Kate Stone: Journal, April 25, 1863 • “A night and day of terror”: Louisiana
Wilbur Fisk to The Green Mountain Freeman, April 26, 1863 • Waiting to March: Virginia
John Hampden Chamberlayne to Martha Burwell Chamberlayne, April 30, 1863 • “Rain, mud, & night”: Virginia
Sarah Morgan: Diary, April 30, 1863 • Expelling “enemies”: Louisiana
Samuel Pickens: Diary, May 1–3, 1863 • Battle of Chancellorsville: Virginia
Jedediah Hotchkiss: Journal, May 2–6, 1863 • “Disorder reigned supreme”: Virginia
Taylor Peirce to Catharine Peirce, May 4, 1863 • Battle of Port Gibson: Mississippi
Catherine Edmondston: Diary, May 5–7, 9, and 11–12, 1863 • “The nation’s idol”: North Carolina
Charles F. Morse to His Family, May 7, 1863 • “The great Joe Hooker”: Virginia
Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican, May 9 and 11, 1863 • “Disgraceful and disastrous defeat”: Virginia
Charles B. Wilder: Testimony before the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, May 9, 1863 • Escaping Slavery: Virginia
Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Journal, May 10, 1863 • Commanding a Black Regiment: South Carolina
Edward O. Guerrant: Diary, May 15, 1863 • Mourning Stonewall Jackson: Kentucky
George Richard Browder: Diary, May 17–26, 1863 • Swearing Allegiance: Kentucky
Harper’s Weekly: The Arrest of Vallandigham, May 30, 1863 • “The people can be trusted”: New York
Oliver W. Norton to Elizabeth Norton Poss, June 8, 1863 • Meeting “Secesh” Civilians: Virginia
Robert Gould Shaw to Annie Haggerty Shaw, June 9–13, 1863 • The Burning of Darien: Georgia
William Winters to Harriet Winters, June 9, 1863 • Siege of Vicksburg: Mississippi
Matthew M. Miller to His Aunt, June 10, 1863 • Battle of Milliken’s Bend: Louisiana
Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, June 10, 1863 • “Dividing and weakening” the North: Virginia
William T. Sherman to John T. Swayne, June 11, 1863 • “The hand of destruction”: Mississippi
Henry C. Whelan to Mary Whelan, June 11, 1863 • Battle of Brandy Station: Virginia
Abraham Lincoln to Erastus Corning and Others, June 12, 1863 • The Constitution in Wartime: Washington, D.C.
William Henry Harrison Clayton to Amos and Grace Clayton, June 18, 1863, and to George Washington Clayton and John Quincy Adams Clayton, June 28, 1863 • The Vicksburg Siege Continues: Mississippi
Charles B. Haydon: Journal, June 20, 1863 • “A soldier never knows”: Mississippi
William T. Sherman to Ellen Ewing Sherman, June 27, 1863 • “They have sowed the wind”: Mississippi
Edmund DeWitt Patterson: Journal, June 24–30, 1863 • Invading the North: Maryland and Pennsylvania
Lafayette McLaws to Emily McLaws, June 28, 1863 • “A very different race”: Pennsylvania
Alpheus S. Williams to Irene and Mary Williams, June 29, 1863 • Changing Commanders: Maryland
Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican, June 30, 1863 • “This business of war”: Maryland
Arthur James Lyon Fremantle: Diary, July 1–4, 1863 • Battle of Gettysburg: Pennsylvania
Samuel Pickens: Diary, July 1–3, 1863 • “What terrible work”: Pennsylvania
Francis Adams Donaldson: Narrative of Gettysburg, July 2–3, 1863 • “This trial of the nerves”: Pennsylvania
Elizabeth Blair Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, July 3 and 4–5, 1863 • News of Gettysburg: Washington, D.C.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain to George B. Herendeen, July 6, 1863 • Defending Little Round Top: Pennsylvania
Henry Livermore Abbott to Josiah Gardner Abbott, July 6, 1863 • Defeating Pickett’s Charge: Pennsylvania
Lafayette McLaws to Emily McLaws, July 7, 1863 • “A series of terrible engagements”: Pennsylvania
Cornelia Hancock to Her Cousin, July 7, 1863, and to Ellen Hancock Child, July 8, 1863 • A Nurse at Gettysburg: Pennsylvania
Catharine Peirce to Taylor Peirce, July 5, 1863 • Celebrating the Fourth: Iowa
William Henry Harrison Clayton to Amos and Grace Clayton, July 5, 1863 • Vicksburg Surrenders: Mississippi
William T. Sherman to Ellen Ewing Sherman, July 5, 1863 • “The event of the war”: Mississippi
William Winters to Harriet Winters, July 6, 1863 • A “forlorn and forsaken” place: Mississippi
Benjamin B. French: Journal, July 8, 1863 • “The glorious result”: Washington, D.C.
Catherine Edmondston: Diary, July 8–11, 1863 • War News and Rumors: North Carolina
George Hamilton Perkins to Susan G. Perkins, July 29, 1863 • Fighting on the Mississippi: Louisiana
Charles B. Haydon: Journal, July 11, 1863 • “I must die very soon”: Mississippi
John Hay: Diary, July 11–15, 1863 • “The Prest was deeply grieved”: Washington, D.C.
Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant, July 13, 1863 • Acknowledging a Victory: Washington, D.C.
Abraham Lincoln to George G. Meade, July 14, 1863 • “Your golden opportunity is gone”: Washington, D.C.
Samuel Pickens: Diary, July 14, 1863 • Crossing the Potomac: Maryland and West Virginia
George Templeton Strong: Diary, July 13–17, 1863 • The Draft Riots: New York
Emma Holmes: Diary, July 16–19, 1863 • Battle of Charleston Harbor: South Carolina
Walter H. Taylor to Richard Taylor, July 17, 1863 • “We crippled them severely”: Virginia
James Henry Gooding to the New Bedford Mercury, July 20, 1863 • Battle of Fort Wagner: South Carolina
Lewis Douglass to Amelia Loguen, July 20, 1863 • “Not a man flinched”: South Carolina
Charlotte Forten: Journal, July 20–24, 1863 • Mourning Colonel Shaw: South Carolina
Maria Lydig Daly: Diary, July 23, 1863 • “Four days of great anxiety”: New York
Herman Melville: The House-top • “The Atheist roar of riot”: New York
Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams Jr., July 23, 1863 • News of Victory: London
George G. Meade to Henry W. Halleck, July 31, 1863 • Justifying a Decision: Virginia
Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, July 31, 1863 • “I am alone to blame”: Virginia
Hannah Johnson to Abraham Lincoln, July 31, 1863 • “What is right”: New York
Frederick Douglass to George L. Stearns, August 1, 1863 • Refusing to Recruit: New York
Frederick Douglass: The Commander-in-Chief and His Black Soldiers, August 1863 • Demanding Retaliation: New York
Walt Whitman to Lewis Kirk Brown, August 1, 11, and 15, 1863 • Visiting the Wounded: Washington, D.C.
George E. Stephens to the Weekly Anglo-African, August 7, 1863 • Demanding Equal Pay: South Carolina
Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, August 8, 1863 • An Offer to Resign: Virginia
Jefferson Davis to Robert E. Lee, August 11, 1863 • Refusing a Resignation: Virginia
Wilbur Fisk to The Green Mountain Freeman, August 10, 1863 • Pillaging Wood: Virginia
Frederick Douglass to George L. Stearns, August 12, 1863 • Meeting the President: Washington, D.C.
William H. Neblett to Elizabeth Scott Neblett, August 18, 1863 • Demoralization at Galveston: Texas
Richard Cordley: Narrative of the Lawrence Massacre • “Such a scene of horror”: Kansas
Ulysses S. Grant to Abraham Lincoln, August 23, 1863 • The Impact of Black Troops: Illinois
Jonathan Worth to Jesse G. Henshaw, August 24, 1863 • Peace Meetings: North Carolina
John M. Schofield to Thomas Ewing Jr., August 25, 1863 • “The most radical remedy”: Missouri
Abraham Lincoln to James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863 • Emancipation and Black Soldiers: Washington, D.C.
Ulysses S. Grant to Elihu B. Washburne, August 30, 1863 • “Slavery is already dead”: Mississippi
Charles Francis Adams to Lord Russell, September 5, 1863 • The Laird Rams: London
Charles C. Jones Jr. to Mary Jones, September 6 and 9, 1863 • The Siege of Charleston: South Carolina
Raphael Semmes: Journal, September 16–24, 1863 • The Raider Alabama: Cape Colony
William T. Sherman to Henry W. Halleck, September 17, 1863 • Reconstruction: Mississippi
William W. Heartsill: Journal, September 17–28, 1863 • Battle of Chickamauga: Georgia
John S. Jackman: Diary, September 18–21, 1863 • “Lying so thick over the field”: Georgia
Kate Cumming: Journal, September 28–October 1, 1863 • “The nameless dead”: Georgia
Jefferson Davis: Speech at Missionary Ridge, October 10, 1863 • Tennessee
Oliver W. Norton to Elizabeth Norton Poss, October 15, 1863 • Becoming an Officer: Washington, D.C.
Jefferson Davis: Speech at Wilmington, November 5, 1863 • North Carolina
Walter H. Taylor to Bettie Saunders, November 15, 1863 • “We have no fears”: Virginia
Cornelia Hancock to an Unknown Correspondent, November 15, 1863 • Contraband Hospital: Washington, D.C.
John Hay: Diary, November 18–19, 1863 • A Trip to Gettysburg: Pennsylvania
Abraham Lincoln: Address at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863 • Pennsylvania
Petition from the Colored Citizens of Beaufort, November 20, 1863 • Protesting Impressment: North Carolina
William Wrenshall Smith: Journal, November 13–25, 1863 • Battle of Chattanooga: Tennessee
Montgomery C. Meigs: Journal, November 23–25, 1863 • “Wild with excitement”: Tennessee
James A. Connolly to Mary Dunn Connolly, November 26 and December 7, 1863 • “The grandest sight I ever saw”: Tennessee and Georgia
Theodore Lyman: Journal, November 26–December 2, 1863 • The Mine Run Campaign: Virginia
Wilbur Fisk to The Green Mountain Freeman, November 29 and December 8, 1863 • A Soldier at Mine Run: Virginia
George G. Meade to Margaret Meade, December 2 and 7, 1863 • “My conscience is clear”: Virginia
Frederick Douglass: Our Work Is Not Done, December 4, 1863 • “Every free man a voter”: Pennsylvania
Abraham Lincoln: Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1863 • Washington, D.C.
Abraham Lincoln: Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, December 8, 1863 • Washington, D.C.
George Templeton Strong: Diary, December 11–13, 1863 • Subduing the South: New York
Catherine Edmondston: Diary, December 11, 1863 • “One misfortune follows another”: North Carolina
Mary Chesnut: Diary, January 1, 1864 • “God help my country”: Virginia
Judith W. McGuire: Diary, January 1, 1864 • “And yet we must go on”: Virginia
Patrick R. Cleburne: Memorandum on Emancipation and Enlisting Black Soldiers, January 2, 1864 • Sacrificing Slavery: Georgia
William T. Sherman to Roswell M. Sawyer, January 31, 1864 • “They have appealed to War”: Mississippi
Lois Bryan Adams to the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, February 8 and 23, 1864 • Meeting “Father Abraham”: Washington, D.C.
Francis J. Higginson to John A. Dahlgren, February 18, 1864 • Sinking of the Housatonic: South Carolina
James H. Tomb: Notes on the H. L. Hunley, January 1865 • A Submarine Torpedo Boat: South Carolina
Judith W. McGuire: Diary, February 28, 1864 • A Soldier’s Widow: Virginia
John Paris: Sermon Preached at Kinston, February 28, 1864 • Hanging Deserters: North Carolina
Oliver W. Norton to Elizabeth Norton Poss, February 29, 1864 • Battle of Olustee: Florida
John B. Jones: Diary, March 1–2 and 5, 1864 • The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid: Virginia
Ulysses S. Grant to William T. Sherman, March 4, 1864 • Summoned to Washington: Tennessee
William T. Sherman to Ulysses S. Grant, March 10, 1864 • “Come out West”: Tennessee
Contributors

Henry Livermore Abbott
Charles Francis Adams
Henry Adams
Lois Bryan Adams
John A. Andrew
George Richard Browder
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
John Hampden Chamberlayne
Mary Chesnut
William Henry Harrison Clayton
Patrick R. Cleburne
Richard Cobden
James A. Connolly
Richard Cordley
Kate Cumming
William Parker Cutler
Maria Lydig Daly
Jefferson Davis
Theodore A. Dodge
Francis Adams Donaldson
Frederick Douglass
Lewis Douglass
Catherine Edmonston
Wilbur Fisk
Samuel W. Fiske
Charlotte Forten
Arthur James Lyon Fremantle
Benjamin B. French
Isaac Funk
James Henry Gooding
Ulysses S. Grant
Edward O. Guerrant
Henry W. Halleck
Cornelia Hancock
John Hay
Charles B. Haydon
William W. Heartsill
Francis J. Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Emma Holmes
Jedediah Hotchkiss
David Hunter
John S. Jackman
Harriet Jacobs
Hannah Johnson
John B. Jones
Charles C. Jones Jr
Charles C. Jones Sr
Elizabeth Blair Lee
Robert E. Lee
Francis Lieber
Abraham Lincoln
Theodore Lyman
Judith W. McGuire
Lafayette McLaws
George G. Meade
Montgomery C. Meigs
Herman Melville
Matthew M. Miller
Sarah Morgan
Charles F. Morse
William H. Neblett
Oliver W. Norton
Frederick Law Olmsted
John Paris
Edmund DeWitt Patterson
Catharine Peirce
Taylor Peirce
George Hamilton Perkins
Samuel Pickens
Whitelaw Reid
John M. Schofield
Raphael Semmes
Robert Gould Shaw
William T. Sherman
William Wrenshall Smith
George E. Stephens
Kate Stone
George Templeton Strong
Walter H. Taylor
Walter W. Taylor
James H. Tomb
Clement L. Vallandigham
Charles S. Wainwright
Henry C. Whelan
Walt Whitman
Charles B. Wilder
Alpheus S. Williams
William Winters
Jonathan Worth

32.00 List Price: $40.00 (Save: 20%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Buy the eBook

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #202509

ISBN: 978-1-59853-197-8 929 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 234 Library of America Series

Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts.

Related Books

Poets of the Civil War

The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It LOA N°250

Grant and Sherman: Civil War Memoirs (boxed set)

The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It LOA N°212

The Civil War: The Second Year Told by Those Who Lived It LOA N°221

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

The Civil War: The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.