In 1860, the North and the South of the United States were very different societies. The North had abolished slavery in the early 19th century, while the South still relied on slaves to work on its farms and plantations. The first chapter will set the scene, showing how simmering tensions over the right to keep slaves in the new states that were being founded as the country pushed westwards eventually erupted into war following the election of the pro-abolition president, Abraham Lincoln. The middle chapters provide an overview of the major battles that followed the South's decision to secede from the Union. Momentum swung backwards and forwards in the early years before the North eventually gained the upper hand, forcing the South's surrender in 1865. The final chapter looks at the aftermath and consequences of the war, as the United States of America began the process of healing and reconstruction in the post-slavery era. The book highlights all the most important figures of the period, as well as focusing on the military and political strategies of both sides and the influence of the wider world on the conflict. The text is lively and clearly presented with fact panels providing fascinating extra pieces of information and background stories.

Author Biography

John D. Wright is the author of several works of non-fiction, including other titles on the American Civil War. Susannah Ural holds a Ph.D. in history from Kansas State University. She specialises in nineteenth-century America, with an emphasis on the socio-military experiences of U.S. Civil War soldiers and their families. She is Co-Director of the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society and former co-director of the Center for the Study of the Gulf South. Dr. Ural teaches courses on the U.S. Civil War era and classes relating to the larger nineteenth-century, including "Mark Twain's America," as well as instructing history majors on research and writing methods. She is an active member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Society for Military History, and is on the editorial board of Civil War History, The Journal of Military History, the journal War and Society, and the magazine Civil War Times. Her masters and doctoral students write on a wide variety of socio-military topics relating to the Civil War era. In the fall of 2013, Osprey Press released Dr. Ural's latest book, Don't Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It, which Civil War scholar Gary Gallagher has praised in his foreword for its "Compelling voices that reward anyone seeking nuance rather than a simple narrative. Hades tells the story of America's defining conflict through the experiences of largely unknown as well as prominent soldiers, politicians, and families at war. In 2006, Dr. Ural published The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861-1865 (NYU Press). NYU Press also published her edited essay collection, Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America's Bloodiest Conflict, in 2010. She is the author of "'Remember Your Country and Keep Up Its Credit': Irish-Americans and the Union War Effort, 1861-1865" published in The Journal of Military History in 2005, and other articles and short essays relating to Irish-American military service and the Texas Brigade in popular magazines like America's Civil War (March 2009) and Civil War Times Illustrated (September 2007). She writes two regular series for Civil War Times Illustrated titled "War in Their Words," which highlights essential primary source collections, and "Ural on URLs," which reviews websites focused on the U.S. Civil War Era. Dr. Ural's current project is Hood's Texas Brigade: The Soldiers and Families of an Elite Confederate Unit, which will be published by LSU Press in 2017. She is also compiling the best of their letters, diaries, and poetry into a collection co-edited with Rick Eiserman tentatively titled Voices of the Texas Brigade, as well as editing a Texas Brigade family's correspondence for a project titled, This Murderous Storm: A Confederate Family at War.