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The May 23, 1863, issue of Harper's Weekly ran the following ad by E.P. Gleason, a New York-based manufacturer. The ad, which promoted Gleason's "Kerosine Crater," an attachment to be used with a kerosine lamp, was ahead of its time, as evidenced by Gleason's use of what we'd today call emojis—small images or icons used to epress ideas, emotions, etc. It's unclear how well Gleason's ad...

In "Gettysburg’s Southern Front," Hampton Newsome takes readers beyond the fields of Pennsylvania to examine Union efforts to threaten Richmond.

In "I Saw Death Coming," Kidada E. Williams provides an essential cross-section into how racist violence targeted Black families and postwar freedom.

I was not one of those precocious Civil War enthusiasts who started reading Bruce Catton at the age of 10. Even when I was in high school, my tastes ran more to literature than to history. The first history book that left a serious im- pression was John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage (1957). For some reason the chapter on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and Kansas senator Edmund G. Ross,...

In "The Tale Untwisted," Gene Thorp and Alexander Rossino build on but meaningfully extend Maryland Campaign revisionism.

Roger Lowenstein's "Ways and Means" flows with a confident grace, guiding readers through myriad financial schemes, government policies, and political intrigue.

"Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell" argues that Secessionville was a key battle, outweighing in scope what it lacked in scale.

New Hampshire-born journalist Charles Carleton Coffin accompanied Winfield Scott Hancock and his II Corps of the Army of the Potomac during the Gettysburg Campaign. Coffin wrote about a memorable encounter between Union troops and Gettysburg resident Josephine Miller, 23, who remained in the family house with her father as the battle intensified in the area. Coffin’s account, published as part...

"Contemners and Serpents" presents the correspondence of a family who ended up in Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina during and after the Civil War.

Mingus and Wittenberg present a comprehensive retelling of the critical period that preceded the conflict’s bloodiest encounter.