Although a successful businessman in Newark, Ohio, prior to the Civil War, Charles Dana Miller understood the necessity of leaving his business and his home to take part in the “struggle for the life of the republic.” His account of what he saw, how he felt, and the hardships he endured as a soldier in the 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry are presented in The Struggle for the Life of the Republic.

Biographer John Belohlavek delivers a work of importance and originality to specialists in the areas of mid-nineteenth-century political, legal, and diplomatic history as well as to those interested in New England history, antebellum gender relations, civil-military relations, and Mexican War studies.

Chapman’s memoir, written from memory in 1867 and aided in part by his extensive correspondence with his family, alternately sparkles with humor and wit and bristles with a passionate hatred for Yankees. He recalled his soldiering days with nostalgia, for he suspected those months in the army might have been the high point of his life.

The dispatches from Lord Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, Second Baron, British Envoy Extraordinary in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War offer insight into contemporaneous Anglo–American relations. The five-year period covered in these three volumes witnessed the fierce and deadly battles of the war fought both in the North and in the South, the shifting moods of public opinion and patriotic fervor, the changing economic conditions, and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

The three volumes of The American Civil War through British Eyes make available important, previously unpublished documents that fill a void for students and scholars of the war. Lyon’s dispatches offer a unique perspective on America during its bitterest test of national unity. Through them the Civil War unfolds not in retrospect but through the eyes of a contemporary observer.

Conrad Wise Chapman (1842-1910) is unique among Civil War artists: he painted and sketched while on duty as a Confederate soldier who served in three theaters of the war. Chapman’s first-hand knowledge is evident in his work. Ben Bassham has written both a critical study of Chapman’s art and a biography, incorporating Chapman’s correspondence and Civil War memoirs.

The dispatches included in Volume 1 of The American Civil War through British Eyes offer insight into contemporary Anglo-American relations. This period witnessed the election of Abraham Lincoln, the secession crisis, the formation of the Confederacy, and the first military confrontations of the war. It also raised a host of problems for Great Britain’s relationships with both the Union and the Confederacy, such as how the war would affect British nationals residing in the United States, what course official British policy should take regarding diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy, and the effect that the likely interruption of exports might have on British manufacturing.

“The Civil War was a crucial experience in shaping the character and political life of William McKinley. In this engrossing and well-researched study, William H. Armstrong provides the most thorough treatment of McKinley’s military career and shows how his wartime record influenced his emergence as the first modern president. Armstrong is balanced and fair-minded, and his work should become the definitive account of the Civil War years of an important figure of the Gilded Age.” —Lewis L. Gould, author of The Presidency of William McKinley

Long Road to Liberty traces the men’s immigrant roots and their involvement in events leading up to the war, including breaking up the last slave auction in St. Louis and efforts to keep Missouri in the Union, and continues with their army lives as the state’s first volunteers. It details the 15th’s actions in crucial battles in Tennessee and Georgia: their desperate stand at Stones River and near annihilation at Chickamauga; their charge without orders up Missionary Ridge; the campaign for Atlanta; and their role at Spring Hill and the killing field a day later at Franklin, Tennessee.

A 37-minute DVD that tells the story of a young Col. George Perkins returning home to Akron after the Civil War. Using vintage photographs and images of re-enactors, it portrays the effect of the war on Perkins and the social and political changes that occurred nationally and on the homefront.