Union Reader

From the first fateful firing on Fort Sumter to the final quiet resolution at Appomattox Court House, the American Civil War was one of the bloodiest, most divisive conflicts any nation has ever endured. It decimated the young men of a generation, both North and South, tore families apart, destroyed cities, towns, and farms, and led America to profoundly question its own identity.
Now this vast and destructive conflict can be studied and relived from a Northern vantage point through the authentic documents in this moving anthology. Compiled by noted Civil War historian Richard B. Harwell, the volume presents a wealth of materials whose writers were eyewitnesses, and often, participants in the war.
Included here are selections from battle orders, soldiers' letters home, prison narratives, regimental histories, and addresses and orders by McClellan, Meade, and other generals; accounts of the activities of black soldiers; songs and humorous sketches; letters of Lincoln on national policy; magazine articles; hospital sketches of Louisa May Alcott, and much more.
Together with Mr. Harwell's classic The Confederate Reader, this volume, enhanced with 12 historic illustrations, comprises perhaps the most authentic report on the War Between the States. It belongs in the library of every Civil War buff and student of American history.