Series: New Perspectives on the Civil War Era

This book explores nearly two hundred letters from Confederate deserters to Governor Zebulon B. Vance from 1861 to 1865. It shares the voices of deserters or friends and family petitioning on their behalf. Deserter Declarations helps us understand who deserters were and lets us tease out some of the factors that motivated soldiers to leave their posts. These letters add...

Mercy in Disaster is about the forgotten nurse in America’s signature, iconic photograph of Civil War wounded: abolitionist Abby Hopper Gibbons. Hung in museums large and small, pictured in books, and found across the internet, rarely is what the New York Times called “one of the most remarkable women of this century” identified. More practitioner than pundit, an organiser and...