American Biographies - History Books

The effective end of the American Civil War on April 9, 1865, had hardly sunk in when, only five days later, another disaster stunned the battered and bloodied nation. On the night of April 9, Pres. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. There would be time for vengeful thoughts later, but first the Great Emancipator was going to get a royal send-off. At the center of what would become a three-week national funeral was a spectacular train that would carry Lincoln's remains, and those of his deceased son, from Washington, DC, to Springfield, Illinois. "The Lincoln Special" steamed slowly out of spring mists, allowing thousands of mourners lining the tracks a lingering view. It was a logistics miracle; a romantic pageant of sorrow and wonder, carried off flawlessly. Through the tears, however, was a sense that America's identity had turned a corner and was about to enter a dynamic and hopeful future. Author of nine books, Michael Leavy is an avid Civil War and railroad historian. Leavy has searched through archives to locate rare photographs and new details and dispel some lingering myths surrounding this tragic but formative American event.

On July 9, 1864, young Mamie Tyler crouched in a cellar as Union sharpshooters above traded volleys with Confederate forces. After six excruciating hours, she emerged to nurse the wounded from the Battle of Monocacy. This was life in a border state and the terrifying reality for the women of Maryland. Western Maryland experienced some of the worst carnage of the war, and women turned their homes into hospitals for the wounded of Antietam, South Mountain and Gettysburg. In Baltimore, secessionists such as Hetty Carry fled arrest by Union troops. The Eastern Shore's Anna Ella Carroll plotted military strategy for the Union, and Harriet Tubman led hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Author Claudia Floyd draws on letters and memoirs to chronicle their stories and present a fascinating and nuanced portrait of Maryland women in the Civil War.

When the call went out in 1862 for volunteers for Delaware's 4th Infantry Regiment, a number of men from prominent Quaker families came forward to fight for the Union. Deeply patriotic and strongly opposed to slavery, they served with distinction in some of the later campaigns of the Civil War, from Cold Harbor through Appomattox. Among them was Henry Gawthrop. Commissioned a first lieutenant in Company F, he saw action during the Siege of Petersburg and at the Battle of Five Forks. Fifty years after the war, he drew on his diary and letters from the war years to create a unique memoir that is among the most comprehensive and detailed of any Delaware Civil War veteran. This is his story.