Bøker av Chris Mackowski

A fully illustrated account of the Vicksburg Campaign, including modern color photography and covering the river war, inland battles, seige operations, and more.By the end of March 1863, Major General Ulysses S. Grant was at a crossroads in his military career. His bold attempts in the late fall 1862 and winter of 1862/63 had all come up fall short of his objective: get his army on high ground north and east of Vicksburg and capture the last major obstacle on the Mississippi River.Grant had been stymied by the difficult region's swampy bayous as well as Confederate resistance at key locations that thwarted his advances and prolonged his army's miserable dispositions in the sickly camps of Louisiana bottomland. Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton had performed well using his interior rail lines and intelligence networks to place blocking forces or obstructions that delayed or derailed Grant's movements.Realizing his career was on the line, Grant chose the riskiest operation he could have concocted. In a joint military operation, Grant marched two of his army corps down the roads and along the bayous of Louisiana, repairing them as they progressed, while Acting Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter led his ironclad gunboats with transports past the Confederate heavy artillery defending Vicksburg's riverfront. It was Grant's hope to get enough boats below the city to enable a crossing of the Mississippi River, a forced march into the state, and arriving at Vicksburg's doorsteps from the east-west approach. In doing this, Grant would severe his main line of logistics and supply, something his subordinate officers thought was a disastrous mistake. Grant would take the risk in a zero-sum game: he would capture Vicksburg or destroy himself and his army doing so.This Casemate Illustrated examines the movements of the Union and Confederate armies from March 1863 through July 1863, the joint-operational cooperation between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, the delayed and indecisive Confederate operations to stop the Federal initiative, and how the individual soldiers conducted the one of the greatest campaigns in American military history: to control the "The Father of Waters"--the Mississippi River.

Historians at Emerging Civil War tackle more of the war's most enduring questions to help the reader look at what could have happened with a full multitude of choices and clear and objective eyes.

"This collection of essays explores some of the ways people have imagined and re-imaged the war, at the tension between history and art, and how those visions have left lasting marks on American culture"--

Explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders during the Battle of Fredericksburg and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Chris Mackowski hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest.

Popular media can spark the national consciousness in a way that captures people's attention, interests them in history, and inspires them to visit historic sites. This collection of essays and feature stories celebrates the popular media that have enticed Americans to learn more about the country's most dramatic historical era.

An exhaustive look at the final hours of the Confederacy's most audacious general. May 1863. The Civil War was in its third spring, and Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson stood at the peak of his fame. He had risen from obscurity to become ';Old Stonewall,' adored across the South and feared and respected throughout the North. On the night of May 2, however, just hours after Jackson executed the most audacious maneuver of his career and delivered a crushing blow against an unsuspecting Union army at Chancellorsville, disaster struck. The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson recounts the events of that fateful nightconsidered one of the most pivotal moments of the warand the tense vigil that ensued as Jackson struggled with a foe even he could not defeat. From Guinea Station, where Jackson crosses the river to rest under the shade of the trees, the story follows Jackson's funeral and burial, the strange story of his amputated arm, and the creation and restoration of the building where he died (now known as the Stonewall Jackson Shrine). This newly revised and expanded second edition features more than 50 pages of fresh material, including almost 200 illustrations, maps, and eye-catching photos. New appendices allow readers to walk in Jackson's prewar footsteps through his adopted hometown of Lexington, Virginia; consider the ways Jackson's memory has been preserved through monuments, memorials, and myths; and explore the misconceptions behind the Civil War's great What-If: ';What if Stonewall had survived his wounds?' With the engaging prose of master storytellers, Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White make The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson a must-read for Civil War novices and buffs alike.

They melted like snow on the ground, one officer said-wave after wave of Federal soldiers charging uphill across an open, muddy plain. Confederates, fortified behind a stone wall along a sunken road, poured a solid hail of lead into them as they charged . . . and faltered . . . and died.

A gripping narrative of one of the Civil War's most consequential engagements. In the spring of 1864, the newly installed Union commander Ulysses S. Grant did something none of his predecessors had done before: He threw his army against the wily, audacious Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia over and over again. At Spotsylvania Court House, the two armies shifted from stalemate in the Wilderness to slugfest in the mud. Most commonly known for the horrific twenty-two-hour hand-to-hand combat in the pouring rain at the Bloody Angle, the battle of Spotsylvania Court House actually stretched from May 8 to 21, 1864fourteen long days of battle and maneuver. Grant, the irresistible force, hammering with his overwhelming numbers and unprecedented power, versus Lee, the immovable object, hunkered down behind the most formidable defensive works yet seen on the continent. Spotsylvania Court House represents a chess match of immeasurable stakes between two master opponents. This clash is detailed in A Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, May 21, 1864. A Season of Slaughter is part of the new Emerging Civil War Series offering compelling, easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War's most important stories. The masterful storytelling is richly enhanced with hundreds of photos, illustrations, and maps. ';[A] wonderful book for anyone interested in learning about the fighting around Spotsylvania Court House or who would like to tour the area. It is well written, easy to read, and well worth the price.' Civil War News