Cormac H. O'Brien          
 

Secret Lives of the Civil War

2007 • Quirk Books
9781594741388
288 pages • $16.95

Buy the book on Amazon.com

 

Buy the book on amazon.com

 

Secret Lives of the Civil War

What Your Teachers Never Told You About the War Between the States

Jefferson Davis"The result of meticulous and painstaking research, making it an absolute 'must'...."—Midwest Book Review

From Stonewall Jackson to Harriet Tubman, an offbeat and revealing look at figures from America's most tragic and defining conflict.


Legendary heroes of U.S. history—as you've never seen them before! Secret Lives of the Civil War features irreverent and uncensored profiles of men and women from the Union and the Confederacy—complete with hundreds of little-known and downright bizarre facts. You'll discover that:

  • Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to receive valuable military strategies from ghosts in the spirit world
  • Jefferson Davis once imported camels for soldiers stationed in the American Southwest
  • Ulysses S. Grant spent much of the Vicksburg campaign on a horse named "Kangaroo"
  • James Longstreet fought the Battle of Antietam wearing carpet slippers
  • William T. Sherman was the victim of two shipwrecks on the same day
  • Harriet Tubman experienced frequent and bizarre hallucinations
  • Stonewall Jackson was a notorious hypochondriac (he always sat up straight, fearing that slouching would compress his vital organs

With chapters on everyone from William Quantrill (a guerilla leader whose skull ended up in the basement of a fraternity house) to Rose O'Neal Greenhow (perhaps the South's most glamorous spy), Secret Lives of the Civil War features a mix of famous faces and unsung heroes.

American history was never this much fun in school!

 
 

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