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Macon is located at the head of navigation on the Ocmulgee River in the center of Georgia. In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Macon was a business community dedicated to supplying the needs of its citizens, of the cotton planters who grew the short-staple upland cotton, the principal foundation of wealth for the antebellum South. This amazing diversity would serve Macon well in the desperate struggle that was to come. Now, for the first time in such detail, is the story of Macon, Georgia, during the Civil War.

When John M. Douthit of Appalachian Georgia enlisted as a private in Fannin County's Fifty-Second Volunteer Infantry Regiment on March 4, 1862 and marched with neighbors to train at Camp McDonald, he left behind a pregnant wife, an eighteen-month-old daughter, and a small farm. A precious cache of family letters traces him to eastern Tennessee, where he served south of Cumberland Gap; through the failed Confederate invasion of Kentucky; on the march to join Bragg's forces near Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and finally, to the defense of Vicksburg, where John and his fellow North Georgians arrived during the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. The author, John's great-great granddaughter and a descendant of the daughter who was born while he was away and whom he never saw, includes family stories and her own mother's memories of John's wife Martha.

A JUST AND HOLY CAUSE? details the life of the family of Lieutenant Marcus Bethune Ely and his unit, the Russell Guards (Co. H, 54th Georgia Regiment) in the midst of one of our country’s greatest tragedies. The Russell Guards were organized in Columbus, Georgia by Captain Charles R. Russell in May 1862. Most of the recruits were from Muscogee and Harris County. These letters provide a picture of life on both the battlefield and the homefront, often touched with humor and love.

The name of Union general William T. Sherman is still reviled in Atlanta, 150 years after his soldiers devastated this important Georgia city. Thirty-seven days of artillery bombardment, July-August 1864, wrecked countless downtown buildings and killed perhaps a score of civilians. Longtime Atlantan Stephen Davis describes Sherman’s shelling in detail unmatched in the Civil War literature.

THE DAMNEDEST SET OF FELLOWS tells the story of one of the finest artillery batteries in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Fighting in almost every major battle in the war's Western Theater, their first baptism of fire occurred at Tazewell, in East Tennessee. Later, they battled at Champion Hill in the Vicksburg Campaign, at Missionary Ridge and Tunnel Hill near Chattanooga, and throughout the Atlanta Campaign. Later, they fought upon the snowy fields of Nashville, and finally at Salisbury, North Carolina, where they manned their guns despite having no infantry support.

The Spirit Divided is a collection of letters, reports, and recollections in which Union army chaplains describe their motives and methods, their failures and achievements. Some threw away their somber black uniforms and became dashing staff officers. Scorning these “chaplains militant,” others were, in the words of a battlefield journalist, “bearers of the cup of cold water and the word of good cheer.

In the 1980s, Army Chaplain Corps adopted the credo “Nurture the living. / Care for the wounded. / Honor the dead.” It summarizes more than 200 years of chaplain ministry with soldiers during war and peace. C. T. Quintard’s Soldier’s Pocket Manual of Devotions was one Civil War chaplain’s expression of the hope and faith on which the credo is built. In 1861, Chaplain Quintard of the 1st Tennessee Regiment marched off to care for his soldiers as they joined the Army of Virginia. His Soldier’s Pocket Manual of Devotions was a very popular and widely distributed devotional manual used by many Confederate soldiers.

The name Andersonville, from the American Civil War to the present, has come to be synonimous with “American death camp.” While a work of deep introspection and high adventure, this new, critical book also corrects myths, misunderstandings, and major mistakes that have appeared in print and popular history.

Thomas R. R. Cobb (1823-1862), a Georgia jurist who, perhaps more than any other one person, influenced the form that the “second revolution” took in Georgia (1860-1861), has been described as a prototype of a Southern intellectual. A product of the “Old South,” Cobb’s influence upon national events (up to and during the Civil War, especially in Georgia) was considerable. Cobb was a “representative Southerner” whose ideas “expressed the trends then current in Southern thought.” This investigation of the life and influence of Thomas R. R. Cobb provides significant insight into the attitudes of his time.

In this anthology of Civil War memoirs, we get a clearer impression of some of the chaplains who served during that Great Conflict. Chaplains were among the most omnipresent observers on the battlefield, and some wrote extensively about their experiences. Eighty-seven of the 3,695 chaplains who served in both armies wrote regimental histories or published personal memoirs, not counting a multitude of letters and more than 300 official reports. Yet, there has never been an extensive collection of memoirs from chaplains of both the Confederate and Union armies presented together. In this groundbreaking work, many of the Confederate chaplains write that they opposed secession and submitted to it only when war was inevitable. Moreover, some of the ministers who became chaplains were active in ministry to black slaves. They spoke out against the neglect and abuse of those held in bondage both before and during the war. For example, Reverend John L. Girardeau formed a large mission church for slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, before the war; Reverend Isaac Tichenor criticized the abuses of the slave system before the Alabama Legislature in 1863; and Chaplain Charles Oliver preached to black laborers in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1864 with the thought that more needed to be done for them. While these efforts may appear trivial in the face of the enormity of the entire slave system, they do reflect that a social conscience was not completely lacking among the Southern chaplains. From the battlefield to the pulpit, Confederate chaplains were surprising and complex individuals. For the first time, explore this aspect of the great struggle in each chaplain’s own words.

Mercer University Press proudly revives this acclaimed real-life account of what the fictional Scarlett O’Hara saw. Life in Dixie During the War, first published in 1892, ranks among the best first-person accounts of the American Civil War. Mary A. H. Gay eloquently recounts her wartime experiences in Georgia and bears witness to the “suffering and struggle, defeat and despair, triumph, and hope that is human history.”

From the first conflict under General Nathan Bedford Forrest at Murfreesboro in 1862 to the desperate and often brutal battles with Union cavalry in the Carolinas during 1865, the 2nd Georgia was almost constantly in action. While the 2nd Georgia fought in such famous campaigns as Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, Knoxville, Resaca, Atlanta, and Bentonville, they also participated in deadly encounters at Farmington, Mossy Creek, Noonday Creek, Sunshine Church, and Waynesboro. Many of these conflicts are obscure to all but the most ardent Civil War historians. Returning in paperback, this is the first regimental history of a Georgia Cavalry regiment ever published. The 2nd Georgia served under both Nathan Beford Forrest and Joe Wheeler, and campaigned not only on home turf, but literally on the farm acreages of many of the unit's members.