Confederate States of America

A different tack to Civil War studies--here John Shelby sketches particular instances of the conflict and marries those with first-hand accounts from seven young Confederates who were involved. Three women's and four men's lives are interwoven the events surrounding them, and they are followed even well into the war's aftermath.

Some Confederate officers and soldiers refused to live in a conquered land. General Jo Shelby was one of those. He led his 300 men, the "Iron Brigade," on a twelve-hundred-mile march to Mexico where they supported the Emperor Maximilian in his fight against Juarez's rebels, hoping to eventually establish their own government there. Though doomed, his actions were historically notable--all the more so since in his later years, he returned to the United States, renounced slavery, became U.S. Marshall for western Missouri and became famous as a nineteenth-century progressive.

Phoebe Yates Pember penned the story of her time as chief matron at Chimorazo Hospital in Richmond shortly after the Civil War.

Based on a true story. Jim Limber Davis was rescued from an abusive guardian by Varina Davis when he was only five years old. Jefferson and Varina Davis welcomed him into their home, the Confederate White House, as one of the family, and Jim lived with them until the fall of the Confederacy.

Describes how Colonel John Mosby and his partisan soldiers conducted successful guerrilla warfare on Northern troops during the Civil War.

Traces the life of the famous Confederate general from his childhood in Virginia through his West Point education and brilliant military career to his death following the Battle of Yellow Tavern.

A short book (36 pages) that is appropriate for elementary students who are just beginning to develop a taste for history.