"This wide-ranging, authoritative collection of first-person accounts and landmark documents - from soldiers and slaves, poets and politicians, generals, mothers, children and more - details every aspect of the Civil War experience. Letters, songs, poems, newspaper reports, diaries, speeches, private memorandums, military orders, congressional amendments - all combine in a powerful and unfiltered portrait of the war, straight from the mouths, pens, and hearts of those who lived it." --provided by Goodreads.