Books
The Civil War You Never Knew Series
These four books challenge Lost Cause mythology and recover the stories history tried to erase. Each volume reveals forgotten heroes, exposes leadership failures, and presents the Civil War as it actually happened—not as Confederate apologists wanted you to remember it.
Unconditional Failure: How Confederate Commanders Lost Fort Donelson
The myth of Confederate military superiority dies at Fort Donelson.
In February 1862, two Confederate generals fled in the night, abandoning 13,000 troops to save themselves. One escaped by steamboat with his personal regiments. Another paddled across an icy river. Both left a professional soldier to surrender an army he could have saved.
This wasn’t noble defeat—it was command incompetence bordering on the criminal. Unconditional Failure strips away romantic mythology to reveal how political appointments, personal cowardice, and strategic chaos plagued Confederate leadership throughout the war. The patterns that destroyed Fort Donelson repeated in campaign after campaign.
If you think you know Confederate military prowess, this book will change your mind.
The Unbroken Oath: The Southern Heroes Who Chose the Union
When Virginia seceded, Robert E. Lee broke his oath. George H. Thomas kept his.
Thomas was a Virginian from a slave-owning family. His relatives disowned him, turned his portrait to the wall, and never spoke to him again. He became the “Rock of Chickamauga” and saved the Union army.
He wasn’t alone. David Farragut of Tennessee. John Gibbon of North Carolina. Winfield Scott of Virginia. Hundreds of Southern officers kept their constitutional oath when it cost them everything—family, home, inheritance.
For 150 years, the Lost Cause erased these men because their existence contradicted the entire narrative. If 100,000 white Southerners fought in Union blue, the South was never unified. If officers from prominent families chose the Constitution, then secession wasn’t the inevitable choice of honor.
The Unbroken Oath reclaims their stories and reveals the Southern loyalty Lost Cause mythology wanted you to forget.
The Dissenting South: Southern Opposition to the Confederacy
The South rose as one to defend its homeland? That’s a myth.
In every Confederate state, men and women refused secession. They denounced rebellion, defied local authorities, and fought for the Union. Andrew Johnson stood alone in the Senate defending the United States. William Brownlow mocked Confederate leaders until his arrest. German immigrants in Texas died for their anti-slavery beliefs. Newton Knight and the “Free State of Jones” declared independence from the Confederacy itself.
For every plantation loyalist, there was a small farmer who saw no reason to die for slavery. For every Confederate recruiter, there was a Union spy or a mother hiding her sons from the draft. The planter elite’s grip on the South was never complete.
The Dissenting South exposes the deep fissures that ran through the Confederacy and restores Southern Unionists to their rightful place in American history. Their courage was remarkable, their suffering immense, their memory nearly erased—until now.
Battlelines: Gettysburg: Civil War Sketch Artists and the First Draft of War
Photographers couldn’t capture battles. Sketch artists could.
About 30 Civil War sketch artists moved quickly to scenes of action, drew what they witnessed, and communicated it to viewers back home. They provided a vital, immediate record of the war—yet their work has been largely ignored for 150 years.
Battlelines: Gettysburg features never-before-published drawings by combat artists who witnessed the battle firsthand. These sketches are the “first draft” of Civil War history, offering fresh insights into America’s defining conflict through the eyes of men who were there when it happened.
This beautifully illustrated volume recovers the work of forgotten artists and brings new visual perspective to the most studied battle in American history.
All books available in Kindle and paperback editions on Amazon.