Hearts Touched by Fire
The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

In July 1883, just a few days after the twentieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a group of editors at the Century magazine engaged in a lively argument: Which Civil War battle was the bloodiest battle of them all? One claimed it was Chickamauga, another Cold Harbor. The argument inspired a brainstorm: Why not let the magazines 125,000 readers in on the conversation by offering a series of papers on some of the great battles of the war, to be written by officers in command on both sides. The articles would be written by generals, Union and Confederate alike, who had commanded the engagements two decades earlieror, if he were not living, by the person most entitled to speak for him or in his place. The pieces would present both sides of each major battle and would be fair and free of politics. Now, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the most enduring entries from the classic fourvolume series Battles and Leaders of the Civil War have been edited and merged into one definitive volume. Here are the best of the immortal firstperson accounts of the Civil War originally published in the pages of the Century magazine more than a hundred years ago.Hearts Touched by Fire offers stunning accounts of the wars great battles written by the men who planned, fought, and witnessed them, from leaders such as General Ulysses S. Grant, General George McClellan, and Confederate captain Clement Sulivane to men of lesser rank. This collection also features new yearbyyear introductions by esteemed historians, including James M. McPherson, Craig L. Symonds, and James I. Robertson, Jr., who cast wise modern eyes on the cataclysm that changed America and that would go down as the bloodiest conflict in our nations history.No one interested in our countrys past will want to be without this collection of the most popular and influential firstperson Civil War memoirs ever published.