Maryland in the Civil War: A House Divided
This superbly designed book presents archival illustrations, many in full-color, an incisive text, and colorful vignettes to capture the agony of this border (and slave-holding) state imprisoned by geography in the Civil War years. After Fort Sumter, the Lincoln administration could ill afford to lose Maryland, and the state, especially its principal city Baltimore—site of the first blood spilled when a mob attacked the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment—remained under military occupation for most of the war. Maryland was the site of the greatest single day's carnage in American history, at Antietam Creek, and Marylanders on both sides of this brothers' war shot down one another at Front Royal and Gettysburg. Southern Maryland was a hotbed of clandestine Confederate activity, Baltimore a training ground for Union recruits, where citizens of doubtful loyalty to the Union were deported or jailed at Fort McHenry. Maryland was home to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, to the “Union Andersonville” at Point Lookout, and to John Wilkes Booth. All of the drama and tragedy of divided Maryland is captured in this outstanding chronicle.