Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed that historian
Benson J. Lossing did more than any other man to make history
interesting and popular. Lossing wrote his comprehensive three-volume
history of the Civil War at a time when the facts were still fresh.
Originally published in 1866, Volume One covers the period from the
political conventions held in the spring of 1860 to midsummer 1861 and
the Battle of Bull Run. Lossing accompanies his narratives of marches,
battles, and sieges with maps and plans, includes biographical sketches
of the prominent people from both sides of the conflict, and illustrates
his history with hundreds of drawings and engravings by the author and
others.