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 1867, Volume Two covers the period immediately
following the Battle of Bull Run in the summer of 1861 to the summer of
1863 and the fall of Vicksburg. To research this volume, the author
traveled several thousand miles to visit principal battlefields of the
war. 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.