Meetup Planning is Underway!

Watch this newsletter and our social media feeds for upcoming information. Space is always limited, the admission price is free (except for a small admin fee to cover ours), and you can tour fields, meet, greet, and get books signed by a couple dozen of your favorite authors.

See you on the field.

Congratulations to the 6th Annual

Savas Beatie Elite Eight Winner!

Free shipping and a signed author bookplate on

Jason Bohm's award-winning book Washinton's Marines!

Ends April 30. Use Coupon Code: TOB

At the Printer!

Savas Beatie Essential Gettysburg Series

COMING JULY 1, 2024

We listened and changed the cover a bit and the subtitle.

Thank you!

We mentioned this last month, but it is worth repeating . . .

IT WAS A GOOD IDEA. THEN COVID STRUCK.

Alas, we have to face reality. The impact of COVID on publishing changed the availability of the special cloth and color we chose for this series, as well as the special end papers. The price to create a three-piece casebound book with our bells and whistles climbed almost 100 percent in the past two years (!)

We have found a good compromise that will allow us to continue the series.

The next book will be entirely bound in the beautiful dark blue Skivertex cloth originally found on the spine wrapping around to the side of Book 1 (Bliss Farm). We will be adding a dust jacket so we can introduce the book in a larger print run to the book trade at the same time, which will reduce our unit cost.

This means we will no longer be offering numbered copies. The volume number in the series, however, will appear printed on the spine of each book. You can remove the jacket if you like, and they will look the same on the shelf spine-out.

That means you should cherish and hold onto the Bliss Farm edition, the first entry into this series, because there will never be anything like it again!

Essential Gettysburg BOOK #2: Early Summer 2024

"Strong Men of the Regiment Sobbed Like Children": John Reynolds’ I Corps at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, by John Michael Priest

Priest, who the legendary Edwin Bearss hailed as “the Ernie Pyle of the Civil War,” spent nine years researching this new study and walking the ground of the first day’s fight to immerse readers into the uncertain world of the rank-and-file experience. He consulted more than 300 primary sources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper account, recollections, casualty lists, and drill manuals, to present the battle from the ground up. Nineteen detailed regimental maps illustrate the ebb and flow of the battle. The result is a fast-paced narrative with some event not always in agreement with conventional views, something Priest thoroughly explains in the footnotes.

Readers will close the book fully understanding why a veteran New Yorker spoke for the survivors of both armies when he wrote, “Strong men of the regiment sobbed like children.”

One choice advance review:

 “Priest’s new history is a powerful and important examination of John Reynolds’ I Corps on July 1 and the wide array of Confederate forces that attacked it. It is meticulously researched to a level this reviewer has not seen for any similar Day 1 study and his finest work to date. It also raises a fascinating question: Was the often-overlooked fighting on the first day the major factor in the final Union victory? The soldiers of the I Corps saved the significant high ground south of town by inflicting heavy casualties on some of the finest units in Lee’s Virginia army to buy the time needed to allow reinforcements to gather at Gettysburg. This study, especially the view from within the ranks, is simply first-rate.”

— Lance J. Herdegen, The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter

Essential Gettysburg BOOK #1

April 2024

2024 CivilWar Talk Virtual Events

Wednesday Nights

Since 2020, Savas Beatie and CivilWar Talk have partnered to bring dozens of authors and their newly released books to the members and guests of CivilWar Talk. This month, we have the following books presented by these well-known authors.

To join any of these Friday night virtual events, click below.

SIGNED Book Deal Coming This Month!

Watch Your Email!

Powell's Atlanta Campaign! Miss Kenya's New Creation!

Indexing Now. July Release!

David Powell's The Atlanta Campaign: Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 is the first in a proposed FIVE-VOLUME full study of the sprawling and decisive 1864 Atlanta Campaign. The campaign was second only to Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia for scope and drama. Once Grant decided to personally lead the Federal armies in Virginia against Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, he chose William T. Sherman to do the same in Georgia against Joseph E. Johnston and his ill-starred Army of Tennessee. Sherman’s base was Chattanooga, while Johnston’s was Atlanta. The ball opened on May 1, 1864. It would prove a most grueling campaign.

Like Powell’s award-winning Chickamauga Campaign trilogy, this multi-volume study of the campaign for Atlanta breaks new ground and promises to be this generation’s definitive study of one of the most important and fascinating confrontations of the entire Civil War.

We will offer 100 signed copies when it comes out, AND signed bookplates for the balance. Stay tuned.

Thank You for Your Interest Emails on These Classics!

Please keep them coming so we can reprint these books!

-- UPDATED NUMBERS THUS FAR NOTED BELOW --

We need 120 interest orders to go to print!

Click the red button and send us an email.



Please spread the word and share this info on social media.

90/120

Ninety-Eight Days: Geography, Strategy, Politics, and Command During the Vicksburg Campaign, by Warren E. Grabau (original subtitle was "A Geographer's View of Vicksburg Campaign").

Out of Print for a couple of decades, this book is incredible: readable, fascinating, and original. Nothing like it exists. Ed Bearss told me it was "the best single volume on Vicksburg, hands down." 68 maps, 728 pp. Proposed price: $42.95

62/120

The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Volume II: Antietam, by Ezra Carman (Tom Clemens, ed.)

This went out of print nearly a decade ago!

Vol. 2 of the magnificent trilogy is the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg installment.

Maps, photos, 696pp. $42.95

REMEMBER: We wll give you a $5.00 online credit back on each of the above books at the time of purchase, which lowers your actual price.

NO COMMITMENT, BUT PLEASE ONLY SERIOUS INQUIRIES.

The Primary Source Publishing Projects!

Keep your interest emails coming, if you have a SERIOUS interest.

Please keep them coming so we can reprint these classics!

-- UPDATED NUMBERS THUS FAR NOTED BELOW --

We even offer a free payment plan at no cost, if you would like one.

NOTE: These are only available from Savas Beatie. Google Google

No wholesalers, no Amazon. Here is what is under development:

The Campaign for Chancellorsville: A Strategic and Tactical Study, by John Bigelow, Jr. This desperately needs to be reprinted with all its color maps, but it is a complex job. It remains one of the finest campaign histories ever written.

We are working on it. Lots of handwork required. We will need your help.

69/150 preorders and climbing . . .

The Union Generals' Reports, 4 vols., edited by M. Chris Bryan and Michael Harris. Some 320 reports (!) transcribed and annotated from longhand of wartime service (think of the Official Records, but these have never been published).

Almost no one knows about these gems, and they are rarely ever read or utilized.

81/??? preorders and climbing . . .

Bachelder Papers Arriving in July/August

We have placed the order for the final reprint of

THE BACHELDER PAPERS: Gettysburg in Their Own Words (Red and Silver Series)!

The Gettysburg Papers, Ken Bandy, editor. 2 vols.

Lovely sewn edition, high-quality library cloth binding, 50-lb. high-quality acid-free paper, head and foot bands. (Just 450 sets printed, only about 100 sets left.)

$85.00

The Antietam Official Records

2 vols. (vol. 19, pts. I and II)

Vol 1: 824 pp. and Vol. 2: 1,228 pp. Sewn edition matches the Gettysburg Official Records, high-quality library cloth binding, 50-lb. high-quality acid-free paper, head, and foot bands. With The Carman Papers on Antietam coming, the Carman full-color maps with annotations,

a reprint of the Carman/ Clemens Maryland Campaign Trilogy, and a new study on the

Cornfield and vicinity, you will wish you had a set. (Only 350 sets printed.) 

$109.00

The Gettysburg Official Records

3 vols. (vol. 27, pts. I, II, and III)

Sewn edition matches Antietam Official Records. The first printing sold out immediately. High-quality library cloth binding, Smythe sewn, 50-lb. high-quality acid-free paper, head and foot bands. (From 450 sets / down to about 70 sets left.)

$189.00

NOTE: We are your sole source provider.

They will not be available on Amazon or at a discount price anywhere.

This month, our Five Things column features author Ed Longacre of J.E.B. Stuart. This book was released this past February! Here, Ed shares five facts he discovered while working on this book.

Take it away, Ed...

1. Why did Stuart cultivate such a heavy beard?

Many who are interested in Stuart’s life and career suppose he grew his luxuriant, cinnamon-colored beard because it was a fashion statement of his era, one that made a handsome man even more attractive. In fact, he grew it to hide a slight facial deformity dating from early youth that left him, as some believed, “rather an ugly boy.” Though it is not readily evident in early photographs of Stuart, his wartime adjutant, Maj. Henry Brainerd McClellan, described the defect as a jaw too long and angular and a chin “so short and retiring as positively to disfigure his otherwise fine countenance.” While at West Point Stuart’s facial features inspired sarcastic classmates to bestow on him the nickname “Beauty”; some would continue to address him this way in later years, but with a smile. As soon as possible after graduating he cultivated a mustache and then a beard to cover up the unattractive features. An army comrade opined that few men benefited more from a forest of facial hair.

2. How did James Ewell Brown Stuart become “Jeb”?

The long-accepted answer to this question, put forth after the war by a boyhood friend in a memoir shown to Stuart’s widow, is that Lieutenant Stuart became known as Jeb soon after joining the 1st United States Cavalry in 1855 to distinguish him from a fellow subaltern, George H. Steuart of Maryland. However, that the two officers had different first names while their last names were spelled differently raises questions as does the fact that the friend who reported the change was unsure of when it occurred. 

It is entirely possible that “Jeb” dates from Stuart’s service in his first active-duty unit, the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, an outfit that treasured the memory of one of its recently deceased members, Lieutenant James Stuart of South Carolina. A graduate of the Military Academy Class of 1846, James Stuart had so distinguished himself in the war with Mexico, volunteering to lead no fewer than five assaults against the fortified castle of Churubusco, and years later spearheading a daring but fatal attack against warlike Indians in the Oregon Territory, that he would never be forgotten. One of his comrades believed that “no soldier of our army surpassed him in courage and daring.” Stuart’s deeds were so notable that his home state presented to his grieving parents, “with particular pride and affection,” an inscribed sword sheathed in a golden scabbard, and a petition was gotten up to erect a statue to him at West Point.  Fifty years later the Rifles’ historian would claim that “traditions of his brave and noble character live in the regiment to this day.” 

Given the still-shining image of the late officer, it is possible that the acronym-based nickname, which has indelibly attached itself to its Virginia-born bearer ever since the Civil War, was adopted a year or two earlier than generally supposed.

3. Every member of Stuart’s staff thought the world of him . . . except one. 

Many, perhaps most, of Stuart’s staff officers treated him with a degree of reverence usually reserved for a loved one. Aide-de-Camp Theodore S. Garnett spoke for many when recalling his reaction to the news of his superior’s mortal wounding: “My grief was as great as if my own father was dying.” In the eyes of his aides, Stuart met the highest standards of a commanding officer on the battlefield, in camp, and on the march, and their affection for him was deep, unwavering, almost palpable.

A single exception to this rule was Lieutenant Thomas Randolph Price, Jr., who in February 1863 joined Stuart’s military family as assistant engineer of the cavalry division, A.N.V. Price, older brother of Major Richard Channing Price, Stuart’s indispensable assistant adjutant general, had come to Virginia fresh from his language studies in Europe, the groundwork of his later fame as one of the world’s foremost philologists. More scholar than soldier, Price could not suppress his distaste for the mud and blood of war-torn Virginia or his fervent desire to return to the classrooms of Paris, Athens, and Berlin. His early dissatisfaction with affairs at cavalry headquarters took the form of diary entries, in many of which he criticized and even ridiculed his commanding officer. 

One entry had the general arriving “at headquarters about midnight; had a great romp with his two aides and roused up the whole camp by his singing and shouting. . . He is said to be always very gay when he is resolved upon [relating] any dashing achievement.” On another occasion Price wrote disparagingly of Stuart regaling his staff with stories of his raids behind enemy lines, whose perils and successes he compared and rated. At another time Stuart “prattled on all evening in his garrulous way” about various escapades. Other entries described an awkward conference in Richmond with Stuart’s civilian superiors, his preference for military studies that Price found “hopelessly biased and incorrect,” and his willingness to force his staff to subsist on “nothing but heavy biscuits and molasses.”

Price’s indiscretions would not have come to light, creating a sensation, had a bridge-rebuilding crew he was commanding on the Rapidan River in April not been attacked by roving Yankees and most of its members captured. Price managed to escape but left behind his diary, which was seized, sent to Union headquarters, and then passed on to interested civilians including the editors of the New York Times, which in late May published excerpts of the document (“An Inside View of the Rebel Army”) to the mortal embarrassment of Stuart and the staff as a whole. The upshot was Price’s quiet shift to the army’s engineering department in Richmond. To his credit, Stuart informed Price’s new superiors that his transfer was “in no way connected with his professional duties but of a character wholly personal” between superior and subordinate.  

4. Stuart’s tactical expertise extended beyond cavalry operations.

For more than a century and a half Stuart has been inseparably linked to the affairs and image of mounted warfare. As his staff officer and first biographer, John Esten Cooke, declared, he “was born to fight cavalry.” In fact, Stuart might well have made a successful and even a brilliant career in command of the other combat arms of the service. At West Point he placed in the top-third of his class in both infantry and artillery tactics, just below his standing in the study of his chosen branch. During the war he ably led combined forces in several battles and skirmishes including at Bailey’s Cross Roads and Lewinsville in August-September 1861, in the May 1862 Battle of Williamsburg, at various points in the subsequent Peninsula Campaign, and when protecting the left flank of the Army of Northern Virginia at Antietam. 

On each occasion he played a personal, pivotal role in the successful operations of Robert E. Lee’s artillery, winning high-level praise for doing do. On those and other fields he demonstrated conspicuous ability in directing infantry operations, no more so than on May 3, 1863, at Chancellorsville, when on short notice he was assigned to lead the more than 30,000 foot soldiers of the seriously wounded Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson. Although lacking “any knowledge of the ground, the position of our forces, or the plans thus far pursued,” Stuart not only directed a two-hour succession of attacks that weakened the Union left flank, but he also massed 30 cannons in smashing an enemy position that proved to be a key to eventual victory. His inspired leadership won the plaudits of Lee and other observers, so much so that when Stuart was returned to cavalry command after the battle more than a few observers, as one of them later wrote, considered it a personal injustice as well as “a loss to the army that he was not from that moment continued in command of Jackson’s corps. He had won the right to it.” 

Ironically, had he continued in infantry command Stuart would have escaped the criticism heaped on him as result of his wayward handling of three cavalry brigades on the roads to Gettysburg.     

5. A second “lost order” may have attempted to abort Stuart’s errant march to Pennsylvania in June 1863.

When Stuart received his orders from Lee on the verge of the advance into Pennsylvania, he was given discretion to go his own way, with some conditions. One stipulated that he returns to the main army should he find his path blocked by Union forces, something that did occur, but which failed to halt his ride. In the aftermath of the campaign, when Stuart’s unexpectedly long absence from Lee’s side, which deprived the army of essential enemy intelligence, became defined as one of the causes of Confederate defeat, the cavalry chieftain came in for much criticism and censure. In 1885, when Stuart’s faithful adjutant, Major McClellan, published his history of the cavalry, A.N.V., he referenced a new set of orders from army headquarters, which Stuart supposedly received on the eve of his leave-taking, removing impediments to the course he later chose. Because no copy of this document was ever found and published, many historians believe the major fabricated its existence in an attempt to cleanse the stain from his former superior’s reputation.

There exists speculation that a second “lost order” from Lee, which Stuart ignored or deliberately disobeyed, reached his hands before or shortly after he left for Gettysburg. This was revealed in postwar correspondence between one of Stuart’s senior subordinates, Lunsford L. Lomax, and John Singleton Mosby, the famed partisan leader and scout. Because it was well known that he had made suggestions as to the route the cavalry took to Pennsylvania, Mosby, like McClellan, had an interest in polishing Stuart’s participation in the campaign. Therefore, it is instructive that in his letter to Lomax, “the Gray Ghost of the Confederacy” mentions a postwar conversation with Lee’s military secretary, Major Charles Marshall, who had transcribed Stuart’s orders, to the effect that all previous instructions, granting Stuart the discretion he desired, had been “revoked” by a last-minute demand that he remain in contact with the army. According to Marshall, Stuart later admitted receiving and disobeying the order. 

 Mosby’s revelations may be accepted or rejected as modern-day students of the campaign choose, but the fact that he passed on a recollection so detrimental to Stuart’s good name, especially to another devotee of their common superior, hints of credibility. Given Lee’s apparently ambiguous feelings toward Stuart’s independent operation, he might well have decided to rescind his approval. In Stuart’s defense, perhaps the revocation reached him while on the march or was not worded strongly enough to seal the loopholes in his earlier instructions. Because this order, like the one cited by McClellan, never surfaced, we shall never know.  

BONUS!

6.  There exists a shamelessly contrived connection between subject and author.

When Stuart reached Pennsylvania on his Chambersburg Raid of October 1862, he took the time to do some shopping for his family including the gift of a child’s purse for his five-year-old daughter, Little Flora. The purse contained a shiny new penny, perhaps an incentive to save and prosper. The only legal one-cent coin then circulating in the North was the Indian Head Cent, designed by the author’s ancestor, James Barton Longacre, chief engraver of the Philadelphia mint before and during the war. Some sources claim that the model for the coin was his own daughter, Sarah Longacre. 

Click HERE to read more on the book.

Outwitting Forrest: The Tupelo Campaign in Mississippi, June 22 - July 23, 1864, author Edwin Bearss and editor David Powell

Stay and Fight it Out: The Second Day at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, Culp’s Hill and the North End of the Battlefield, co-authors Kristopher White and Chris Mackowski

It was another busy month for Savas Beatie authors, the hardest-working writers in the industry! Check out their happenings last month!

Did you know you can bookmark our author event calendar?

Click HERE. 

A quick trip to the midwest landed author Chris Bryan sharing his book Cedar Mountain to Antietam with the members and guests of the Milwaukee Civil War Round Table.

Author Ed Lowe happily signing copies of his new book A Fine Opportunity Lost after giving a presentation to the Knoxville Civil War Round Table.

At the 2024 Central Virginia Battlefield Trust Spring Seminar last month, several Savas Beatie authors and the company co-founder and director participated in talks and tours. Pictured above left to right: Theodore P. Savas, Kevin Pawlak, Dan Davis, and Mike Block.

Taking his best-selling book to the desert in Arizona, author Jubal Early (sorry, Steve Cowie) had the opportunity to share his comprehensive findings in When Hell Came to Sharpsburg with the Scottsdale Civil War Round Table.

Author Chris Mackowski presented Stonewall Jackson at the 9th Annual Prince William/Manassas History Symposium last month. Many of Chris's books can be found on the Savas Beatie website.

At a private event with the Cornell Club in New York, author Frank Varney shared his book General Grant and the Verdict of History.

The Cumberland Valley Civil War Round Table had the pleasure of listening to bestselling author Scott Mingus Sr. and his presentation on "If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania."

New copies of author Ed Lowe's book A Fine Opportunity Lost were on hand for a signing at the Garden Plaza at Greenbriar Cove facility.

An impressive lineup of authors was selected for the Springfield Civil War Symposium in Ohio last month. Author Britt Isenberg (above) presented Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard and Jim Hessler (below) gave a talk from his book Sickles at Gettysburg. Photo Cred: Phil Spaugy

Did you know we have excerpts posted on our website? Here are a few, and from now on we will have a list right here for you to view. Happy previewing!

Click here to read an excerpt from War in the Western Theater.

Click here to read an excerpt from Union General Daniel Butterfield.

Click here to read an excerpt from Dranesville.

Click here to read an excerpt from Race to the Potomac.

Click here to read an excerpt from We Shall Conquer or Die.

Click here to read an excerpt from Unforgettables.

Corporal Kenya: The Cartoon

About Greg Sweatt: Greg has been drawing "Co. A" since 2003 to illustrate the humorous side of the Civil War soldier, both North and South--the missteps, absurdities, and impossibilities of their daily lives. The cartoons show the humor in the common soldier. Greg is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with a BA and Teaching Credential and has written for Civil War Times, Illustrated, Civil War News, The Civil War Courier, and other periodicals.

Stonewall Jackson Rebuked: The Raids on Dam Number 5, Dam Number 4, Bath, Hancock and Romney, by Timothy R. Snyder