Sign-In
Cart
A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation
Hardcover
Literary Figures19th Century United States HistoryCivil War Period (1850-1877)
Publisher Price: $35.00
ISBN13: 9780393247077
Publisher: W W Norton & Co
Published: Feb 9 2021
Pages: 528
Weight: 1.94
Height: 1.60 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
December 1862 drove the United States toward a breaking point. The Battle of Fredericksburg shattered Union forces and Northern confidence. As Abraham Lincoln's government threatened to fracture, this critical moment also tested five extraordinary individuals whose lives reflect the soul of a nation. The changes they underwent led to profound repercussions in the country's law, literature, politics, and popular mythology. Taken together, their stories offer a striking restatement of what it means to be American.
Guided by patriotism, driven by desire, all five moved toward singular destinies. A young Harvard intellectual steeped in courageous ideals, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. confronted grave challenges to his concept of duty. The one-eyed army chaplain Arthur Fuller pitted his frail body against the evils of slavery. Walt Whitman, a gay Brooklyn poet condemned by the guardians of propriety, and Louisa May Alcott, a struggling writer seeking an authentic voice and her father's admiration, tended soldiers' wracked bodies as nurses. On the other side of the national schism, John Pelham, a West Point cadet from Alabama, achieved a unique excellence in artillery tactics as he served a doomed and misbegotten cause.
A Worse Place Than Hell brings together the prodigious forces of war with the intimacy of individual lives. Matteson interweaves the historic and the personal in a work as beautiful as it is powerful.
1 different editions
Also available
A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation
Matteson, John
Paperback
Also in
Civil War Period (1850-1877)
The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul
Kilmeade, Brian
Hardcover
To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876
Baier, Bret
Whitney, Catherine
Hardcover
Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier
Jonusas, Susan
Hardcover
Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
Lowenstein, Roger
Hardcover
Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
Nelson, Megan Kate
Hardcover
To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth: The Epic Hunt for the South's Most Feared Ship--And the Greatest Sea Battle of the Civil War
Keith, Phil
Clavin, Tom
Hardcover
Champagne Charlie: The Frenchman Who Taught Americans to Love Champagne
Kladstrup, Don
Kladstrup, Petie
Hardcover
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Baptist, Edward E.
Paperback
The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West
Nelson, Megan Kate
Paperback
The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
Levine, Robert S.
Hardcover
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
Gates, Henry Louis
Paperback
Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies
Gardullo, Paul
Conwill, Kinshasha Holman
Hardcover
The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln and the Struggle for American Freedom
Brands, H. W.
Paperback
The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights
Wickenden, Dorothy
Hardcover
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869
Ambrose, Stephen E.
Paperback
No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
Cox, Karen L.
Hardcover
A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House
White, Jonathan W.
Hardcover
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Foner, Eric
Paperback
The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights
Wickenden, Dorothy
Paperback
The Black Man's President: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Equality
Burlingame, Michael
Hardcover
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
Shenk, Joshua Wolf
Paperback
Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us about Our Greatest President
White, Ronald C.
Hardcover
Atlas of the Civil War: A Complete Guide to the Tactics and Terrain of Battle
Hyslop, Stephen G.
Hardcover
The History of the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry XXIIIrd. Corps: Where the grim cannon frown and the bayonets gleam
Klinger, Mike
Hardcover
To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876 (Large Print Edition)
Baier, Bret
Whitney, Catherine
Paperback
South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
Baumgartner, Alice L.
Hardcover
The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America
Dickey, J. D.
Hardcover
First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North's First Civil War Hero
Groeling, Meg
Hardcover
Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero
Lineberry, Cate
Paperback
We Gave Them Thunder: Marmaduke's Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas
Piston, William Garrett
Rutherford, John C.
Paperback
The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President--And Why It Failed
Mensch, Josh
Meltzer, Brad
Paperback
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
O'Reilly, Bill
Dugard, Martin
Paperback
America's Original Sin: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth, and the Lincoln Assassination
Rhodehamel, John
Hardcover
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era
Miles, Tiya
Paperback
Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History
Salecker, Gene E.
Hardcover
The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul
Kilmeade, Brian
Audio Book
The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution
Oakes, James
Paperback
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
Dugard, Martin
O'Reilly, Bill
Hardcover
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Royal Collector's Edition) (Annotated) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Hardcover
The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President--And Why It Failed
Meltzer, Brad
Mensch, Josh
Paperback
The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896
White, Richard
Paperback
Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America's Most Famous Small Town
Titus, Jill Ogline
Paperback
The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom
Brands, H. W.
Hardcover
The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight Over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction
Blair, William A.
Paperback
Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction
Rhea, Gordon C.
Hardcover
Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea
Carr, Ethan
Diamant, Rolf
Hardcover
Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
Dew, Charles B.
Paperback
The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West
Nelson, Megan Kate
Hardcover
Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad
Tobin, Jacqueline L.
Dobard, Raymond G.
Paperback
A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation
Matteson, John
Paperback
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
McDaniel, W. Caleb
Paperback
Riders in the Storm: The Triumphs and Tragedies of a Black Cavalry Regiment in the Civil War
Warner, John D.
Hardcover
Civil War Trivia and Fact Book: Unusual and Often Overlooked Facts about America's Civil War
Garrison, Webb
Paperback
Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg
Longacre, Edward G.
Hardcover
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery
Craft, William and Ellen
Paperback
To Rescue the Republic CD: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876
Baier, Bret
Whitney, Catherine
Audio Book
A Field Guide to Gettysburg, Second Edition: Experiencing the Battlefield Through Its History, Places, and People
Reardon, Carol
Vossler, Tom
Paperback
Five or Ten Minutes of Blind Confusion: The Battle of Aiken, South Carolina, February 11,1865
Wittenberg, Eric J.
Hardcover
A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee
Reeves, John
Hardcover
Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union
Kreitner, Richard
Hardcover
A Legacy in Brick and Stone: American Coast Defense Forts of the Third System, 1816-1867
Weaver, John R.
Hardcover
Irish Brigade in the Civil War: The 69th New York and Other Irish Regiments of the Army of the Potomac
Bilby, Joseph G.
Paperback
A Scottish Blockade Runner in the American Civil War: Joannes Wyllie of the Steamer Ad-Vance
Messner, John F.
Paperback
The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies
Carmichael, Peter S.
Paperback
Down Along with That Devil's Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy
O'Neill, Connor Towne
Paperback
An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads
Newby-Alexander, Cassandra L.
Hardcover
The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23-July 4, 1863
Smith, Timothy B.
Hardcover
Free Papers: inspired by the testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi slave freed in Minnesota in 1860
Easter, Mary Moore
Paperback
Border War Tour: A Traveler's Guide to Civil War Sites on the Missouri/Kansas Border
Jones, Jonathan a.
Paperback
The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26-28, 1862
Edrington, Thomas S.
Taylor, John
Paperback