University of Arkansas Press Publishes 10th Volume in Popular Civil War Series

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Portraits in Conflict by Ben H. Severance

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War (cloth, $65), by Ben H. Severance, is the latest addition to the award-winning University of Arkansas Press Portraits of Conflict series.

The series began in 1987 with the Arkansas volume and has included Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and Missouri. Called a “major contribution and welcome addition to Civil War History” by the Journal of Southern History, the volumes are avidly collected and enthusiastically anticipated.

Each of these books includes hundreds of photographs, many never before published, of Confederate and Union soldiers from a particular state. Individual stories are intertwined with the history of the state’s involvement with the war.

Alabama is unusual among the Confederate states in that, while its people saw little fighting inside its borders, nearly 100,000 Alabamians served with Confederate units throughout the South. This volume chronicles their experiences in almost every battle east of the Mississippi River—especially at Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg under Robert E. Lee; at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga as part of the ill-fated Army of Tennessee; and at the famous siege of Vicksburg. Ultimately Union soldiers did invade the state, and Alabamians defended their homeland against enemy cavalry raiders at Selma and against Federal warships in the fight for Mobile Bay. The volume also includes accounts of some of Alabama’s leading politicians as well as several of its ordinary citizens.

Severance is associate professor of history at Auburn University Montgomery and a former officer in the U.S. Army. He is the author of Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867 – 1869. General editors for the series are Carl Moneyhon, professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Bobby Roberts, director of the Central Arkansas Library System.

The University of Arkansas Press is the book-publishing division of the University of Arkansas. It publishes approximately 20 titles per year. The press is charged by the trustees of the university with the publication of books in service to the academic community and for the enrichment of the broader culture.