Audiobooks by Eric J. Wittenberg

“If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania”: The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac Mar

Gen. Robert E. Lee began moving part of his Army of Northern Virginia from the Old Dominion toward Pennsylvania on June 3, 1863. Lee believed his army needed to win a major victory on Northern soil if the South was to have a chance at winning the war. Transferring the fighting out of war-torn Virginia would allow the state time to heal while he supplied his army from untapped farms and stores in Maryland and the Keystone State. Lee had also convinced Pres. Jefferson Davis that his offensive would interfere with the Union effort to take Vicksburg in Mississippi. The bold movement would trigger extensive cavalry fighting and a major battle at Winchester before culminating in the bloody three-day battle at Gettysburg. Throughout northern Virginia, central Maryland, and south-central Pennsylvania, civilians and soldiers alike struggled with the reality of a mobile campaign and the massive logistical needs of the armies. Thousands left written accounts of the passage of the long martial columns. The coauthors mined hundreds of primary accounts, newspapers, and other sources to produce this powerful and gripping account. As listeners will learn, much of it is glossed over in other studies of the campaign, which cannot be fully understood without a firm appreciation of what the armies (and civilians) did on their way to the small crossroads town in Pennsylvania.

Eric J. Wittenberg, Scott L. Mingus Sr. (Author), Paul Heitsch (Narrator)

Audiobook

'If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania': The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac Mar

General Robert E. Lee's movement north shifted the war out of the central counties of the Old Dominion into the Shenandoah Valley, across the Potomac, and beyond. The first installment carried the armies through the defining clash at Battle of Brandy Station, after which Lee pushed his corps into the Shenandoah Valley and achieved victory at Second Winchester. Major General Joseph Hooker used his cavalry to probe the mountain gaps, triggering a series of consequential mounted actions. The current volume completes the march to Gettysburg and details the actions and whereabout of each of the armies. The maneuvering prompted General Hooker to move his Army of the Potomac north after his opponent and eventually above the Potomac, where he loses command to Major General George G. Meade. Jeb Stuart begins his consequential ride that strips away the eyes and ears of the Virginia army. Civilians and soldiers alike struggle with the reality of a mobile campaign and the logistical needs of the armies. Untold numbers of reports, editorials, news articles, letters, and diaries describe the passage of the long martial columns, the thunderous galloping of hooves, and the looting, fighting, suffering, and dying. Mingus and Wittenberg mined hundreds of primary accounts, newspapers, and other sources to produce this powerful and gripping saga.

Eric J. Wittenberg, Scott L. Mingus Sr. (Author), Paul Heitsch (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the Civil War, June 23 - July 4, 1863

July 1863 was a momentous month in the Civil War. News of Gettysburg and Vicksburg electrified the North and devastated the South. Sandwiched geographically between those victories and lost in the heady tumult of events was news that William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland had driven Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee entirely out of Middle Tennessee. The brilliant campaign nearly cleared the state of Rebels and changed the calculus of the Civil War in the Western Theater. Despite its decisive significance, few people even today know of these events. The publication of Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the Course of the Civil War, June 23-July 4, 1863 by award-winning authors David A. Powell and Eric J. Wittenberg, forever rectifies that oversight. Powell and Wittenberg mined hundreds of archival and firsthand accounts to craft a splendid study of this overlooked campaign that set the stage for the Battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, the removal of Rosecrans and Bragg from the chessboard of war, the elevation of Ulysses S. Grant to command all Union armies, and the early stages of William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. Tullahoma-one of the most brilliantly executed major campaigns of the war-was pivotal to Union success in 1863 and beyond. And now listeners will know precisely why.

David A. Powell, Eric J. Wittenberg (Author), Al Kessel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

'West Virginia was the child of the storm,' concluded early Mountaineer historian and Civil War veteran, Maj. Theodore F. Lang. The northwestern third of the Commonwealth of Virginia finally broke away in 1863 to form the Union's thirty-fifth state. In Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia, authors Eric J. Wittenberg, Edmund A. Sargus, and Penny L. Barrick chronicle those events in an unprecedented study of the social, legal, military, and political factors that converged to bring about the birth of the West Virginia. President Abraham Lincoln, an astute lawyer in his own right, played a critical role in birthing the new state. The constitutionality of the mechanism by which the new state would be created concerned the president, and he polled every member of his entire cabinet before signing the bill. Seceding from Secession includes a detailed discussion of the 1871 US Supreme Court decision Virginia v. West Virginia, in which former Lincoln cabinet member Salmon Chase presided as chief justice over the court that decided the constitutionality of the momentous event.

Edmund A. Sargus Jr., Edmund A. Sargus, Jr., Eric J. Wittenberg, Penny L. Barrick (Author), David Stifel (Narrator)

Audiobook