The American Civil War & Reconstruction
Whistlestop Bookshop’s first store opened in Gettysburg in 1985. Eventually, over 19 years there, our Civil War section grew to be three large wall cases. A disproportionate percentage of it, naturally, was about the battle of Gettysburg and biographies of those who fought there. In addition to this book selling experience, my southern upbringing and Army family life created a lifelong interest in the War Between the States and all of its complexities. It is an understandable national obsession, considering how the first half of our nation’s history contributed to its ferocity, and the second half of our history has been the struggle to live with and understand the consequences.
The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion
The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion
“A penetrating reconstruction of the most disturbing and crucial slave uprising in America’s history.” —New York Times
The definitive account of the most infamous slave rebellion in history and the aftermath that brought America one step closer to civil war—newly reissued to include the text of the original 1831 court document "The Confessions of Nat Turner"
The fierce slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831 and the savage reprisals that followed shattered beyond repair the myth of the contented slave and the benign master, and intensified the forces of change that would plunge America into the bloodbath of the Civil War. Stephen B. Oates, the celebrated biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., presents a gripping and insightful narrative of the rebellion—the complex, gifted, and driven man who led it, the social conditions that produced it, and the legacy it left.
A classic, here is the dramatic re-creation of the turbulent period that marked a crucial turning point in America's history.