Thank God they won the war. Few people know very much more than very general details of the Civil War and the events leading up to it in the decades preceding. Fortunately for those that have the desire to delve into it, there is a multitude of books, letters and diaries that give first-hand accounts of the experience on all sides of the issue. One of the best Apple apps out there is that of the British Library - the parallel to our Library of Congress. It's not cheap at more than $90 USD, but is worth every penny because with it you get a lifetime of reading from books published exclusively in the 19th century. I've read books by James Silk Buckingham, who came from England to tour and observe the slave states in the 1840's...one of the best authors I've ever read. From the same app I retrieved Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a well-written and fascinating read. Also there I found a book written by a battlefield nurse, Mary Ashton Livermore, who served on the Union side and personally met Abraham Lincoln in a receiving line at the White House, describing both her service and meeting with Lincoln in riveting detail.
There's also the book store on Apple devices. I just finished the works of Frederick Douglass, one of the keenest minds of the era. In his writings Douglass had high regard for a Samuel R Ward who was a speaker and author of the day, so I sought and purchased his book entitled Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro.
After reading those and many other tomes, a picture emerged from the horrifying details of the war and from slavery that likened them to Hitler's state policy of mass murder. People should wake up to the reality that these things occurred on American soil, and should never again be repeated in concept or in deed.
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