The American Civil War – The Armies of the Union and the Confederacy

If there is one conflict that is remarkable in every respect, it can only be the American Civil War, better known on this side of the Atlantic as the Guerre de Sécession.

This conflict, which pitted the armies of the South against those of the Union of the near-centennial republic of the United States of America from 1861 to 1865, remains in the annals as the last classical war — in certain respects an heir to the Napoleonic Wars — and the first truly modern war of the twentieth century, featuring for the first time a massive and often intensive use of cutting-edge technologies.

This fratricidal conflict is the product of a long series of political, economic and ideological compromises between two civilisations that only very imperfectly masked the underlying fractures. The fierce appetites of the North, set against the principles of independence of the Southern states, could only lead to explosion.
Four years of fierce, deadly, bloody, total conflict, in which Johnny Reb gave no quarter to his brother Billy Yank. Everything has been said or written about this conflict: the joie de vivre of the South, its elegance, its chivalric spirit, its attachment to age-old traditions including that of slavery, pitted against the industrial war machine of the North, its humanist values, its shopkeeper's courage but also its greed and its implacable spirit of planning. From Gone with the Wind to Birth of a Nation, every cliché has been deployed.

This work presents the broadest possible panorama of the uniforms worn by the belligerents of this conflict. The most characteristic silhouettes and the basic principles of organisation are set out, chapter by chapter, in the now-celebrated format of the books published by Heimdal.