Dave Connon Reviews my Confederacy at Flood Tide book

(August 1, 2017) The book review below is provided by Dave Connon of Confederates From Iowa. 

Football announcers, amazingly enough, parallel the work of historians:  They both offer play-by-play comments, descriptions of players, speculation, and post-game analysis.  Historian Philip Leigh has written a thoughtful book, The Confederacy at Flood Tide:  The Political and Military Ascension, June to December 1862.

Leigh describes “the Confederacy’s most opportune period for winning independence.”  He excels at setting things in context, ranging from battles in the Eastern and Western Theaters to geopolitical struggles in Europe.  The book ends on the crescendo of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Divided loyalties

The author offers a political insight about Robert E. Lee and the South in general:

Since he [Lee] famously, and reluctantly, resigned as a U.S. Army colonel during the secession crisis, Lee appreciated that the Confederacy was composed of people with divided loyalties and consciences.  Many would require victories in order to remain steadfast to the new cause.

Click here to read the rest of the book review.

My Amazon Author Page

LSU Libraries Reviews My Latest Book

(November 1, 2016) Today’s Fall 2016 issue of LSU’s Civil War Book Review included this review of The Confederacy at Flood Tide.

The title is my fourth since 2013 and will be followed by a fifth next May. The preceding books are Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies, Trading With the Enemy, and an illustrated and annotated version of Confederate Private Sam Watkins’s memoirs, Co. Aytch, which is Rebel vernacular for “Company H.”

Readers may learn more about each title at My Author Page at Amazon.