Civil War Stories is Catherine Clinton's fresh look at some everyday and extraordinary people whose lives were forever transformed by the impact of war. Two sisters, one a staunch defender of the Union, the other a passionate advocate of the rebel cause, are traumatized by the divide the Civil War imposes. Thousands of orphans, scattered from Maine to New Orleans, learn the hard lessons of the war at an early age. Clinton urges us to reconsider this fatherless generation's devastating losses. The war's outcome was acrimoniously contested after Appomattox. The story of two South Carolina women, one black and one white, illuminates that fires of bitterness raged even after surrender.