"In this chronicle we hear the real voices of the soldiers, nurses, farmers, laborers, slaves, and freed people who lived through America's most tragic conflict. The Civil War Chronicle is a collection of the letters, diaries, speeches, telegrams, newspaper accounts, and official battlefield reports penned by those people, both famous and anonymous, who felt compelled to record their experiences because they sensed that their lives were significant. Also included are hundreds of period images which, along with the carefully chosen yet highly eclectic accounts, help recapture the day-to-day texture of life during the Civil War at all levels of Union and Confederate society."--BOOK JACKET.