"The bloody conflict that sundered the United States from 1861 to 1865 took 620,000 lives, laid waste to large sections of the American South, and decided the future course of the nation. Its reverberations are still felt in American Life. Now from the home of "The Nation's Memory" comes The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. Drawn from the library's unparalleled Civil War collections - including previously unpublished letters and diaries, maps and photographs, as well as thousands of works by post-Civil War scholars and experts - this is the ultimate one-volume reference on the Civil War."--BOOK JACKET.