Tom Elmore Bücher

In Civil War Columbia, South Carolina, no women were more gossiped about than Amelia Feaster and her teenage daughter, Marie Boozer. The Philadelphia-born Feaster, a widow three times before her thirty-first birthday, aided the Union war effort from her home, while Marie became infamous for her beauty and vanity. For over a century, scandalous tales of these women have been published across the nation, linking them to rich and powerful men both at home and abroad. Historian Tom Elmore sorts through the many myths and legends--involving such things as adultery, decapitation and the Russian tsar's jewels--about Feaster and Boozer to present the first fact-based biography of these two nineteenth-century tabloid queens.

Centered in the Confederacy's Atlantic states, Columbia was one of three untouched Southern capitals at the end of 1864. Its factories produced uniforms, swords, belts, bullets, gunpowder and cannonballs, all vital to the war effort, until the fiery onslaught of Sherman's invasion cut a swath through the city. Tom Elmore, local Civil War historian and tour guide, presents over sixty significant sites throughout the Greater Columbia area that were marked by moments of triumph and devastation during the war. Readers will find the stories behind both well-known and infamous places, including the Horseshoe on the University of South Carolina campus, the gruesome 1864 prisoner of war camp, the ruins of one of the largest textile mills ever built and the monument commemorating the spot where the great city was surrendered.

In April 1865, Richmond had fallen, and the Confederacy was dying. Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia. Joseph Johnston was in North Carolina negotiating the surrender of his army to William T. Sherman. But in South Carolina, General Edward Potter was leading 2,500 Union soldiers, including the famed African American regiment the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, through the state's interior, intent on destroying the railroads and equipment. This is the story of Potter's Raid. Using rare and nearly forgotten accounts, historian Tom Elmore has compiled the story of this often-overlooked campaign that featured the last shots of the Civil War in the state that started it.