"Two Civil War era reporters, one traveling with the Union army and the other with the Confederates, are the authors of these two magnificent firsthand accounts of the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, the pivotal action of the Civil War. A.J.L. Freemantle (1835-1901) will be familiar to readers as a character in Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels (1974). Fremantle was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army; he became interested in the American South, travelling there and keeping a journal.

Whitelaw Reid (1837-1912) enjoyed a subsequent career as a journalist and became active in politics, eventually running unsuccessfully as vice-president on the Republican ticket with Benjamin Harrison in 1892. He was minister to France (1889) and ambassador to Great Britain under Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. This new edition contains a fresh introduction, fully revised references, and new illustrations and maps, all of which help students engage critically with these primary sources, providing them with a unique look at the most pivotal action of the Civil War."--Jacket.