The Civil War could truly be thought of as the single defining event in American history. The War’s social and political effects are still with us today. But sadly, our Civil War history is slowly disappearing. Suburban sprawl has destroyed many historic sites, and many significant battlefields are now lost under a layer of shopping malls and residential neighborhoods. On the surface, this book is a history travelogue. It includes famous battlefields such as Gettysburg and Antietam that are run by the National Park Service, and smaller unknown or forgotten places such as Westport and Olustee that are preserved as state or county historical parks, or which are not preserved at all but have miraculously managed to survive for a century and a half. But this is also a journey into America, into the history and culture which, for better or worse, have made us what we are today as a nation. The ghosts of the Civil War have never left us. Illustrated.