In this striking chronicle, the American Civil War comes to life through the lenses of such extraordinary photographers as Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, Jay D. Edwards, J.W. Petty, A.J. Russell, Mathew Brady and his numerous assistants, and scores of others. Found in attics, old albums, on forgotten shelves in libraries and archives, the images or real faces and places in Touched by Fire reveal the underlying drama, tragedies, and pain of a war that split one nation into two. Essays by eminent Civil War scholars and the entertaining, informative captions accompanying each picture highlight the viewpoints of citizens and soldiers often neglected in history texts and illuminate in detail the nature of Civil War leadership and command, the spirit of the individual regiments, the role of the oft-forgotten navies on both sides, and the continental scope of the war and its impact on the land and on communities large and small.

The story of the war is perhaps most starkly, and most poignantly, recorded in the hundreds of photographs of the men and boys—soldiers ranged in age from as young as thirteen to well over fifty—who offered their lives for the land they loved. Evocative portraits of the men charged with leading the troops—including Union officers Grant, McClellan, Burnside, Farragut, Custer, and Sherman, and across the line, Lee, Beauregard, Longstreet, and Hood—are accompanied by concise and candid evaluations of their performances. From group photographs of the hundreds who enlisted in small towns throughout the country as the war began, to shots of newly trained regiments posing proudly with shiny new ceremonial swords or with antiquated weapons brought from home, to men shown crowded in the squalor of such notorious prisoner-of-war camps as Andersonville, to horrific depictions of the dead and dying stretching as far as the eye can see, Touched by Fire presents the fate of the common soldier in matchless, unforgettable images.

The result of an historic collaboration between the National Historical Society and Civil War Times, Touched by Fire offers an unprecedented view of the Civil War and brilliantly captures the emergence of photography as the truest and most authentic record of the passions and the horrors of war.