Civil War Confederate Leaders

(ISBN 978-1-933122-77-9)

The fight that split the United States also split the United States military, and this book tells the biographies of officers who chose to leave the U.S. Army to fight for their home states in the Confederacy. Chester the Crab tells the stories of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and the men who put into action Lee’s daring battlefield plans: Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, JEB Stuart, and John Singleton Mosby. These stories include descriptions of the Battle of Chickamauga, Jackson’s Valley Campaign, and the daring raids across “Mosby’s Confederacy.” This colorful graphic novel will excite reluctant readers, prepare students for standardized tests in history, and help homeschooling parents!

Comic sample page #1: Did Lee choose the North or South?
Comic sample page #2: Where was “Mosby’s Confederacy?”
Topics covered in this comic book

Did Lee choose the North or South?

Where was Mosby's Confederacy?

CHAPTER 1 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Here is a great compare and contrast exercise! The Civil War not only divides families, it also divides people who had become friends while serving together in government and the military before the war. Biographies of Civil War leaders have many similarities – reading someone’s pre-war timeline without knowing their name, it would be hard to pick which leader was from a Northern state and which was from a Southern state. For example, the two presidents of the forces fighting the war have a lot more in common than you might expect . . .

A Tale of Two Presidents covers the following topics:

A Tale of Two Presidents: Kid rock
A Tale of Two Presidents: Into politics
A Tale of Two Presidents: Clouds of war
A Tale of Two Presidents: Civil warriors
A Tale of Two Presidents: The End

CHAPTER 2 ROBERT E. LEE
The most famous of all the Confederate battlefield generals is Robert E. Lee, who is a living symbol of Virginia history. His family first came to Virginia from England in the early 1600s! Lee’s mother grows up at the James River estate Shirley Plantation, one of the most elegant homes in Virginia and just a few miles from the first Virginia settlement at Jamestown. Lee himself is born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia – just a few miles from the home of another famous Virginian general, George Washington . . .

This Robert E. Lee biography covers the following topics:

Who was Robert E. Lee?
Why did Lee go in the Mexican War?
Did Lee choose the North or the South?
Who won the Battle of Gettysburg?
Who was Lee’s “Old War Horse?”
How does the Civil War end?

CHAPTER 3 “STONEWALL” JACKSON
Thomas Jackson was born in 1824 in what is today West Virginia. Death cut his family two years later: his sister and father die of typhoid fever. His mom dies when Jackson is just seven years old. Jackson grows up in the home of a strict uncle. But Jackson teaches himself a lot and gets a teaching job in his late teens. In 1842 he enters the United States Military Academy at West Point. He then joins the Army’s artillery and serves in the Mexican War. And then . . .

This “Stonewall” Jackson biography covers the following topics:

Where did Jackson teach?
How did “Stonewall” get his name?
What was Stonewall’s Valley Campaign?
How did Stonewall Jackson die?

CHAPTER 4 CAVALRY CHARGE
Horses are used for individual transportation more in the agricultural South than they are in the more urban North before the Civil War. So at the start of the war the Confederate cavalry units have a real advantage in the quality of their horses and riders. Most of the Southern cavalrymen provide their own horses for the battlefield. A cavalryman is usually armed with a carbine rifle, pistol, and a saber – and the Confederates put their cavalry advantage to quick use in attacking Union positions.

Cavalry Charge covers the following topics:

Where did J.E.B. Stuart learn to ride?
Who won the first Civil War battle?
Who missed fighting at Gettysburg?
Where was “Mosby’s Confederacy?”
Who was “The Wizard of the Saddle?”