War Ain't No Picnic: 30 Civil War Stories & Devotionals

An entertaining and easy-to-read collection of Civil War stories, with footnoted primary sources for the more serious reader who enjoys historical research.

Award-winning storyteller and Methodist pastor, Tom Letchworth, retells some of the most fascinating stories from the American Civil War.

Each chapter includes historical photos and spiritual applications.
These are some of the interesting stories Tom Letchworth discovered in his research of the American Civil War. And since he's a United Methodist minister, it's only natural that he saw the spiritual analogies.

• The mystery of the glow-in-the-dark wounds after the Battle of Shiloh.
• How the Battle of Manassas "invaded" a civilian picnic.
• The volunteer nurse whose orders even General Sherman followed.
• How a slave sailed his way to freedom and later served as a U.S. congressman.
• The bullet that passed through General Cleburne's open mouth as he yelled orders.
• Lula McLean's doll "witnessing" the peace talks.
• The tragic maritime Sultana Disaster.
• Lincoln's official presidential memo in which he described a general's wife as a "saucy woman."
• Thirty stories in all.

Battles include: Blackburn's Ford, Bristoe Station, Bull Run, Chickamauga, Fort Donelson, Fort Pillow, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Manassas, Perryville, Richmond, Shiloh, and Yorktown.

Major and minor characters include: Mary Ann Bickerdyke, Franklin Hardin Barton, Braxton Bragg, Don Carlos Buell, Silas Canfield, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Barnard E. Bee, P.G. T. Beauregard, Patrick Cleburne, Chaplain Robert Dabney, Jefferson Davis, Dorothea Dix, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Ulysses S. Grant, Reuben Hatch, Stonewall Jackson, Josiah Stoddard Johnston, Annie Chambers Ketchum, Robert E. Lee, William Letchworth, Abraham Lincoln, Tad Lincoln, George McClellan, Lula McLean, Wilmore McLean, Louise Rodgers Paul, Gabriel Paul, Leonidas Polk, William Rosecrans, Richard Henry Rush, William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert Smalls, and many others.

Many readers have bought more than one copy of War Ain't No Picnic -- one for themselves, and the rest as gifts.