In late 1863, the Hendon brothers from northern Alabama went to war. Most men around them joined the Confederate Army as did James, the oldest son of William and Sarah Hendon. James joined the 10th Alabama Infantry Regiment and fought in Leeas Army of Northern Virginia against U.S. Grantas Overland Campaign of 1864, including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and the Bloody Angle, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and the end at Appomattox. However, for the other three brothers, the Union cavalry was their choice. Robert, Jonathan and Henry joined the 1st U.S. Alabama Cavalry Regiment and fought in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and in the battle for Atlanta under William Tecumseh Sherman. Four brothers went to war and only three came home. This book is the story of their war-time experiences and the deep divide that came to their family as a result.

In the 1750s, Isham Hendon and three brothers, William, James and Josias, moved from Maryland to North Carolina. This story details the forty descendant families of the four brothers from early settlement down to 1860 and how the social, political, and economic conditions changed for these families because of the Civil War. Prosperous in 1860, the war brought heavy losses to the forty descendant families. They suffered from the death and woundings of their soldier loved ones. They suffered the decline of social and political standing in the wake of the upheaval in North Carolinaas social system after the war. The families suffered too from economic losses caused by the war. The families fell from social, political and economic prosperity in 1860 to poverty in 1870.

"In 1920, a young county attorney takes on the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma. This true story tells of a three year battle that Claude Hendon, a county attorney wages to bring down the powerful Ku Klux Klan in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. In that battle, members of the local Klan whipping teams are prosecuted and sent to jail along with county Klan leaders. At the state level in late 1923, the Klan controlled legislature impeaches and removes Claude's ally, Governor Jack Walton of Oklahoma. At the same time, the state attorney general, a Ku Klux Klan supporter, puts Claude on trial on charges of bribery, drunkenness and failure to conduct a special election as mandated by the legislature. Threatened, shot at, physically beaten, and hauled into court, can Claude save himself and win his battle to rid the county of the Ku Klux Klan?"--Cover.

In the North, Abraham Lincoln built a massive war effort by expanding executive authority, sometimes in ways beyond the Constitution. Not only emancipation, but also new monetary policies, new forms of commercial organization and production, and new ways of raising and commanding armies made a different United States, shaped for world power.

Henry Harper from Troup County Georgia joined the Confederate Army along with his two brothers and numerous cousins. This is the story of their war experiences from joining up in 1861 until homecoming in 1865.