Civil War Times Illustrated and America's Civil War Magazine present a fresh and bold re-examination of the epic year that was the "spring of the conferacy." From bloodstained battlefields to smoke-filled antechambers of political power-brokers, 1862 was a year of tumultuous events in America. Flush from its victories of the previous year, the Confederacy stood poised and powerful - tantalizingly close to sundering the shackles of the Union and establishing itself as a new and independent nation-state on the North American continent. The battles, political events, personalities, and innovative weapons of war are re-examined, and often illuminated with new analysis and information, by some of America's foremost historians and scholars.