"The final volume of this highly acclaimed four-volume series begins with the controversial Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid on Richmond in March 1864 and ends with the proclamation of emancipation in Texas in June 1865. It collects 160 pieces by more than one hundred participants and observers, among them Abraham Lincoln, William T. Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Frederick Douglass ... The selections include include vivid and haunting firsthand accounts of battles and campaigns -- the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Atlanta, the Crater, Franklin, and Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas -- as well as the Fort Pillow massacre; the struggle to survive inside Andersonville prison; the burning of Columbia and Richmond; the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment; the surrender at Appomattox; and Lincoln's assassination." -- Publisher description.