Secret Missions of the Civil War: First-hand Accounts by Men and Women Who Risked Their Lives in Underground Activities for the North and South.

STERN, Philip Van Doren.

Item Number: 138249

Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1959.

First edition of the author and historian’s carefully chosen collection of eyewitness accounts written by the leaders of undercover operations for both the North and South during the American Civil War. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by Philip Van Doren Stern on the first printing limitation page. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket.

Although he remains best known for his short story The Greatest Gift, upon which the film It's a Wonderful Life is based, Philip Van Doren Stern was a noted Civil War historian and one of the few historians to make undercover operations during the war his specialty. In Secret Missions of the Civil War, Van Doren Stern deftly weaves together representative dramatic eyewitness accounts written by the courageous men and women who actually participated in undercover operations for both the Union and Confederacy.