Philip Leigh
3911 W. San Pedro
Tampa, Florida 33629
Phil_Leigh@me.com
813-368-0764

 

Phil Leigh was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and has mostly worked as a computer industry stock analyst. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology and an MBA from Northwestern University.

From 2012 to 2015 he has contributed twenty-four articles to The New York Times Disunion Series, which commemorated the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. He was one of Disunion’s most frequent contributors.

In 2013 Westholme Publishing released an annotated and illustrated version of the memoirs of Confederate Private Sam Watkins entitled, “Company Aytch: A Classic Memoir of the Civil War” for which Phil wrote the Foreword and Annotations.

In May 2014 Westholme published Phil’s Civil War book, “Trading With the Enemy“, which is about intersectional commerce between the North and South during the Civil War.

In May 2015 Westholme released his second Civil War book, “Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies”

In May 2016 Westholme published his third Civil War book, “The Confederacy at Flood Tide”

Two more of Phil’s self-published Civil War books are: “Three Months in the Southern States: Illustrated and Annotated” and “Olustee and Florida’s Cattle Wars” The first one is the diary of a British officer who observed the War during the pivotal summer of 1863 and includes 178 annotations by Phil. The second is a “Kindle Single” of 22-pages that narrates Florida’s Civil War history during the second half of the War.

Phil’s latest Civil War book, The Confederacy at Flood Tide, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

You may purchase a signed hardcover copy from Phil by sending a check for $28.00 payable to him at the address above.

Should you add a note explaining how your interest in the Civil War developed, Phil can augment the signature with a personal remark. Please also be sure to provide your return address.

The Confederacy at Flood Tide title was selected to distinguish the book from the popular notion of the Confederacy at High Tide, which is associated with Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. But the story of the Confederacy’s most opportune time for winning independence during 1862 involved developments in Europe, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, Kentucky, Mississippi and even Missouri and Arkansas.

Moreover, the Confederacy’s flood tide was not limited to military factors. It also swelled within the sectors of diplomacy, politics, and espionage. For example, the Confederacy never came closer to diplomatic recognition than in the autumn of 1862. After learning of the Union rout at Second Bull Run, in mid-September British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston was considering British mediation for a peace settlement that would recognize the Confederacy as an independent state.

As one of the weapons Lincoln used to reverse the Confederate tide, the Emancipation Proclamation was more controversial than is commonly supposed. Major General George McClellan, among other prominent Union leaders, believed it was a deliberate attempt to incite a slave rebellion in the South. Europe more readily accepted his interpretation, where it was feared the proclamation might trigger a genocidal race war in other parts of the Western Hemisphere thereby disrupting the Atlantic trade. Finally, even President Lincoln admitted the possibility that it might provoke such insurrections in the South shortly before he issued the proclamation.

The Confederacy at Flood Tide combines the multifaceted developments from mid-June through mid-December 1862 into an integrated narrative that brings a new perspective to the overworked accounts of the past.

The Confederacy at Flood Tide Reviews:

  1. “Philip Leigh has done it once again. With The Confederacy at Flood Tide, he interweaves narrative and analysis to upend our conventional wisdom about the rise and fall of the South’s fortunes during the Civil War. A must read for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of those critical months in 1862, when the South could, for just a moment, see the possibility of victory.”  – Clay Risen, The New York Times
  1. “Philip Leigh has produced a highly-readable history of a crucial period of the Civil War. It is a fine synthesis of secondary sources, lavishly provided with maps which help keep the reader oriented and informed. He gives the reader a solid grounding of the battles, linked with a valuable discussion of how the leaders, both military and political, effected them. Perhaps the most interesting part of this work is the way in which Leigh places the events he discusses into the global context, connecting what was happening in the U.S. with public opinion, government policies, and social forces in Europe and Mexico. This is a fine addition to the current scholarship of the war.”  – Frank Varney, author of General Grant and the Rewriting of History
  1. “Phil Leigh’s new book,The Confederacy at Flood Tide, does a fine job of describing the chronological slice of the American Civil War from June to December 1862. This format ties together the far-flung theaters of war and the contemporaneous political situation, which emphasizes the interconnections among them, while the limited time frame allows this to be done in far greater detail than any volume covering the entire conflict. Mr. Leigh does not accept offhand the standard versions presented as history, but drills into the events without preconceptions, the better to determine causes and impacts.”   – Joseph Rose, author of Grant Under Fire