Here is a rich panorama of fascinating Civil War history: the war's first deaths on the streets of Baltimore; Abraham Lincoln on the deck of the revenue cutter Miami; Franklin Buchanan of Talbot County commanding the ironclad C.S.S. Virginia as she sounds the death knell for the age of sail; Naval Academy instructor John Taylor Wood becoming one of the most feared Confederate raiders on the Bay; the P.O.W. camp at Point Lookout with its horrific death toll; the imprisonment of Jefferson Davis at Fort Monroe, the Gibraltar of the Chesapeake. Eric Mills's thoroughly readable narrative covers events in Chesapeake country during the months preceding the great conflict to shortly after the death of Lincoln.