Join Garden District Book Shop for an evening with author Mark F. Bielski. About this event The Garden District Book Shop is thrilled to host local author and historian Mark F. Bielski to celebrate the release of, “A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy: The Rise and Fall of New Orleans, 1862”, on June 24 at The Rink (2727 Prytania Street.) Bielski is an historian, author, the Director at Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours and host of the History with Mark Bielski podcast. Traditional history has not devoted a great deal of attention to the fall of New Orleans, a Civil War event that was an early harbinger of the dark days to come for the Confederacy. “A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy” begins in the spring of 1862, when a furious naval battle began downriver from the city at Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the joyous celebrations of Mardi Gras turned into the Easter season of dread as the sound of the distant bombardment reached New Orleans, portending an ominous outcome. Throughout the book, Bielski covers the leaders and men who fought for control of New Orleans, the largest city in the South, the key to the Mississippi, and the commercial…

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I was very happy to read this great review of my new book, A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy: The Fall of New Orleans, 1862, by Civil War Books and Authors. Civil War Books and Authors Review of “A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy: The Fall of New Orleans, 1862” In discussing a conflict that lasted five long years, it can be difficult to convincingly maintain that any single event from the first twelve months of the Civil War constituted a “mortal blow,” but the Union capture of New Orleans in April 1862 was by all estimates a devastating setback to the Confederacy’s bid for independence. The blockade had already effectively choked off international trade by the time Union forces launched a direct assault on the city, but the strategic, material, and morale losses that attended its fall remained considerable. By far the most populous city in the seceded states, cosmopolitan New Orleans controlled the mouth of the great Mississippi River and contained a large proportion of the American South’s irreplaceable Gulf State industry. Even with all of this obvious significance, a definitive-level study of the fall of New Orleans still escapes us, and Mark Bielski’s A Mortal Blow to…

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