Featuring breathtaking panoramas and revelatory, unforgettable images, Battle Lines is a monumental graphic history of the Civil War. A collaboration between award-winning historian Ari Kelman and acclaimed graphic novelist Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, Battle Lines showcases a variety of objects from the conflict (a tattered American flag from Fort Sumter, a pair of opera glasses, a bullet, an inkwell, among others), along with a cast of soldiers, farmers, slaves, and well-known figures, to trace an ambitious narrative that extends from the early rumblings of secession to the dark years of Reconstruction. Employing a bold graphic form to illuminate the complex history of this period, Kelman and Fetter-Vorm take the reader from the barren farms of the home front all the way to the front lines of an infantry charge. A daring presentation of the war that nearly tore America apart, Battle Lines is a beautiful, uncompromising, poignant, and incredibly original achievement.

The National Archives' cartographic section contains approximately 8,000 Civil War maps, including both manuscript and printed maps and plans. The manuscript maps include pencil sketches and original pen-and-ink drawings as well as processed maps with annotations in ink or pencil. Many of the Civil War manuscript maps and drawings are unique to the National Archives, while a variety of the printed maps are more common and can be found in other large repositories such as the Library of Congress.