(From the Foreward:) "The Tree of Appomattox" concludes the series of connected romances dealing with the Civil War, begun in "The Guns of Bull Run," and continued successively through "The Guns of Shiloh," "The Scouts of Stonewall," "The Sword of Antietam," "The Star of Gettysburg," "The Rock of Chickamauga" and "The Shades of the Wilderness" to the present volume. It has been completed at the expense of vast labor, and the author has striven at all times to be correct, wherever facts are involved. So far, at least, no historic detail has been challenged by critic or reader.
This edition of the book contains 10 place-, time- and subject-relevant illustrations that are unique to this edition.
Joseph Alexander Altsheler was born in Three Springs, Hart County, Kentucky to Joseph and Louise (Snoddy) Altsheler. In 1885, he took a job at the Louisville Courier-Journal as a reporter and later worked as an editor. He started working for the New York World in 1892, first as the paper's Hawaiian correspondent and then as the editor of the World's tri-weekly magazine. Due to a lack of suitable stories, he began writing children's stories for the magazine.
Altsheler married Sarah Boles on May 30, 1888, and had one son. He and his family were in Germany when World War I began. The difficult journey home took a toll on Altsheler's health and he was never the same. He died in New York City in 1919.