A brotherhood of valor - the common soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A (Hardcover)

"If I had to recommend just one biography of a Confederate military figure, this would be it", said Stephen B. Oates of Jeffry Wert's General James Longstreet. And of Wert's Mosby's Rangers, Stephen Sears said: "No Confederate warrior band was more celebrated, and no one has told the Rangers' story as well as Jeffry Wert". Once again, in A Brotherhood of Valor, Wert delivers fresh insights with the vividness and authenticity that are his hallmark.

Bringing to the Civil War a perspective from which it has seldom been seen, Wert delivers a dual portrait of two great fighting units, the Confederate Stonewall Brigade, and the Union Iron Brigade, who faced each other at Manassas (Bull Run), Fredericksburg, Sharpsburg (Antietam), Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg -- the most celebrated battles of the war.

We learn about the drama of battle from the viewpoint of the foot soldiers -- working men and farmers, mostly -- who answered the call to arms and joined their respective armies. From their letters home, we hear about grueling marches in rain and snow, sometimes in bare feet; sleeping on the ground without so much as a blanket; eating dried bread and little else for days on end; and, of course, the terror of watching comrades killed in battle. The details of their day-to-day lives bring an immediacy to the Civil War unmatched by any other source.