Courage Under Fire Profiles in Bravery from the Battlefields of the Civil War

"In Courage Under Fire, award-winning historian Wiley Sword captures the fervor of a nation at war with itself, a war that pitted brother against brother. Through the immediacy of diaries and letters written not only on the battlefields and in the camps but also on the deathbeds of soldiers from both the North and South, Sword lays bare the complexities and depth of a soldier's mind in coming to grips with life and death - even while his country, and often his family, is mercilessly ripped apart." "From wives and mothers to the highest military figures, all strove toward often worthy but difficult objectives, while seeking to suffer as little as possible. In this compelling study of men and women facing the severest stress of their lives, fascinating stories such as that of Union Lieutenant Colonel Frank Curtiss come alive. He was ordered to take his regiment, the 117th Illinois, in a hopeless charge against the enemy's fortified lines at Atlanta, Georgia, on August 3, 1864. Aware that many of his men would die needlessly and for minimal tactical gain, he refused to obey these orders. The moral courage to fight meant also to appropriately assess the risks and weigh the loss in lives of one's soldiers. Confederate General John Bell Hood's decision to sacrifice much of his army at Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864, ranks as one of the saddest events of the war. His aggressive behavior is assessed in terms of both moral and physical courage providing a revealing insight into the character of one of the war's key commanders. The possibility of death in battle was a fearsome prospect for Lucy Morse who kept desperate hope that her husband, William H. Morse, would survive the fighting. She wrote to him, "I was almost crazy before I heard from you for fear that you had shared the fate of many a brave soldier." Her story and that of the fateful events in their lives provides graphic evidence of the fiber of America's soldiers and their worthy families."--BOOK JACKET.Sword, Wiley is the author of 'Courage Under Fire Profiles in Bravery from the Battlefields of the Civil War', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312367411 and ISBN 0312367414.