The War for the Common Soldier

How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael’s sweeping new study of men at war. Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and the South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience — the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishments, and the frustrations of being