Civil War letters from a humble family of South Carolina farmers who lost nearly a whole generation:
The Boyd family of the Abbeville district, South Carolina, second-generation Irish immigrants, were not wealthy and owned no slaves. They worked extremely hard to grow their own crops. Yet they sent five sons and a well-loved son-in-law to fight in South Carolina's armies. To me, this is stunning. They did not love the war. They were pragmatic at first, with a we-have-to-get-it-done attitude. By the end Daniel Boyd was bitter, tired, and disillusioned. But his sense of honor kept him from simply deserting. He commented on the huge number of men all around him who did just that; ironically, those who left in the last six months of the war seemed to Daniel to fare very well, to escape any condemnation. The book is wonderful - and allows the reader to delve beneath the plainly stated words of the letter-writers to see the Civil War through an almost never-seen perspective.

A bonus for me: In one of the letters in this books, I recognized a mention made of one of my own ancestors. My great-great grandfather Jeffers, and his partner Mr. Cothran, had a business shipping and delivering goods and mail all over the western part of SC. In 1861, Robert P. Boyd wrote to his father requesting letters from home, and telling him how to mail them: “back yor letters RP Boyd, Barnwell Dis, Woodward post offis, car of Cathern and Jeffers.” That was fun to spot! ( )