A Politician Goes to War
The Civil War Letters of John White Geary
288 pages | 12 illustrations | 6 x 9 | 1995
Cloth edition is not available
ISBN 978-0-271-02618-3 | paper: $26.00 sh
Excerpt:
Camp near Atlanta July 29th 1864
My Dearest Mary,
As usual I am writing you under a heavy cannonade. This is the fourth day of the siege, and throughout the live-long day the bursting of bombshells, the booming of Cannon, the rattling of small arms, the dead and the dying are features of the day and the night. But there are still worse features than these. War and pestilence I have witnessed, but my eyes have been spared until now from witnessing the emaciated and languid form of their skinny twin sister famine. To-day I saw a young mother with a starving child so poor as scarcely to live, seeking bread at our home. Her husband was a conscript in the rebel ranks, and this is but a specimen of Davis’ work. If there is one spot in hell hotter than another, why should it not be reserved for him who has brought such evils on his fellow man.
William Alan Blair is an Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Bell Irvin Wiley’s classic books include The Life of Billy Yank and The Life of Johnny Reb.