Within recent years the memory of the Confederate South, passing from first hand to second, has become a memory of generals. And all but lost in the smoky dimness are the lines of common soldiers, ragged and hungry and wolf-lean and wolf-deadly. But they lived, too, those common soldiers. Such of them as survived the war fathered and grandfathered the men and women of today's South, and left to their children a tale, at once forlorn and wonderful, of how a war was bravely fought and bitterly lost. The most any simple veteran could say was that he had fought it through, to the death of hope. A scant handful blazoned themselves with the proud legend: "First at Bethel-Last at Appomattox." Big Bethel on the Virginia Peninsula was not the true beginning of the Civil War, for that befell at Fort Sumter; but at Big Bethel the first hot blood was shed on both sides. And there were surrenders after Appomattox; but Appomattox made them inevitable, it was the assurance of the end of things. The very few who, at the last, could look back to the fist, had bought their right to boast of it with the dearest currency, their wounds and their broken dreams. A family group of five young men marched away to Big Bethel, and two lived to lay down their arms at Appomattox. Without meaning to, they made possible by a profuse and unconsciously eloquent mass of letters, diaries, and repeated oral traditions the survival of knowledge of what men they were, and how they fought and triumphed and lost. This book is the effort to set it down, and is as much of the truth about those five as it is possible to discover, ninety-five years after they marched off to battle.

Foreword -- The sound of the drum -- All the boys well in camp -- Until we are prepared for it -- Less fear in each passing day -- The God of battles is on our side -- So it is when one of us dies -- Wound up in love as by a cloak -- I never before knew what soldiering was -- I belong to General Lee's army -- Our brigade was in it good -- Fought well and was complimented -- Fallen in love on somebody else's plantation -- Hard, hard to be a good man -- Still the will is half the man -- Washington would have been in our possession -- Never yet did I see fellows run as they did -- Upon the verge of time I stand -- I am tired of this fighting -- Tell Mother, if I fall -- Let us not mourn as those who have no hope -- We can still weather this storm -- Blow, Gabriel, blow -- Valor and devotion could accomplish nothing -- Afterword.