The War for the Common Soldier: By Peter S Carmichael

Based on close examination of the letters and records left behind by individual soldiers from both the North and South, Carmichael explores the totality of the Civil War experience-the marching, the fighting, the boredom, the idealism, the exhaustion, the punishment, and the frustration of being away from families who often faced their own dire circumstances

Carmichael focuses not on what soldiers thought but rather how they thought. In doing so, he reveals how, to the shock of most men, well-established notions of duty or disobedience, mortality or immorality, loyalty or disloyalty, an bravery or cowardice were blurred by war.