Last to Join the Fight: The 66th Georgia Infantry
| By author: | Daniel Cone |
Product Code:
H882
ISBN:
9780881464757
Product Format:
Hardback
| In stock |
Price:
$29.00
Qty:
*
More than five dozen regiments from Georgia fought for the Southern Confederacy; one of these was the 66th Georgia Infantry. Raised and commanded by early-war veteran James Cooper Nisbet, the 66th assembled at Macon in summer 1863, suffered through a winter of discontent in Dalton, charged into enemy fire at Peach Tree Creek and Atlanta, and slogged through the rain and mud of Franklin and Nashville before surrendering. LAST TO JOIN THE FIGHT chronicles the service of this penultimate Georgia Confederate unit.
Drawing on newspapers, letters, and diaries, this book details the hard realities of service in a Civil War regiment. Yet it also assesses the often-flawed memories of Colonel Nisbet, and plumbs census records to reconstruct the social makeup of the 66th. A sample group of more than 500 men displays the extent of poverty in the ranks, and considers how variables in a soldier’s age, family status, home location, or economic background determined devotion or desertion. Concluding pages view the regiment’s survivors in the postwar period, amidst hard times and historical forgetfulness.
The story of the 66th Georgia Infantry has never been told before. LAST TO JOIN THE FIGHT offers not a noble epic about valiant fighting men, but rather the bloody-ground truths about the Civil War from the vantage point of those who entered it towards the end.