A Private named Pinckney is the main character in this novel of historical fiction as he proceeds with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia through some of the great and passionate battles in Virginia and Maryland, and lives to tell the tale. Pinckney interacts with his Generals as well as local characters whose lives have been swept up and into the War as it rolls through their locales. This story is an oft-told tale where history mingles with fiction to present the psychology and passions of a bygone era when honor was ...
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A Private named Pinckney is the main character in this novel of historical fiction as he proceeds with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia through some of the great and passionate battles in Virginia and Maryland, and lives to tell the tale. Pinckney interacts with his Generals as well as local characters whose lives have been swept up and into the War as it rolls through their locales. This story is an oft-told tale where history mingles with fiction to present the psychology and passions of a bygone era when honor was everything. By 1864, Southerners were fighting against overwhelming odds to undo the noose being looped around Richmond. The history of barefoot, hungry men who would not give up begins at Sharpsburg / Antietam, Pinckney's first battle after he enlisted on August 1, 1862 as a Private in the North Carolina 48th Infantry. His next battle after Sharpsburg was Fredericksburg where he and his Regiment were positioned on the rim edge of Marye's Heights as sharpshooters under command of Brigadier General John Rogers Cooke. Then came Bristoe Station, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and the Siege of Petersburg where he was mortally wounded on April 1, 1865. Rushed by flying hospital to the large Federal Point-of-Rocks hospital near Richmond, Pinckney's right leg is amputated on April 2, 1865 and he died the next day. But Pinckney's presence does not stop there. He appears to his Sergeant and Brigadier who are looking for him at Sutherland Station, then he is there for them at the Appomattox Surrender, and, finally, watches in sorrow in fallen, burned-out Richmond as the sad and melancholy President, Mr. Lincoln, climbs up the back steps and through the elongated open windows of the vacated White House of the Confederacy, goes upstairs and sits down at the presidential desk of Jefferson Davis. In shock from the sight, Pinckney, who was a Corporal by then, rushes out of there and heads to North Carolina for one last good-bye to his wife Evalina. This last day of the Confederacy ends a twice-told tale that begins with flying hospitals in the dead of night; the dapper President of the Tri-Town Council who rides to inform Lee at Sharpsburg; the woman at the river in Fredericksburg; the Widow Tapp whose shy and woeful full-breed bloodhounds defend the house at North Anna; Starvation Parties in Petersburg during the Siege where Pinckney is asked to play the fiddle and Pinckney's General Henry Heth invites his old friend Hancock; the elegant dinner party at elderly General Winfield Scott's in Manhattan where potatoes are served and mashed; and four unrelated people that Pinckney rescues from an auction at Raleigh - elderly Old John, gray-haired Norah, and two little boys named Issac and Zeke. During the War, Pinckney's wife Evalina is waiting at home and dreaming of battles.
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