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. Volume Two picks up where Volume One left off. It is 1864 after Gettysburg. Two of the novel's main fictional characters, Isaac and Zeke, are wearing the Union blue and marching on a long, dusty road to join the Union XXV Corps which is composed entirely of African freedmen. Issac and Zeke and their Unit bivouac on the road to Petersburg. As 1864 unfolds, barefoot and hungry Southerners are fighting against overwhelming odds to undo the noose being looped around Richmond. On April 1, 1865 Pinckney's long run of good luck - at Sharpsburg /Antietam, Fredericksburg, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the Hog Snout at North Anna, Cold Harbor and then the Siege of Petersburg - comes to an abrupt end with a severe gunshot wound to the leg. Captured and treated initially in a flying hospital, Pinckney is then rushed to the large Federal field hospital at Point-of-Rocks on Bermuda Hundred near Richmond where his leg is amputated on April 2 and he dies the next day, April 3, 1865. But his presence does not stop there. While the crude surgery is being performed by a civilian barber recruited to the Federal medical corps, Pinckney's life is already slipping away, and, rising up from the surgical table, he gathers his ragged butternut garments and the remnants of his old uniform, hurriedly dresses, and rushes off to appear to his Sergeant and Brigadier who have been looking for him at Sutherland's Station. One week later, Pinckney appears to them again to say good-bye, standing awkwardly before them on a little hill as the Surrender unfolds at Appomattox. On his way further South to see his wife, Evalina, Pinckney visits fallen Richmond as Shockoe Bottom burns to the ground and the next morning watches sadly as Mr. Lincoln takes possession of Jefferson Davis' desk in the vacated White House of the Confederacy.
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