Blue, Gray and Black Blood

When President Lincoln sent out the call for a voluntary army to defend the fragile
Union of States threatened by the secession of southern states, some who first
answered the call were farm boys from western Massachusetts. This is the story of the
experiences of one regiment, the 52nd Massachusetts Volunteers, who fought the
Rebels in the bayou country of South Louisiana. Every participant in their engagements,
the farm boys and their commanders, and the Rebels and theirs, considered south
>By chance, two northern soldiers spoke the Acadian French of their Quebec neighbors.
A common language permitted them a rare opportunity to communicate with the enslaved
who followed the Union soldiers to freedom without being able to communicate with their
liberators in French-speaking Acadiana.

Within the framework of known history, the author has told a compelling story of
young men of the 52nd growing up in the crucible of war and older men and women
of disparate cultures first clashing and ultimately recognizing the commonalities of
their cultures. The reader is delighted to learn that an appreciation of humor and the
bizarre are as universal qualities of fellow men as pride and cruelty.