The Last Drumbeat

Inspired by true events and based on the recorded history of one southern family’s struggles and endurance in the Civil War.

“No one’s going to take Quesinberry land.” With those words eighteen year old Oliver Quesinberry joins the Civil War. Leaving his young wife Mahala, his infant son, and family farm to do what he believes is his duty to preserve their land from Northern aggressors. A powerful story of how war forces a boy, a family and a country to question long held beliefs and endure tremendous loss.

At the family home, his parents Abigail and Andrew struggle to keep the farm going, caring for five young children, as their grown sons all enlist. Abigail, a strong resourceful woman, the best horsewoman in the area, is determined not to let the war overwhelm her, or her family. When Andrew joins the war effort in the last year, Abigail is left alone to hold the family together. Proving her toughness of spirit and tenacity, she overcomes heartbreak and fear to emerge as the backbone of the family.   

In September of 1861, at the age of eighteen, Oliver Quesinberry follows his older brothers Isaac and Asa into the Civil War. Volunteering against the wishes of his wife and his parents, he leaves the farm near Hillsville, Virginia that has been in the family for over a hundred years. Confident the war will over within months, he departs with the conviction the Southern Cause is just and the war will be short-lived.

Oliver is assigned the position of drummer for 29th Virginia regiment. As the war continues he comes under the command of General James Longstreet, whom General Lee called his “Old War Horse” and later General George Pickett. He is there for the infamous assault by Confederate troops at the center of the Union’s lines at Gettysburg, known as “Pickett’s Charge”. We follow Oliver’s regiment from it’s inception, to the retreat at Gettysburg, to Cold Harbor and Petersburg, as he becomes  disillusioned and struggles to come to terms with the reality and brutality of the war.

A family saga which takes the Quesinberry family through the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 to it’s conclusion with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865.