With Your Shield Shining

The Civil War has been written about in every possible way, and for me to add to this extensive library, I required my own war-one that might have taken place after Longstreet was allowed to flank the Union left on the Gettysburg, resulting in a Confederate victory.

This allowed a young lieutenant to meet my great grandmother in a small town in western Missouri. A painting and several daguerreotypes attest to her beauty if not to her emotional development, on which I have allowed myself to imagine what no relative has imagined before.

The lieutenant, when not courting a girl in her teens, finds himself training country boys with weapons that were available, if not generally used in that other war; he gains promotion after promotion, and then goes south with famous generals, where there is a lot of gunfire and more promotions. Warfare has changed little in eighty years. The human condition, with all the youthful hopes, temptations and victories has changed even less, and permit us to recreate and relive that earlier time.