The Stonewall Brigade

Book excerpt: A Novel of the American Civil War David Preston was an officer in the U. S. Army—before Virginia seceded from the Union. Then, with most of his fellow Virginians, he offered himself in the service of the Confederacy . . . Assigned to Col. T. J. Jackson's 1st brigade, at Harper's Ferry, he quickly began applying the expertise in military medicine he had gained as an observer with Garibaldi's forces in Italy. He'd met Abe Lincoln once, in Washington. Now he was to encounter the likes of J. E. B. Stuart, the dashing cavalry commander, Robert E. Lee, Jubal Early, and especially Stonewall Jackson—that puzzling blend of professor, Bible scholar, and dazzling military genius. David was to follow Jackson through all his campaigns—right up to the last one, at Chancellorsville, where a stray bullet ended the great general's life. And David was then to see the Confederate cause gallantly go down to defeat as Grant's armies closed their iron circle around Richmond. But always in the back of David's mind was Araminta, the Cherokee woman he would marry if he survived the war. She was caught up in the political intrigues over the fate of the Cherokee nation after the war, and her Southern sym­pathies led her to take chances which endangered her safety, and perhaps her life . . . Human tragedies interweave and blend with the broad sweep of military maneuvers, in this large-scale historical novel about the men who fought with Stonewall Jackson during the Great War of Secession.