The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers
by By Moe, Richard
Category: History , United States , Civil War Period (1850-1877)

The First Minnesota Volunteers, the first regiment offered to Lincoln after the fall of Fort Sumter, served in virtually every major battle fought in the eastern theater during the first three years of the Civil War. This is the story of the Army of the Potomac during that period: the initial enthusiasm dashed by sudden defeat at Bull Run; the pride at being shaped into an army by George McClellan and the frustration with his - and his successors' - inability to defeat Robert E. Lee; and, finally, the costly victory at Gettysburg, the decisive battle in which the First Minnesota played a crucial, and tragic, role. Drawing on a wide array of letters, diaries, and personal reminiscences, many of them previously unpublished, Richard Moe tells the story anew through the experiences of the men who lived it. As James MacGregor Burns notes in his foreword, "Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, this work sticks close to the men in battle, and hence, like Tolstoy, the author keeps close to the human side of war." In the words of Ken Burns, Moe has created "a version of history told from the bottom up, not the top down, and we are all the richer."