From Home Guards to Heroes
Subtitle: The 87th Pennsylvania And Its Civil War Community (Shades of Blue and Gray Series)
Publisher: University of Missouri Press; University of Missouri
Published: January 22, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780826216809
Subjects: American history: c 1800 to c 1900; Civil war; Regiments; United States - General; Pennsylvania; History; York County; History - Military / War; United States - Civil War; History: American; USA; Regimental histories; Civil War, 1861-1865; United States - State & Local - General; 19th century; Adams County; Soldiers; United States
Description: "The soldiers of the 87th Pennsylvania Infantry fought in the Overland campaign under Grant and in the Shenandoah valley under Sheridan, notably at the Battle of Monocacy. But as Dennis Brandt reveals in From Home Guards to Heroes, their real story takes place beyond the battlefield. The 87th drew its men from the Scotch-Irish and German populations of York and Adams counties in south-central Pennsylvania - a region with closer ties to Baltimore than to Philadelphia - where some citizens shared Marylanders' southern views on race while others aided the Underground Railroad."

"Using their own words to describe action both on and off the battlefield, he sheds light on the lives of ordinary men: the comparative values of farm and city boys, their motives and concerns, the effect of battle on soldiers and their families, and the suffering that veterans took to the grave. Brandt also looks at soldiers' racial views, illuminating their deepest worries about the war, and at community politics and problems of discipline surrounding this ideologically divided unit."

"Grounded in more than a decade of research into nearly two thousand military records, this is one of the few regimental histories based on more than one thousand pension records for the entire regiment, plus nearly eight hundred additional record sets for other area soldiers. Brandt tapped regional newspapers and a cache of unpublished letters and diaries - some from private collections not previously known - to provide an invaluable account of Civil War sensibilities in a northern area bordering a slave state."--Jacket.