All for the Union

Union soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes chronicles his career in the war. "All for the Union is the astonishing and eloquent diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, the Union soldier featured in Ken Burns's highly acclaimed PBS-TV documentary The Civil War. Enlisting as a private in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry at age nineteen, Elisha Hunt Rhodes fought in the regiment's twenty battles, beginning at First Bull Run and ending at Appomattox, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and command of the regiment at age 22. In these pages, history comes alive as a brave yet thoughtful soldier tells us, in his own words, what he saw, what he did, and why he was willing to endure such hardship and peril to preserve his beloved Union. Very few soldiers survived the entire war, and none wrote about it so clearly and honestly. It is difficult not to be charmed by the author of this diary, for he was a most decent man: dutiful, forthright, modest, and courageous. When Ken Burns stumbled onto this diary during the course of his research for The Civil War, he was so moved by it that he chose to reorganize the documentary so as to follow two "common" soldiers throughout the War: Elisha Hunt Rhodes for the North and Sam Watkins for the South. For the millions of television viewers who had the chance to meet Elisha Hunt Rhodes through excerpts from All for the Union, now at last comes the opportunity to read the entire diary of a man who embodied the American ideal of the citizen soldier and who expressed so powerfully his love for the young nation-a cause worth fighting for and, if need be, worth dying for."--Dust jacket.