We Look Like Men of War
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5.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Lost Regiment series comes a factually based narrative of the black military experience in the Civil War.
We Look Like Men of War
"I was born a slave, as was my father before me, but I shall die a free man...."
Thus begins the poignant story of Samuel Washburn, born a slave in 1850. A young master's cruelty leads to an unforeseen confrontation, which forces Sam and his cousin to flee the plantation. They run north to freedom, only to return south to fight for the greater cause.
Though still a boy, Sam becomes a regimental drummer with a "colored regiment" and sees action in the Wilderness campaign at Fredericksburg and Petersburg, as well as at the bloody Battle of the Crater in July of 1864.
Sam's voice offers a unique and insightful perspective on the carnage of the War Between the States and the toll it took on both young and old, black and white.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
What could have been a moving tale of a man's progress from slave to free man to battle-scarred veteran of the Union Army is here reduced to a pedestrian ramble through the Civil War. Samuel Washburn, a slave who grows up on a Kentucky plantation, loses both of his parents by the time he is 12 years old. In the early stages of the war, his master is killed in battle, leaving the master's cruel son Ben no more than a boy himself in charge. Sam and his cousin Jim assault Ben in self-defense; believing him dead, they take flight and, with a bounty on their heads, eventually make it to Indiana. They volunteer for a Negro regiment being formed to join the Army of the Potomac in Grant's campaign against Petersburg, Va. Sam's personal narrative builds to the disastrous Battle of the Crater, where conflicts of command not only thwarted a plan that could have ended the war months earlier than it did, but also orchestrated the wholesale slaughter of Federal troops as orders and strategies were countermanded and confused at the last moment. The book, by the author of the Lost Regiment series, is exceedingly well researched; however, Sam's character is unconvincing in vernacular and circumstance. The role of Negro troops in the Civil War is still a subject not fully explored, but the novel descends into a highly idealized and exceedingly narrow history of the intrepid heroics and courage of the men who served and sacrificed themselves for the Union cause.
