Stuart Murray draws upon Berkshire County, Massachusetts diaries, letters, newspapers, military reports, church journals, and gravestones to tell the stories of the black Union soldiers drawn from New England factories and farms, and comprising the 54th Regiment. Here the reader will encounter Medal of Honor winners, Confederate generals, women volunteers, prisoners of war, leading abolitionists, pacifists, shopkeepers, poets, writers, artists, politicians, and a host of others, all contributing to a vivid portraits of the horrors and glories of the Civil War.