This is the story of the eleven Companies of the "Fighting Fourteenth Regiment" as seen through the eyes of James William Covington, a self-styled "blacksmith with a literary turn" and member of the Regimental Band, along with seven other soldiers who recorded their thoughts and feelings in journals and letters to their loved ones. They were common men who lived in the most uncommon of times and as such, were called upon to perform uncommon deeds. It is seen against the backdrop of our country's greatest struggle; a war that pitted brother against brother, father against son, and took the lives of more Americans than all the combined wars before or since.