subtitle Drinking Patterns in the Civil War Was the Civil War a fight between two mobs of drunks? Did the Irish drink too much? Did the Germans swill beer? And what about the staid New Englanders? Not to mention drunken Confederate colonels. With statistics from over a hundred regiments and dozens to wild anecdotes (all documented) we can see for the first time, the true panorama of war and alcohol. Compare the boozing of George Washington's troops with the boys of 1861-1865. Read George B. McClellan's frothing diatribes against whiskey. For the first time, a fact-based narrative reveals to pleasures and perils of drinking in the Great War.